It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found him – for the promise is that when we seek him with all our hearts, we shall surely find him – who can stand before the world to testify that they have known God.
J. I. Packer – Knowing God
“Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” Job 11:7
It is an incredible thing to consider that the incomprehensible Creator of the universe wants to be known. The Apostle Paul told the Athenians on Mars Hill that God intended mankind to seek Him and reach out to Him (Acts 17:27). God wants us to know Him and, as Hebrews 1:1-2 makes clear, He has made Himself knowable in the person of His Son, Jesus. In chapter 3 of Hebrews, believers and non-believers alike are exhorted to ‘consider Jesus.’ In chapter 12, from a passage which appears to be addressed to believers only, we are told to ‘fix our eyes upon Jesus,’ and again to ‘consider Him.’
Other invitations like these abound in the New Testament. Such calls to mankind to examine the evidence and to investigate Christ and His credentials as Lord and Savior are really quite remarkable within the context of human history for the simple reason that no mere man or woman could ever withstand that kind of scrutiny.
I recently finished reading a book by Oxford-educated British author and journalist Paul Johnson titled Intellectuals – From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky. It is an examination of the character and personal integrity of the leading architects of our modern secular-humanist society. The question Johnson poses in his book and goes on to examine in meticulously researched detail is simple and yet critically important: Did these individuals possess the personal character and credibility that would qualify them to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs?
In his book Johnson successfully unmasks the sad disparity between the pious posturing and the real-life practice of these exceptionally gifted and persuasive individuals. Each of the men and women profiled claimed to have the answers to mankind’s problems and further claimed to be motivated by the purest of affections for the entire human race and yet, as exposed by Johnson, they all shared a common history of contemptuous, cruel, and abusive behavior towards those individuals with whom they maintained personal relationships. The hypocrisy is stunning, to say the least.
Such is the legacy left to us by mankind’s greatest minds, and indeed we are seeing that same pattern reproduced in our political and cultural icons of today. We thrash about in a quicksand of intellectual and moral duplicity – all, it seems, for an apparent lack of elementary due diligence with regard to the fundamental character of those to whom we have surrendered our trust.
We need to know the credentials and character of the individuals in whom we chose to place our trust and confidence. This is the very reason employers do background checks, why SCOTUS nominees are investigated, and why the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews graced us with the grand and marvelous ‘being’ statements of Hebrews 1:3 describing the divine nature of Jesus Christ. Unlike any other person in human history His character is irreproachable and there is none other who is worthy of our trust, our praise, and our worship.
So then, let us fix our eyes upon Jesus and consider the nature and unimpeachable credentials of the Son of God:
Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Hebrews 1:3 KJV
Verse 3 of chapter 1 is the kingpin of the entire Hebrew epistle. It is here, after describing for us in verses 1 and 2 the manner which God has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind, the inspired writer now presents the authenticating credentials of that revelation with a view to affirming the fitness of Christ to reveal God. These are the credentials of the Son, who is both the message and the messenger, and they are spectacular. Verse 3 is rarefied air. It commands the highest peak of New Testament revelation and yet it exposes the firm bedrock foundation upon which our Christian faith rests because it contains two foundational statements regarding the essential nature of Jesus, the Son of God – “Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.” R. C. Lenski states well the impact of these two statements:
Language fairly groans with the weight of meaning. Our poor human tongue and mind, which are occupied so much with the things that are beneath us, strain to rise to the heights of the divine persons. But these mighty expressions form the rock bottom of our Christian faith, the essence of the sweet gospel realities. If the Son in whose person God drew nigh to us were less than is said here, our faith and our hope would be vain indeed.
R. C. H. Lenski (1864 – 1936) – The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews
The early church fathers drew directly upon these two declarations regarding the nature of God’s Son in 325 AD when they saw the need to craft a statement addressing a heretical teaching known as Arianism that denied the deity of Christ. That famous doctrinal statement came to be known as the Nicene Creed.
The unknown author of Hebrews posits these two truths early in his epistle, establishing them as the immovable load-bearing towers upon which he suspends the entire weight of his argument for the supremacy, all-sufficiency, and immeasurable excellence of Jesus.
The twin support-towers of Hebrews 1:3 are the dual proclamations that Jesus is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of God’s person and it is the participle ‘being,’ to which both statements are attached, that defines these truths as fundamental, immutable, and eternal attributes of the Son of God.
“Who being”…
The word ‘being’ is just two letters (ὢν, pronounced ōn) in the Greek. It is the translation of the present active participle form of a Greek verb that means ‘to exist’ or ‘to be.’ The verb tense is sometimes referred to as the ‘durative present’ because it denotes a continuous or sustained condition and/or action. Greek scholar A.T. Robertson (1863 – 1934), in his classic work Word Pictures in the New Testament, expresses the meaning of ōn in this context as “absolute and timeless existence.”
