Isaiah 6:5

Isaiah 6:5

The vision of Isaiah is a true symbol of the soul's progress.

I. The first stage of the vision is the revelation of God in His glory and in His holiness. The spiritual being of man truly begins when he has seen God. This vision of God must be a moral vision, that is, the apprehension of God as a King and Lawgiver, and therefore, as in relation to ourselves, our duty, and our affection. There is no true vision of God which embraces the entire vision of man until the eye of the spirit has been opened, and we gaze at God, not an idea or a fancy, but a Being great, majestic, holy, sitting upon a throne with law and claim even upon ourselves.

II. The second stage of the vision is the effect of this revelation upon the heart of the prophet. The sight of God is followed by the consciousness of personal sin. The claim of God is seen in the kingship which the throne symbolises. To know God is also to know duty, and to know duty is to know failure and disobedience, and the miserable deflections from duty which mock our human lives.

III. The next change of the vision is the purifying act of the seraph, who flies with a coal from the altar, and touches the lips of the penitent prophet. And here we recognise the sanctifying of the aroused soul by a relation to sacrifice; the confession of previous guilt is followed by the removal of the sin through a Divine act. (1) To the consciously guilty, there is a means of forgiveness. (2) The coal is from the altar. The purification is associated with sacrifice, and the means of that purifying follows and depends upon the burnt offering. Does not this point us to the grand Christian doctrine that sin is taken from the confessing soul by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God?

IV. The last change in the vision is the reply of the sanctified spirit to the requirement of God; and this points to the further stage of spiritual growth, that which follows upon the reception of saving power acceptance and obedience to the Divine will.

L. D. Bevan, Penny Pulpit,No. 364.

Reference: Isaiah 6:5. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 280.