What is the express image of His person (Hebrews 1:3)?

He is called "the brightness (the irradiation) of His glory" - the glory of God. The idea presented by the figure is something like that of the rays of the, sun. If there were no rays we should not see the light of the sun, although the sun might be in the firmament of the heaven. The sun would shine in vain were it not for the beams which reach us. And so the Son of God is like the rays - the shining forth of the glory of God. The same in essence, the "Son" is the irradiation of that essence, in order that it might reach us, that there might be something to teach us the glory of God. Probably, even to the angels the glory of God would have been a hidden glory; they never could have known anything of the glory of God but through the SON; and thus before all worlds they beheld the glory of the SON.

He is also called "the express image of His person" (i.e. substance). This is the nearest approach to declaring God's essence, or essential existence. The word "substance" means essential being, or existence. How little we know about this! God, self-existent-One who never had a beginning, yet full of all that we know of blessed attributes. This we cannot understand, but must believe. And He has said that the SON is the "express image," the "impress," as it were, "of His substance." The illustration is that of the impress of a seal. Though you had never seen the seal, I might show you the impress of it, that which was exactly like it, and from that impress you could form a true idea of the seal. So Christ is the "Impress" of the substance of God, One in whom are essentially all the thoughts and feelings of God; and this, too, the SON was before all worlds.

Thirdly, the Son is “the effulgence of His glory” — the shining forth of the glory of God. The Son become flesh fully presents the glory of God. This glory of God is the combination of all the attributes of God brought into display. The Son has drawn near to us in a way that makes it possible for us to see God displayed in all His attributes.

Fourthly, the Son is “the expression of His substance.” This is more than the shining forth of attributes; it is the setting forth of God Himself — the expression of His Being. The Son become Man was the visible representative of One who is invisible. It is possible to bear the attributes of a person without being the representative of the person. Not only did the attributes of God shine forth in the Son, but He was the representative of God in creation. All His acts showed that God was present with us.

But this is not all. We have the blessed Lord further declared to be "the express image of his (God's) person." Now, first of all, it is interesting to note that in the Greek there is only one word for the twofold English term "express image." And it is a most forcible one. It has been bodily transferred to English in the well-known word "character," which is pure and unaltered Greek, and means (see Liddell and Scott), strictly, an instrument for graving, and then that which is cut in or stamped. To use a homely illustration, one may perhaps think of that which has taken the form of a mould in which it has been cast in liquid shape, and then solidifying. Thus the third stage of meaning is much the same as our word "character," which is now so English, and yet, as already stated, is unchanged Greek.

The English reader, of course, would naturally suppose there were two words in the Greek as in the English, as seen both in the Authorised Version "express image," or the more precise and literal rendering ("exact impress") of the Speaker's Commentary. J.N.D.'s rendering, "exact expression," is also more to the point perhaps than the Authorised Version. Thus we see that "image" is not in the original, through giving a very fair idea of its force. It is otherwise in Col. 1:15, where our Lord is said to be the "image of the invisible God," an all-important declaration, introduced, after the apostle's wont, apparently as if he were going off at a tangent, but really in vital connection with his previous statements. Here then, in Colossians, the word image (eikon) is emphatic, as it is not in Hebrews. For the point in the former epistle is to enforce the representative functions of the Lord Jesus. As Man He represents God on earth, and that in perfect moral beauty and holiness. "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," as He Himself says. We carefully note that Christ is not said to be the "likeness" of God. Things are like that are not identical. But who shall divide between the Father and the Son? Nay, the renewed mind rejoices in the sacred mystery of the Son's inscrutable person. But this by way of digression. These brief remarks are rather intended, however imperfectly, to call attention to the striking characterisation of the Saviour in this wonderful verse in Heb. 1.

Verse 3. "The express image of his person." Christ was the outshining of God's glory. This is more than testimony made by the prophets in other ages. John 12:38-41, in connection with Isaiah 6, shews the shining out of His glory very remarkably. See also Genesis 1:26-27 in connection with this word, "the express image of his person."