‘Timeless existence’ can describe no one other than God. In fact, when ōn is preceded by the definite article ho the phrase ho ōn is translated as ‘The One Who is.’ That term was used by Greek-speaking Jews, those to whom this letter was written, as a name for God based upon its usage in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Exodus 3:14 phrase ‘I Am Who I Am.’ The Septuagint rendering of that phrase, ego eimi ho ōn, translates into English as ‘I Am The One Who Is,’ thus ‘I am ho ōn.’
In verse 3 ōn (being) is preceded not by the definite article ho (the) as in Exodus 3:14 but by the relative pronoun hos (who) which refers back to the immediate antecedent which is ‘Son.’ To Greek-speaking Jews ho ōn was a name for God. Hos ōn as used in verse 3 references the Son of God. It is hard to believe that the similarity is unintentional.
The little phrase hos ōn (who being) establishes the qualities it modifies as the timeless and eternal attributes of a timeless and eternal Son. Jesus did not attain these facets of His being at the time of His incarnation. He always was and always will be the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of God’s person and, because they are eternal characteristics, they attest to the eternal nature of the Son – thus making Him equal to God the Father and yet described in such a way as to make it evident that the Son is separate in His essential being. This is trinitarian language. The first two words of verse 3 make it clear that Jesus is, as stated in the Nicene Creed, “very God of very God.”
“Who being the brightness of”…
‘Brightness’ is the Greek word apaugasma. It is a later word derived from the prefix apo (from) combined with auge (radiance). Hebrews 1:3 is the only place it is used in the New Testament. As a late-developing word it has a relatively short history in extra-biblical Greek. ‘Out-shining’ might be a better translation but there really isn’t a good English word that translates the meaning accurately. Early church father John Chrysostom defined apaugasma as “light out of light,” a phrase that was incorporated into the Nicene Creed. Respected Scottish professor A. B. Davidson (1831 – 1902) provided a definition that has become a favorite of many expositors, though it takes a bit of effort to wrap one’s mind around the image it presents:
… not rays of light streaming from a body in their connection with that body or as part of it, still less the reflection of these rays caused by their falling upon another body, but rather rays of light coming out from the original body and forming a similar light-body themselves.
A. B. Davidson – The Epistle to the Hebrews
Davidson’s definition portrays a magnificent word picture – ‘rays of light coming out from the original body (God the Father) and forming a similar light-body (God the Son) themselves.’ In the text of his commentary Davidson includes the additional remark that a literal idea of light can not be pressed. That point would seem to be self-evident as there is no natural phenomena to which this word might be attached. In fact, in all available extra-biblical examples apaugasma is never used literally with regard to the transmittal of light. Instead, it appears to have been a word created to be used as a metaphor or word-picture to illustrate the process or concept of making that which is unknowable known. A usage in the Jewish Book of Wisdom, for example, refers to wisdom (something knowable) as the apaugasma of the eternal light (something unknowable).
“Who being the brightness of His glory”…
We tend to think of God’s glory simply as a bright light that surrounds Him or emanates from Him, and understandably so. The pillar of fire that guided the Israelites by night is referred to in rabbinic literature as “the shekinah glory.” Revelation 21:23 says that the New Jerusalem will have no need for the sun or the moon because the glory of God will give it light. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus’ face shine as the sun and His garments become white as the light. Luke interprets their experience with the words, “they saw His glory” (Luke 9:32). But, while light is certainly an aspect of God’s glory, it is not that which defines it.
Glory translates the Greek word doxa, from which we get the word ‘doxology.’ In all non-biblical Greek the basic meaning of doxa is ‘what one thinks’ or ‘opinion.’ Typically it was used to denote a favorable opinion and therefore can mean ‘reputation’ or ‘renown.’ The New Testament, however, presents a picture entirely different from the secular Greek usage.
The meaning of doxa in New Testament usage is derived exclusively from its use in the Septuagint as the translation for the Hebrew word kavod. Kavod was the term used in the Old Testament to communicate the manifestation of that which is ‘intrinsically impressive in the being of God’ (TDNT 2:239). Ancient Hebrew is a very concrete language. It uses words that express things that can be seen, smelled, tasted, or heard. In the Old Testament kavod expressed the reality of God, that which could be seen and known about God. God’s power as it was revealed in nature and natural phenomena, the evidence of His divine being, was His kavod.
