While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. (Matthew 17:5)
The Christ many preach and write about is not the real Christ. The Christ of many Evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic churches today is not the actual Christ Jesus who once walked this earth and whom men saw and studied and knew – the Christ who was the incarnate Word of God and the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He is not the Christ who once lived and died and was raised again. The Christ many talk about today is a pure figment of their own imagination which they have substituted for the actual Christ of history, the Christ who once lived here on earth and who now lives in glory.
There is, however, a perfect portrayal of the real Christ, the Christ of actual fact, in all of His many characteristics and complete love, holiness, zeal, and glory. That portrait is from God's own Word, the Bible. It is found in the preview of the coming Christ given to the Old Testament prophets, and in the life, ministry, and words of the Lord Jesus Christ as He actually moved among men, as documented by His disciples in the books of the New Testament.
We have a threefold objective in studying the real Christ:
1. That we may see Him in all His moral glory: The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and we may therefore admire and love and glorify Him as we ought.
2. That we may become like Him when we see Him, or as 2 Corinthians 3:18 puts it: We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
3. That in Him we may have a standard for our own conduct, or as John puts it in our third text: He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked (1 John 2:6).