More than that, passing on to the next glory He is the very impress, the very image of God's being, of His substance, so that the Lord Himself has said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." What a wonderful thought! The word translated "express image" means the stamp which makes the coin. The Greek word is "character," which suggests that our blessed Lord was an exhibition of the full character of God — His holiness, wisdom, goodness, love, power. All that God is — not merely in His ways, but in His being — is expressed absolutely by the Son. This would connect, in some measure, with the expression "the Word" in John, though that applies to His untreated connection with God; "the Word was with God, and the Word was God." When He becomes Man, He is still the Word, the expression of divine thought.

By His Son, God made the worlds. But He by whom He made them is the brightness of His glory, the express Image of His Person, and He upholds all things by the word of His power. Nothing of this is lost by incarnation. These things are as true to-day as when He created the universe; they will be as true in eternity to come as they are true now. "Thou remainest … Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." He is the One in whom every attribute of God's glory is realized, and is made effulgent; He is the exact impress of God's nature. It is not only that He has wrought marvellous works of wisdom and power, and upholds them all throughout the vast universe without weariness or intermission; but He is perpetually capable of representing to us the attributes and nature of God Himself. Not one distinguishing feature in the character of Deity but it finds its revelation and expression in the Son. God has spoken in Him. In knowing Christ we are set in the light of what God is. Nothing is withheld of the glory of God, for the Son is the shining forth of that glory, the bringing forth into visible expression of all that God is. It will be noted that this is not something which the Son became, or was made, in the course of time. Other glories connected with His work and His offices might have a beginning; but this of which we are now speaking is what is proper to Him as Son, the essential glory of His Person, true of Him before time began, and true of Him when time shall be no more.

What a privilege is ours to contemplate His glory! How sad would it be that any one should seek to tarnish it! The holy scriptures specially and consistently guard the glory of the Person of the Son because He was the One divine Person who became man to effect the purpose of God. He veiled His glory by coming in the likeness of men, and hence the special need of the marvellous unfolding of His glory in the holy scriptures. The Son—the One who will inherit all things, the Creator of the worlds, is "the brightness of God's glory"—the effulgence, the shining forth in harmony of all the traits of God's nature and being. God, as God, in His own essential being dwells in light inaccessible, but He has been revealed, "declared," in the Son. (John 1:18.) It is our privilege to know Him thus revealed, to know Him as fully as it is possible for the Infinite to be known by those who are finite.

Only One who was God could reveal God, hence we read, "Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the expression of his substance." He is the express image of, He exactly displays in His own Person, all that God is in His own essential being. Therefore when He became man He was the Son of God, because He set forth in His own Person all that God is. By Him becoming man God fully shone forth in the Person of the Son, in this scene of darkness.

The declaration of the glory of His Sonship follows. He is eternally Son of God, the Only-Begotten, very God in eternity. He is Son of God in incarnation, taking on the form of man, making purification of sins and He is in resurrection the first begotten, declared Son of God by resurrection from among the dead. It is a marvellous revelation of Himself, corresponding to the similar statements in the beginning of the Gospel of John and the first chapter of Colossians. He is constituted the heir of all things as He created all things and is the creator. All things in heaven and on earth are His. He possesses all things which exist. This is God's eternal purpose concerning Him. All things are by Him and for Him. By Him the worlds were made. (Literally "the ages"; Hellenists understood by it the universe. Its meaning then is equivalent to creation. It is used thus in the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint.) The vast universe is the work of His hands and He himself as very God is "the effulgence of His glory and the expression of His substance." He makes the invisible God visible. He is the perfect impress of God; God is fully revealed in His person who came from glory and dwelt among men. Furthermore, He is upholding all things by the Word of His power.

p465 [W G Heney] MY DEAR BROTHER, - First as to your scriptures - Hebrews 1:2 and Genesis 1:26 have quite a different force. Hebrews 1:2 signifies that He was the express image, as the wax from a seal, of the spiritual being of God; something like (with the difference of speaking of the Father, which implies, when revealed, actual grace in exercise) "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

The Son is also "the expression of His substance." In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, but it dwells in Him to be expressed. He is "the Word" - the expression of all that is in the divine mind - the full and blessed revelation of God. Until the incarnation God was unexpressed, and therefore unknown, for "no man hath seen God at any time"; but "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." (John 1:18.) God is in the light; everything that pertains to His nature and character is perfectly disclosed in the Person of the Son.