In contrast Greek is an abstract language, using words that refer to ideas and concepts – things that cannot be perceived by the five senses. The Greek language had no suitable equivalent for the expression of the reality of God. Nevertheless, when the time came to translate the Hebrew of the Old Testament into Greek, a word choice had to be made:
When the (Greek) translator of the Old Testament first thought of using doxa for kavod he initiated a linguistic change of far-reaching significance, giving to the Greek term a distinctiveness of sense which could hardly be surpassed. Taking a word for opinion, which implies all the subjectivity and therefore all the vacillation of human views and conjectures, he made it express something absolutely objective, i.e. the reality of God.
TDNT 2:245
Because it was linked so closely to the Hebrew term kavod, doxa became the word New Testament writers adopted to signify not the reputation or renown of God, but the divine mode of being itself, an expression of the divine nature, or that which reveals the nature of God. Considering its Hebrew etymology, it is little wonder that of all the definitions one can read for the Greek word doxa (glory) as it is used in the New Testament, the one provided by a Hebrew language scholar seems to be the clearest and most accurate. Once again we cite Hebrew language professor A. B. Davidson. In his exemplary work The Epistle to The Hebrews, Davidson defines ‘glory’ as follows:
‘Glory’ is not any external halo that surrounds the divine nature; it is the divine nature itself in its majesty and as manifested to the world.
A. B. Davidson – The Epistle to the Hebrews
Now here is the heart of the matter – the glory of God is a concrete reality, not an abstract concept. That reality is Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, God’s glory – His presence and divine being – was primarily manifested as light because light is a visible reality. It could be seen. But what do we see today? The answer is found in Hebrews 2:9: “But we see Jesus…” What an incredible statement!
Before the incarnation we could not see Him clearly. He has always been the brightness of God’s glory, but now we see Him as He is; and in seeing Him we see the full incomprehensible glory of the Creator. The reality of God, that which could not otherwise be fully known, is now made manifest in the person of His Son because the Son is the visible apaugasma or out-shining of God’s glory – the One who makes known He who is by nature unknowable to mankind. He is a perfect man, perfectly visible, born of a woman, who left real footprints on this planet, and who can be seen today because He is pictured in the Word of God both in His humanity and His divinity.
As used in Hebrews 1:3 apaugasma (brightness) pictures the incomprehensible, unknowable glory of a transcendent God invested in the knowable and concrete reality of the person of Jesus, the Son – God’s glory residing in the Son wholly, separate, and undiminished. It is not a shared glory but rather an out-shining of glory identical to the Father’s in all aspects but one. Sinful man cannot look upon the glory of God and live. But we frail humans are able to behold the glory of the Son, even to fix our gaze upon Him – and in doing so we see God in all His magnificent splendor.
By describing the Son as ‘the apaugasma’ of God’s glory the author of Hebrews affirms a bedrock truth of Christianity: the glory of God resides exclusively in Jesus. By His divine will, God has decreed but one way to the Father, and it is through the Son. Jesus is the ‘out-shining’ of the glory of God. This resident glory includes even the visible glory of the created universe, as is made clear by the preceding phrase in Hebrews 1:2 which says, referring to the Son: “by whom also he made the worlds.” Jesus, and only Jesus, reveals God and makes Him knowable to mankind.
“the express image”…
‘Express image’ translates the Greek word charakter. It is used only here in the New Testament and just three times in the Septuagint. You may have guessed that it is the word from which we derive our English word ‘character’ or ‘characteristic.’
In the Greek world charakter referred to the mark or impress made by an engraving or stamping tool; often specifically referring to the mark upon a coin that determined its value. From there it came to mean any distinguishing mark or characteristic that identified a thing or a person.
As it carried over to the Septuagint, charakter retained its root meaning and is used a) to refer to a scar that results from burning – picture the burned hand from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ b) to refer to the likeness between parents and children – ‘a chip off the old block’ might be an equivalent English idiom, c) for the distinctive characteristics of Greek culture that began to encroach upon Jewish traditions.
‘Express image’ is a good translation for charakter as the word ‘express’ in this sense means ‘precisely and specifically identified to the exclusion of anything else.’ The ESV choice of ‘exact impress’ is excellent, also, and is probably the preferred rendering.
“the express image of His person”…
The word ‘person’ in the King James is a translation of the Greek word hupostasis. This is another Greek word for which we have no appropriate English equivalent. The problem of English equivalency is compounded by three specific issues that have clouded our historical understanding of the word’s intended meaning as used in the New Testament:
- The fact that later Greek philosophy and post-apostolic Christian theology assigned a meaning to the word – equating it to ‘essence’ or ‘essential being’ – that was not present at the time the New Testament was written but has been mistakenly adopted by New Testament English translators.
