So glory is another word used for the sum total of all divine excellencies. It refers to the internal as well as the manifestative glory.^[1]

There is nothing like seeing what God is to make men sensible what they are.^[2]

It is confessed, that there is a degree of obscurity in these definitions; but perhaps an obscurity which is unavoidable, through the imperfection of language to express things of so sublime a nature.^[3]

 

 

When a man sees the glory of God, it changes him. God’s glory is impossibly great and our finitude and fallenness become at that moment crushingly clear to us. Looking at God’s glory in Scripture, we soon discover one of the brightest visions recorded in Isaiah Chapter 6:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. (6:1a)

This is one of the loftiest pictures, one of the clearest images of the glory of God. The passage takes us from the vision of glory to the impact that vision has on the prophet Isaiah. He is undone by what he sees and is immediately overwhelmed by a new awareness of his personal sin and of the sin of his people. He was rendered speechless. Edwards reflects on how glory affects the men who see it:

Therefore this begets in those who behold [God’s glory] a hatred of sin and an abhorrence of it. But he who abhors sin most will be most sensible of it in himself. So there is nothing like the knowledge of God to make a man sensible of sin and to see how much there is of it …. Thus there is nothing that will make men more sensible of what they are than a sight of the glory of God.[4]

The glory of God is a grace-built, brilliant door that opens with dazzling brightness and unfathomable depth to draw us deeper into the nature and character of God. The study of glory, therefore, becomes a quest to understand the whole of God and it must, in this quest, focus the student with ever greater sharpness, upon the holiness of God.

The glory of God apart from the holiness of God is quite impossible. In Isaiah 6 the glory of God filled the temple and the angels cried, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Any one of God’s virtues is necessarily tied to his other attributes. The simplicity of God is the term used to describe the essential unity and non-competitive nature of God’s many attributes working in concert one with the other. God’s love is not at war within himself, working against his justice; nor does his holy anger at sin compete with the riches of his grace. God’s simplicity means that within God all his attributes work together to bring glory to his name, to declare his nature, to shout his victory, to declare and display his sovereignty and his eternal purposes in all things. Packer writes about God’s simplicity:

… the fact that there are in Him no elements that can conflict, so that, unlike man, He cannot be torn different ways by divergent thoughts and desires.[5]

The more we understand any one quality within the Godhead, the more we are helped to learn more about the others. We begin to see what motivates God to act, to speak, to save, or to judge, and in that study we begin to perceive the evidence of his majesty, his power, his wisdom and his justice. This is especially so in Christ’s person and work. Christ is absolutely, uniquely, and ultimately central to the glory of God. He is the content of God’s glory and the fullness of it.

The glory of God illuminates all of God’s work. As this light is shined, it exposes the nature of man and his sin-devastated, helpless, and hopeless condition. It also illumines the immeasurable greatest of God’s glory in his person and the absolute holiness of his character. The glory and holiness of God are at ultimate enmity with sinful human beings but those same qualities in God work by means of his grace to save people who are alienated from God. So both man’s salvation and the coming judgment are inextricably bound up with God’s holiness and glory. The Cross displays both God’s gracious love for his redeemed people and his holy wrath against their sin. In this way, the Cross of Christ defends the simplicity and essential unity of God. No qualities of God’s nature were working at cross-purposes. Wrath did not wage war against mercy. God’s love was not exercised so that his justice would be defeated.

In the Cross, no principle or attribute within the Godhead was derogated beneath a competing quality (e.g. wrath against love, justice against mercy, grace against judgment, and the like) in order to fulfill the plan of redemption. Every attribute of God worked without contradiction or diminution, in the unity of God’s overarching will in the fulfilling of his purposes, in order that our salvation might be completely supremely and most gloriously by the Cross of Christ alone. Our salvation is for the glory of God and it was accomplished to establish, to defend, and to publicly declare his absolute holiness to save (see Psalms 98:1).

 The desire to see God’s glory with our own eyes is the prayer not only of Moses on Mt. Horeb (see Exodus 33:18; Deuteronomy 5:24; and Ezekiel 39:13), it is the longing of every believer, and the promise of God to every redeemed person (“we shall see him,” 1 John 3:2). It is also the most devastating dread of anyone who does not know God. Gerstner writes:

The glory of God is the happiness of all those who love him. Nevertheless, it is the glory of God at which the Christian aims, not at his own happiness. But his happiness comes as a by-product when he is not seeking self-interest any longer.[6]

Beginning to understand glory

God’s glory brings admiration from us as part of his creation. We observe the grandeur of the heavens, the complexity of life, the protection and mysteries of providence, as well as the limits to our conquests that God imposes upon us without our permission, and we conclude that the greatness of God is a facet of his glory that must be honored. We are moved to bow before the grandeur of God’s creative power when we look through a telescope and see a galaxy that is millions of light-years away, and know that there are millions and millions of these star-clusters, some so far away that we are just beginning to find them in what we used to think were “dark” regions of the sky. The immensity of what we discover is astounding. The further we look, the more we find. The tremendous scope and orderliness of the creation, all sing the “heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19). We respond by declaring the greatness of God. This is giving God glory.

