Seeing God's face in glory
They will see His face (Rev. 22:4). As the Scripture sets before believers our enduring hope, the saints hear of the day when we shall see “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Specifically, when Christ appears, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). John Owen once asked, “To who is it not a matter of rejoicing, that with the same eyes with which they see the tokens and signs of him in the sacrament of the supper, they shall behold himself immediately in his own person?” He then adds “in the immediate beholding of the person of Christ, we shall see a glory in it a thousand times above what we can here conceive.” Believers have been longing for such a sight (Job 19:26), yearning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4). And while we have some faint acquaintance with Christ’s glory now by faith, a total transformation in us, changed from perishable to imperishable (1 Cor. 15:51–52), is necessary to see His unveiled glory. It is when we are like Him that we shall see Him as He is (1