- The unfounded insistence of 16th-century German reformers that hupostasis should be translated as ‘assurance’ or ‘confidence’ in Hebrews 11:1 – ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for’. This is a translation for which historical and linguistic evidence is non-existent and therefore must be soundly rejected.
- The clear indications that hupostasis carries with it an added significance in Hebrews as compared to Paul’s two uses of the word in II Corinthians. Therefore English renderings of the word that may work just fine in Paul’s Corinthian letter fall short of the intended meaning in Hebrews.
The end result is a mishmash of words used to translate the five occurrences of hupostasis in the New Testament. A common list would include: confidence, assurance, essence, substance, person, matter, essential being, undertaking, title-deed, guarantee, contract, and promise. While all of these words express to one degree or another an aspect of hupostasis as it is used in Hebrews, ultimately they all fall short of the true meaning the author is attempting to convey.
The root idea of the word is ‘that which stands under’ from hupo (under) and histemi (to stand). It came to be the word used to describe the plan or the purpose behind a project or undertaking, such as a building plan. The term encompassed not just the plan itself but also the actualization of the plan. In this sense hupostasis was used in the same way that we might use the verbal phrase ‘to follow a blueprint.’ The existence of the blueprint and the process of carrying it out are viewed as two parts of the same whole, the hupostasis. As it was commonly used, the end result of the project or hupostasis was inconsequential to the primary meaning of the word. A hupostasis could end either in success or failure. The two occurrences of hupostasis in II Corinthians reflect this common usage.
The unknown writer of Hebrews uses hupostasis in the same general Greek sense but from an expanded, transcendent perspective that reflects it’s usage by the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo. Philo primarily associated hupostasis with the plans and purposes of God. Therefore the existence of the hupostasis was sufficient to validate or confirm an intended result that was fixed and certain. Failure of the hupostasis was not an option. The intended purpose of the plan or project to be undertaken was certain to be achieved.
A plan with a guaranteed future fulfillment is incompatible with human designs and therefore must be of God – a plan or project, a hupostasis, rooted in the eternal purpose of ‘The One Who Is.’ Hupostasis in the Epistle to the Hebrews can be described as a plan or purpose that originates from God and whose end is perfect and certain. I like to think of it as a ‘divine blueprint.’
In verse 3 we are told that the Son is the exact impress of God’s ‘divine blueprint.’ Consider for a moment all that is encompassed by this amazing truth. An incomprehensible, transcendent God chose to stamp His divine blueprint for all the ages from creation to the cross to the consummation of all things – His purpose behind all that is or will be – into time/space reality for all of mankind to see and comprehend; and that stamp, that exact impress openly displayed for the world to examine, is His Son, Jesus Christ. Words truly fail when we consider the grandeur of this statement and all that it embodies.
As discussed in part 1 of this series, God’s grand purpose through the ages and for eternity is to manifest His glory to His created beings. That plan as it plays out in real time is the hupostasis of Hebrews 1:3, His blueprint in time and space designed to reveal to us His majesty. Jesus is the express image of that blueprint from beginning to end, even as He said of Himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev 22:13) It is because of this truth that He is qualified to be the out-shining, or apaugasma, of God’s glory. Thus the first truth – the Son is ‘the apaugasma of God’s doxa‘ – rests upon the second truth – The Son is ‘the charakter of God’s hupostasis.’
Because the Son is the brightness of God’s glory, it is upon Him and no other to whom we must affix our gaze in order to behold a transcendent, infinite, and almighty God. Because the Son is the exact impress of God’s blueprint for all of time and eternity, He alone is qualified to reveal the nature and design of our eternal and immutable God.
A clear and radiant night sky, a spectacular sunset, a landscape vista of incredible beauty – all of these things are manifestations of a facet of God’s glory but collectively they are just a microbe in size compared to the vastness of the infinite glory of God. And, while all of mankind can see the physical manifestations of God’s glory in creation, it is only by fixing our eyes upon His Son that we can begin to apprehend the invisible and infinite majesty of the divine nature and the concrete reality of an almighty and indescribable God.
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person… Echoing between the words of these two profound statements one can almost hear the voice of the Samaritan woman at the well as she cries out to all who will listen, “Come, see a man…!”
God’s Word beckons us to examine the character and credentials of His Son. There is no other who is worthy of our trust or our praise, and there is no other who is qualified, chosen, or able to reveal our incomprehensible God.
Cast your eyes upon Jesus, and behold our God.
FOOTNOTE – In an effort to avoid distraction from the main point of this article, I have included here a link to an appendix in which I trace the historic usage of hupostasis in greater detail for the benefit of those who may want to dig a little more deeply into the subject: https://unassailablegospel.com/?p=4966
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