God has revealed himself through miracles; through his Word written; through prophets; through promise and covenant; through worship and sacrifice; through his election of Israel; through the Messianic promise and prophetic words; and supremely through the divine person and saving work of Jesus Christ. We can read his Word and understand more about God’s character and nature. We can see evidence of his salvation, his miracles “in time and space and history” (quoting Francis A. Schaeffer’s famous phrase). And these glorious actions give us occasions for gratitude and praise to God. This is a second kind of glory we offer to God.

A third kind of glory is derived from the absolute nature of God’s character. His perfect purity, his unassailable holiness, his boundless grace, and much more, give us many reasons to extol not only what God does, but who God is. His righteousness, justice, and truth are established from before time. In response to these qualities in God, we bow before the majesty of God as God. Knowing the kind of God he is, we disavow any presumption in his Presence, and only cry out for mercy before him. This is to know the majesty of God that is found in “his absolute dignity, demanding subjection of every creature.”[7]

God’s glory is created within God and by God. It is connected to who God is and what he has done and said. It is declared by God for his own exaltation. Glory is connected to the character of God, the purposes of God, and the will of God. The glory of God is contained in all of creation, in the Word of God, the works of redemption, and especially in the Cross of Christ. But God’s glory is utterly and absolutely alien to and at extreme hostility to sinful man.

Glory and joy

Why would God reveal his glory to people who are so alienated from him and hostile to it? Why would God spread his glory in splendor upon heavens to be seen by all and then to be rejected by sinful men after they beheld it (cf. Romans 1:18–23)? Why would God record it in prophetic ecstasies, only to have men kill his prophets as they spoke the Word of God? Why would God choose to use the Cross, the most unjust murder in history, to declare his glory? How can the death of Jesus be the glory of God? To what purpose does God go to such detail, such extremes of content, to such complexity in design, over vast epochs of time extending to eternity past and then to eternity future, to make his glory known to people?

Edwards considered this question perhaps more than any other, and he was more capable than almost all others to explain this mystery. He answered this puzzle first by saying that all the means God uses to extol his name and bring him glory create this symphony of praise to God because he created them for that very purpose. God must glorify himself as God. Everything, everywhere, from every epoch, all things, in every circumstance, bring praise to the glory of God. “All things.” The creation brings glory to God, Edwards says, “Because it is a thing meet and suitable in itself.” That is to say that there is a purposefulness and an intelligent reason for all things that exist—creation has implicit design contained in it all that ends in a single purpose, to bring God glory. Creation gives resplendent evidences of God’s immensity, wisdom, love, justice, and wrath, and these are to be praised because God displayed them for us to see. These qualities are displayed so that God would receive more glory for what he has done.

We have stated that God possesses all the glory there is. God has everything he needs. He is not desperate, desirous, or needy for anything outside of himself. He does not require anything his creatures might give to him or ascribe to him in praise with words of honor or adulation. Neither does he need any approval from them for anything he does. He makes no apology for being God. He is not completed by anything or anyone outside himself.

The beneficiary of the glory of God displayed so resplendently is not God. God has had from eternity all glory. He will possess in the future no additional glory. Giving him more glory is impossible. It is not for God that his glory is praised, remembered, celebrated, and honored. He is not the beneficiary. He has all beneficence, every good and perfect gift, in himself. Who benefits when God is given glorious praise? God’s people are the beneficiaries of his glorious display when the Most High is extolled. God is not the beneficiary of this display because he already possesses all the glory there is. Edwards writes:

The one who benefits by the manifestation of his glory is not God, who cannot be benefited by anything. He possesses all things, all the time. Who does benefit? The elect creatures. Why then does God do all things “for” his own glory? Not for his sake but for their sake.[8]

The glory of God is revealed not so that God may know more of himself or that God may declare the immensity of his glory to expand his glory. He knows all there is to know. He possesses all glory within himself. There is no addition that can be made to the sum of God’s glorious nature.

When God shares the knowledge of his glory with his people, he is not made more glorious. When we glorify God, we are not giving him “our” glory. We are giving him back his own glory. We are reflecting his true nature through our understanding and praise of his character and works. In loving God as God, we are participating in the glory of God. This is so because people have no glory of their own to bring to God. Man’s glory is alien to God and hostile to his nature and it is the object of his fiercest wrath.

