The appearance of the grace leads to the appearance of the glory.
The identity of the form of expression in the two clauses is intended to suggest the likeness of and the connection between the two appearances. In both there is a visible manifestation of God, and the latter rests upon the former, and completes and crowns it.
But the difference between the two is as strongly marked as the analogy; and it is not difficult to grasp distinctly the difference which the Apostle intends. While both are manifestations of the divine character in exercise, the specific phase (so to speak) of that character which appears is in one case grace,' and in the other glory.' If one might venture on any illustration in regard to such a subject, it is as when the pure white light is sent through glass of different colours, and at one moment beams mild through refreshing green, and at the next flames in fiery red that warns of danger.
The two words which are pitted against each other here have each a very wide range of meaning. But, as employed in this place, their antithetical force is clear enough. Grace' is active love, exercised towards inferiors, and towards those who deserve something else. So the grace of God is the active energy of His love, which stoops from the throne to move among men, and departing from the strict ground of justice and retribution, deals with us not according to our sins, nor rewards us according to our iniquities!
And then the contrasted word glory' has not only a very wide meaning, but also a definite and specific force, which the very antithesis suggests. The' glory of God,' I believe, in one very important sense, is His grace.' The highest glory of God is the exhibition of forgiving and long-suffering love. Nothing can be grander. Nothing can be more majestic. Nothing, in the very profoundest sense of the word, can be more truly divine--more lustrous with all the beams of manifest deity, than the gentle raying forth of His mercy and His goodness.
But then, while that is the profoundest thought of the glory of God, there is another truth to he taken in conjunction with it. The phrase has, in scripture, a well marked and distinct sense, which may be illustrated from the Old Testament, where it generally means not so much the total impression of majesty and power made upon men by the whole revealed divine character, but rather the visible light which shone between the cherubim and proclaimed the present God. Connected with this more limited sense is the wider one of that which the material light above the mercy-seat symbolised--and which we have no better words to describe than to call it the ineffable and inaccessible brightness of that awful Name.
The contrast between the two will be suggested by a passage to which I may refer. The ancient lawgiver said, I beseech thee show me thy glory.' The answer was' I will make all my goodness pass before thee.' The eye of man is incapable of apprehending the uncreated divine lustrousness and splendour of light, but capable of receiving some dim and partial apprehensions of the goodness, not indeed in its fulness, but in its consequences. And that goodness, though it be the brightest of' the glories that compose His Name,' is not the only possible, nor the only actual manifestation of the glory of God. The prayer was unfulfilled when offered; for to answer it, as is possible for earth, would have been to antedate the slow evolution of the counsels of God. But answered it will be, and that on this globe. Every eye shall see Him.'
The grace has appeared, when Divine Love is incarnate among us. The long-suffering gentleness we have seen. And in it we have seen, in a very real sense, the glory, for we beheld His glory, full of grace.' But beyond that lies ready to be revealed in the last time the glory, the lustrous light, the majestic splendour, the flaming fire of manifest Divinity.
Again, the two verses thus bracketed together, and brought into sharp contrast, also suggest how like, as well as how unlike, these manifestations are to be.
In both cases there is an appearance, in the strictest sense of the word, that is to say, a thing visible to men's senses. Can we see the grace of God? We can see the love in exercise, cannot we? How? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?' The appearance of Christ was the making visible, in human form, of the love of God.
My brother, the appearance of the glory will be the same--the making visible in human form of the light of throned and sovereign Deity. The one was incarnation; the other will be incarnation. The one was patent to men's senses--so will the other be. The grace has appeared. The glory is to appear. Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.' An historical fact, a bodily visibility, a manifestation of the divine nature and character in human form upon earth, and living and moving amongst men! As Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many,"so unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.' The two are strictly parallel. As the grace was visible in action by a Man among men, so the glory will be. What we look for is an actual bodily manifestation in a human form, on the solid earth, of the glory of God.
And then I would notice how emphatically this idea of the glory being all sphered and embodied in the living person of Jesus Christ proclaims His divine nature. It is the appearance of the glory '--then mark the next words--of the great God and our Saviour.'
I am not going to enter upon the question of the interpretation of these words, which by many very competent authorities have been taken as all referring to Jesus Christ, and as being a singular instance in scripture of the attribution to Him directly, and without any explanation or modification, of the name, the great God!' I do not think that either grammar or dogma require that interpretation here. But I think that, if we take the words to refer distinctly to the Father and to the Son, the inference as to Christ's true and proper divinity which comes from them, so understood, is no less strong than the other interpretation would make it. For, in that case, the same one and indissoluble glory is ascribed to God the Father and to Christ our Lord, and the same act is the appearance of both. The human possesses the divine glory in such reality and fulness as it would be insanity if it were not blasphemy, and blasphemy if it were not absurdity, to predicate of any single man. The words coincide with His own saying, The Son of Man shall come in His glory and of the Father,' and point us necessarily and inevitably to the wonderful thought that the glory of God is capable of being fully imparted to, possessed by, and revealed through Jesus Christ; that the glory of God is Christ's glory, and the glory of Christ is God's. In deep, mysterious, real, eternal union the Father and the Son, the light and the ray, the fountain and the source, pour themselves out in loving-kindness on the world, and shall flash themselves in splendour at the last, when the Son of Man shall be manifested in His own glory and of the Father!'
And then I must touch very briefly another remarkable and plain contrast indicated in our text between these two appearings.' They are not only unlike in the subject (so to speak) or substance of the manifestation, but also in the purpose. The grace comes, patient, gentle, sedulous, labouring for our training and discipline. The glory comes--there is no word of training there! What does the glory come for? The one rises upon a benighted world--lambent and lustrous and gentle, like the slow, silent, climbing of the silvery moon through the darkling sky. But the other blazes out with a leap upon a stormy heaven as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west,' writing its fierce message across all the black page of the sky in one instant, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.' Like some patient mother, the' grace of God' has moved amongst men, with entreaty, with loving rebuke, with loving chastisement. She has been counsellor and comforter. She has disciplined and fostered with more than maternal wisdom and love. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' But the glory appears for another purpose and in another guise--Who is this that cometh with dyed garments? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art Thou red in thine apparel? I have trodden the winepress alone--for the day of vengeance is in Mine heart, and the year of My redeemed is come.'
