The basis for this article comes from Isaiah 50:7. I thought it odd that through the prophet Isaiah Christ said, “I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.” Let’s consider what this represents about Christ’s character, and how that should affect our character.
To try to characterize the perfection that is Christ’s character is far above and beyond what I have the ability to comprehend and try to explain. But some of the comments Jesus makes about himself in Isaiah 50:5-10 offer ways for us to look at Christ’s life in mortality based on his own description of himself. His descriptions of his own personality can help us see where each of us may (probably) fall short and can do better.
Here are the verses in question in Isaiah. I will repeat some or all of them again as I talk about them and how they relate to us.
5 ¶ The Lord God hath opened mine , and I was not , neither turned away back.
6 I my to the , and my to them that plucked off the hair: I not my face from and .
7 ¶ For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
8 He is near that me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me.
9 Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax as a garment; the shall eat them up.
10 ¶ Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the of his , that walketh in , and hath no ? let him in the name of the Lord, and his God.
First, the breakdown of verses
5 ¶ The Lord God hath opened mine , and I was not , neither turned away back.
God knows our weaknesses. He has known them since he took us from the realm of Intelligences and gave us a spirit body. We have lived in God’s presence for eons. He knows us perfectly. When He sent us to earth we were given specific weaknesses to have to overcome for our own benefit. These are the parts of our characters that need shoring up for our journey into the eternities to come. Earth life is all about proving, testing, and overcoming.
Our imperfection is what I want to focus on for a moment. Each of us must overcome our own set of difficulties in this life. There is no magic pill that can take it all away. We must face our defects of character and turn to God for help in becoming better. In all things Christ can show us the way to do this. But don’t look at Jesus just yet. I want us to continue looking at ourselves for now.
As we have been studying the Old Testament, what is one of the complaints God has against His people that is voiced over and over again? I know, there are many from which we might choose. I am thinking now of His complaint that we are ever changeable. We lack consistency and resolve to continue in the course that at some point we chose for ourselves, because it seemed at the time to offer the greatest benefits to us.
The Lord reminds us over and over again that when He can no longer entreat us to follow Him that it is because we have hardened our hearts against Him. He also uses the term to have “stiff necks,” meaning that try as He might, He cannot get us to turn and look in the direction we need to look for our own benefit. In verse 5 Christ is saying that he is always open to listening to God. He never turns away from Him.
5 ¶ The Lord God hath opened mine , and I was not , neither turned away back.
Christ exhibits in the way he lives his life the willingness to look to God at all times. He never turns away from Him, never becomes willful (rebellious), and always keeps listening for God’s instructions for his life. Even as I write these words I see example after example in my own life where I have closed off my hearing from God’s efforts to guide me. I see my own consistent willfulness and rebelliousness during times in my life when I wanted to do things my way, not God’s way. Because of my stubbornness I turned my back, even if briefly on God, and had to repent and return to Him. Christ never did any of that. He was constant in his faithfulness to our Father. He never waivered in his devotion.
The willingness to suffer
6 I my to the , and my to them that plucked off the hair: I not my face from and .
As a mortal with flaws and weaknesses that need overcoming, I am naturally afraid of pain, shame, and suffering. That is human and natural in us all. When Christ came he told his chief apostles, who had fallen asleep when they were supposed to be keeping a vigil for him, that “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41) This is very descriptive of us all.
Our spirits are eternal. We have lived in the realms of glory with God. But as mortals, our bodies and natures, fallen from grace, are fearful and weak. This is a condition even Christ had to deal with. As perfect and constant as his character was, there was a part of him that was a completely new experience, and that was the weaknesses and the desires of the flesh. He had to rein in his mortal inclinations just like we do. This is why he can understand what we go through in this life. He went through it too. He knows how difficult a body can be to master. It is his personal knowledge of what we are going through that allows him to offer us the grace, the enabling power, sufficient to become better today than we were yesterday. That we would not get mortality “right” in the first run at it was a foregone conclusion before we ever came here. He was the only one who made it through mortality without any slip ups. But having walked in our shoes, he knows how hard it is for each of us.
Note in verse 6 Christ’s determined statement that no matter what anyone would do to him, or did do to him, he would not turn away from the experience. He was willing to submit his will to God in all things, no matter how bad things got in mortality. Verse 6 is a declaration of Christ’s devotion to our Father in Heaven, his willingness to obey at all costs, which is the very issue over which he has chided Israel about for many a century. Israel was eager to make covenants, and they enjoyed God’s blessings for a time, but they always turned away when the world scoffed at them. They always went back, like a dog to its vomit and embraced the practices of the world that destroyed their happiness and turned them from God.
Like a flint
7 ¶ For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
This is the verse that caught my attention and got me thinking about this whole passage. We always think of Jesus as passive in nature, gentle, loving, longsuffering, patient, and kind. It is true that those are some of the major elements required of him during his mortal ministry. He was here, after all, to demonstrate to us the love of God for us, His children. It is only after his mortal ministry that Christ is reintroduced to us as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the judge of all flesh. Now that his mortal phase of his Messiahship is behind him, he is coming into the power and glory promised him by our Father before the world was made.
