No doubt every true Christian would love to one day say with all sincerity: “My eyes have seen the Lord.” These words carry a living hope and a deep longing that should govern our lives on earth, through death, and into eternity.
In one sense, we have already seen the Lord by His light, truth, grace, and power. We have seen Him spiritually through the Holy Scriptures. If we had not, we would never have believed and followed Him while we wait to see Him face to face.
We remember Mary Magdalene seeing the risen Lord, and the disciples telling Thomas, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas doubted until he saw Christ with his own eyes. Then he fell down in worship and cried out, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus replied, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:28-29). Thomas’s response was immediate worship as his eyes behold the Lord of glory.
The Holiness and Power of God
One of the most powerful visions in Scripture is Isaiah’s encounter with the Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died, the prophet saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. The train of His robe filled the temple. Seraphim cried out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” The foundations shook and the house was filled with smoke.
Then Isaiah cried out in terror:
“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1-5)
In a moment, the holiness, power, and glory of God exposed the darkness of Isaiah’s own heart. He saw the uncleanness of his lips and his people. Confronted with God’s glory, he pronounced judgment on himself. Why such terror? Because his eyes had seen the Lord.
A Proper Response
Many today claim to have seen the Lord in dreams, visions, or unusual experiences like on clouds, in food, on car windows, or during supposed trips to heaven. Yet these accounts rarely produce brokenness, repentance, or holy fear. Instead, they often lead to strange heretical teachings or self-promotion, which is evidence that they are false.
Contrast this with Scripture: when the Apostle John saw the glorified Christ, he fell at His feet as though dead (Revelation 1:17). When Peter saw the power and glory of Jesus, he fell down at His knees and cried, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8).
The same happened to Job, yet a righteous man and blameless before the Lord. After seeing the majesty of God, he declared:
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)
Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly said: “The nearer a man gets to God, the greater he sees his sin.”
Alexander McLaren also observed: “The easy-going Christianity which is the apology for religion with so many of us, has no deep sense of sin, because it has no clear vision of God.”
This is the urgent need of the church today. We desperately need a clear, biblical vision of God.
We are not asking the Lord for visions like Isaiah’s or John’s in Revelation right now in this life. If we were to see Him in the full blaze of His glory in our present state, it would overwhelm and destroy us. We are not yet glorified and ready for such a sight. But we do need to see a true vision of God in the Holy Scriptures, especially in the face of Jesus Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9).
As Jesus said to Philip, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Seeing Christ clearly in the gospel is seeing God in His glory. The more clearly we behold the beauty and holiness of Christ, the more we will be broken over our sin, driven to repentance, and filled with true worship.
This vision of Christ in the Word increases our longing to one day see Him face to face. Then, as John writes, “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). There our deepest longing will be fully satisfied, and we will be able to say in its truest and fullest sense, “My eyes have seen the Lord.” There we will worship Him without interruption, in perfect holiness, forever (1 Corinthians 13:12; Psalm 17:15).
May the Lord grant us this kind of vision of Christ even now.
