Dying to Self

“But He said, ‘You cannot see My face: for no man shall see Me, and live.’” Exodus 33:20

In my previous blog I wrote about coming face to face with Christ and eliminating those things which prohibit us from seeing Him. I stumbled upon some interesting thoughts following that blog as I thought more deeply about what it means to be face to face with Christ.

Some of the misconceptions about God that I have come to embrace have to do with what it means to come face to face with God and what would happen to me if I did. I based my understanding of God’s face on the occurrence in Exodus where God tells Moses that he may not see the face of God or he will die. But then another passage came to mind from the New Testament that challenged my traditional understanding of this.

“If you had known Me; you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord show us the Father and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” John 14:7-9

So let me get this right: to come in contact with the face of Christ is to come in contact with the face of the Father. And yet I am not dead… or am I? And if I am not dead… then have I truly come into contact with the face of Christ? Will this death be physical or spiritual? What difference was there between the time of Moses and the time of Christ? Aha! There is the key. The difference is Christ. At the time of Moses there was no incarnate Christ yet and as such there could be no true life and no true redemption from sin. So to come into contact with God who can behold no sin would in essence snuff us out of existence. There was nothing to keep us alive. But after Christ there was life and something that could indeed survive coming face to face with God. Following this train of thought I am now able to come face to face with God through Christ. But does something still die? You bet! Again we turn to scripture.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:1-4

In light of that passage, everything has changed… but nothing has changed. When we come face to face with God, we die. We must! We must die to self and live in Christ. Prior to the New Testament there was no life in Christ so to see God would demand the dying to self but offer no life in Christ. You would die if you came face to face with God.

Today, when there is sin in our lives we are faced with a choice. We may bring it before God, coming face to face with him, in which case we must then die to that sin and to ourselves and allow God to replace what has died with the life offered through the resurrection of Christ. If we attempt to come before God without Christ then we will truly die with no hope of life to follow.

The astounding and wonderful realization of this for me was that I may see the face of God. The terrifying, frightening aspect of this is that in order to do so, I must die to myself. Are you seeing God face to face? What have you died to today?