Side note: Flint is a very hard stone that can be cut to create very sharp edges. Historically it has been used to make tools for cutting other things. When Christ says he set his face like flint, he is saying that the direction he is facing is immovable and will resist any effort to change it. They can strike, spit, shame, or punish him all they like, but he will not remove his gaze from his Father. His resolve is “rock hard.” It is this very determination that makes his life so admirable.
We might forget at times that Christ had to prove himself in mortality just like we do. Abraham was told that everyone who came to earth had to be proven to see if they would do all things God required of them. Christ was no exception. As great and as powerful as Jesus was, and has always been, he still needed to submit his will to God’s during his time in mortality. He had some things that came as advantages – being half God comes to mind. But none of us had to be perfect so we could pay for the sins of all of God’s children either. I think that sort of balances things out a bit.
The definition of being hard hearted or stiff necked in the scriptures is that we have turned ourselves away from God, and He can’t get us to look to Him for comfort and guidance any more. It is our perverse behavior and stubbornness that earns us the designation of a stiff neck or hard heart. Christ demonstrates in verse 7 that we could live just the opposite of that.
When Christ says that “I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed,” he is saying that he is determined not to look away from God. His eye, his focus, his attention is and always will be on God, therefore he will never be ashamed. This is an important point for me, and for all of us to understand. It is only when we look away from God and follow any other source of direction in life that we are able to be shamed. As long as our focus is on God and His will, we have nothing that can cause us to be embarrassed or ashamed of what we are doing. When God approves of us, who can stand against us?
When Christ said he set his face like a flint, I suddenly realized that he is expressing what it is like to be just the opposite of stiff necked and hard hearted. He is making a choice never to look away from God, never to follow any other teaching or approach to life. He is choosing to be obedient to God at all costs to himself, personally. In essence, he is saying that he is choosing to be has stubborn in his obedience and devotion to God as Israel was being stubborn and rebellious against God. It was then that I realized that I can also set my face as flint against the world, and focus my life on God’s will and His love for me. That is how I can live my life without fear or shame, and without any care for what the world might think of me.
The reward for setting our face like a flint
8 He is near that me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me.
9 Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax as a garment; the shall eat them up.
10 ¶ Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the of his , that walketh in , and hath no ? let him in the name of the Lord, and his God.
In verse 8 Christ says that the reason he will never have to fear or worry about what the world thinks of him is because God is always near. How many times have we wondered where God went, because we felt we had been left alone? Christ tells us that He is ever near to us, and that it is He who will justify our behavior when we follow Him and keep His commandments.
I love how Christ throws down the gauntlet in challenge to anyone who would argue with him. He says that he can stand toe to toe with any adversary, and because he is determined to follow God’s will, those who oppose him will wax old like a garment, and “the moth shall eat them up.”
Finally, there is verse 10. This is Christ’s invitation to each of us to follow him and to be like he is.
10 ¶ Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the of his , that walketh in , and hath no ? let him in the name of the Lord, and his God.
There are three parts to this verse.
- If we fear (have respect for) the Lord, we need to obey the voice of his servant. That means we need to look to and follow the counsel of the living prophet. It also implies that we need never be ashamed to follow God’s mouthpiece on earth.
- If we feel that we are living in the dark, meaning that we are confused by the teachings of the world and don’t know which way to go, the prophet can bring us into the light. This takes trust in God. When we trust that God is leading His people, we will only have one place to look, and that is to His prophet. It has been the order of God’s kingdom on earth since the days of Adam. That isn’t going to change until Christ returns to rule himself on the earth.
- To stay upon God means to wait upon His will and pleasure. It requires that we put trust in His timing, His commandments, and His love for us, personally. Those who stay upon God are those who have set their face like flint, in that they have decided that they will listen to no other voice in their life but His.
Christ and me
The verses I have discussed here have given me better perspective in the differences in Christ’s attitudes and behaviors, versus my attitudes and behaviors. I’ve always wondered why he was so successful, while I struggle so much. The answer to my wondering, in large measure, boils down to my fickleness, versus his determined resolve to stay focused on being obedient.
We humans are so easily distracted by the things of mortality. In an instant something can come up and we are off and running, without a thought as to where we are headed. Yet Christ never lost his focus. He was successful in keeping his mortal inclinations in check. I don’t think it was easy for him, but he did it. I believe that for each of us mortality is roughly equal in that I don’t believe that God would require more from me than He does from you, if He truly loves us equally, and is no respecter of persons.
We have to trust God and His eternal love for us, as well as His hopes for us to be exalted someday. I can’t believe that He would deliberately make it easier for some of His children than for others, or that He would deliberately stack the deck against some children while letting other skate through life with ease. We don’t see the big picture. That is one of the most difficult parts of mortality. It is the seeming unfairness of life that causes us to wonder about the character of God, and question His perfect love for us.
Christ is our example. He is our focus for now. He has shown us how to live our lives, how to treat each other in such a way as to please our Father in Heaven. He has conquered our greatest enemies, death and ourselves. Only by following Christ and by obeying his commandments given by his prophets can we do as he has done by setting his face like a flint in his determination to always be faithful to our Father in Heaven. With continual repentance, we can do that too.
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