2 Corinthians 4:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For God, who commanded the light— "God, who by his powerful word, in the first creation of this world,commanded the light instantaneously to shine out of that darkness which covered the whole face of the deep, (Genesis 1:3.) hath also shined in our once prejudiced and benighted hearts, to impart the lustre of the knowledge of God's glory, discovered, as we before observed, in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ; and thence reflected upon us, and from us to you, for the important purposes of your sanctification and salvation." This is a continuation still of the allegory of Moses, and the shining of his face, &c. so much insisted on in the foregoing chapter; for the fuller explication whereof, we will add a word or two more to what has been already said upon it. Moses, by approaching to God in the mount, had a communication of glory or light, which irradiated from his face when he descended from the mount. Moses put a veil over his face, to hide this light or glory; for St. Paul uses both these names for the same thing: but the glory or light of the knowledge of God more fully and clearly communicated by Jesus Christ, is said here to shine in his face; and in that respect it is that Christ, in the foregoing verse, is called by St. Paul the image of God; and the Apostles are said, in the last verse of the preceding chapter, to be transformed into the same image from glory to glory; that is, by their large and clear communications of the knowledge of God in the Gospel,they are said to be transformed into the same image; to represent, as mirrors, the glory of the Lord, and to be as it were the images of Christ, as Christ is the image of God.