He declares his glory for our sake that men might know more of God. He does not need man to add to his own self-glorification—he has absolutely no interest in that. It is his expansive and incredible grace that works to invite us to come and see his glory and thus to be changed by it and then to take his glory upon our hearts, minds, and lips. As worshippers of God, we know and reflect his glory back to him. As he has glorified himself always and only, we are invited into this most intimate and personal act by which God glorifies himself through us.

His glory is declared in what he has done, not so that God may know more of his own power and majesty, his wisdom and justice, but that men might know of them. The display of the glory of God is, at its center, a display of God’s gracious nature to invite us to a more immediate, direct, personal knowledge of the glorious God. One who studies nature is examining a bit of the content of God’s glory. By studying the evidence of God’s hand in all that he has made, one can directly observe the result of God’s genius and can infer from that evidence much about his character. The order in nature declares the glory of God to any who take the time to open their eyes and examine the evidence of God’s creative genius and life-creating power in everything, everywhere (“the firmament shows his handiwork” Psalms 19).

The glory of God is displayed and extolled for our happiness. Jonathan Edwards’ son summarized the centerpiece of his father’s theology:

Mr. Edwards was the first, who clearly showed, that both [the happiness of his creatures and the declarative glory of the Creator] were the ultimate end of the creation, taken, not distributively, but collectively, as a system raised to a high degree of happiness. The creation, thus raised and preserved, is the declarative glory of God. In other words, it is the exhibition of his essential glory.[9]

The glory of God is declared for the benefit of his people for their happiness. As God is ultimately happy in himself, he desires that we who contemplate him would enjoy him forever. His purpose in glory is that his dearly loved children might have complete, full, overflowing joy in him. If the understanding and perception of God’s glory is to create great benefit and happiness of his children, then to neglect the glory of God in all things is to lose those benefits and to reside within our own misery and unhappiness. How could one who contemplates the glory of God be sad? Or how could they who know the glory of God as he has declared it ever feel in the least bereft? This helps us understand the answer to the famous first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “to glorify … and enjoy” God forever. God’s glory and redeemed man’s joy are inseparable.[10]

Glory and hope

Of the 160 or so references to hope in the Bible (ESV version), only six of them link hope with glory: Romans 5:2; Ephesians 1:12; 1:18; Colossians 1:27; Titus 2:13; and 1 Peter 1:21. Glory and hope only occur together in the context of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ’s work on the Cross is the greatest expression of God’s glory and the source of our hope.

Glory and hope never occur together in any Old Testament verse. Hope derives from glory in the New Testament. The glory of the Work of Christ; the grace of God; the promise of heaven; the reality of Christ’s indwelling presence; the return of Jesus Christ to rule and reign forever; and the resurrection of Christ from the dead are all components of our hope.

There are about 89 Old Testament verses (using the ESV) that refer to hope. The Old Testament writers proclaim hope in the person of God (see Psalms 33:22, 39:7, 42:5, 42:11, 43:5, 62:5, 69:6, 71:5, 71:14, and the many more). Hope also resides in God’s Word or in his promises (Psalms 119, passim, especially 119:43). Hope drives the prayer of God’s people for deliverance from enemies or to seek provision for the future (see Ruth 1:12, Ezra 10:2; Job 3:9; 4:6, 30:26; Isaiah 20:6, 59:9, 59:11; Jeremiah 14:22, 17:13, and 29:11; Zechariah 9:12). Proverbs presents one’s offspring as a hope for the future (see Proverbs 11:7, 13:12, 19:18, 23:18, and 24:14). Thomas Brooks explains that New Testament hope is exercised about the glory and felicity, the happiness and blessedness, that is at God’s right hand …. So hope is put for the glorious things hoped for, Ephesians 1:17. And thus you see those precious and glorious objects, about which that hope that accompanies salvation is exercised.[11]

New Testament hope is about salvation in Christ and the benefits and joys that are associated with his finished work of redemption. Hope in the Old Testament can rest upon God’s person and promises, but the promised salvation is only dimly illuminated in the shadows of Law and Prophets. In Christ’s finished work, hope shines out of glory, bringing future promises and fulfillment into the full light of the Cross and resurrection of Christ.

Yet the hope that we experience now is not yet fulfilled. The glory that shall be revealed will be the fulfillment of promise, the completed rescue, covenant promises made sure, the consummation of all things in Christ. Hope is made substantive through glory. Glory insures, applies, and displays hope as a certainty to be fulfilled in the future (“the blessed hope” Titus 2:13).

Dyads, triads, quadrads, and heptads of glory

Glory is paired with many other words that illuminate the meaning, extent, influence, and power of it. Reading theological treatises on glory, it is interesting how many pairs are identified by the different writers as they seek to define the scope and nuance in glory. Harrison identifies dyads of glory formed with these words:  pneuma pneuma, Spirit[12] and joy; holiness; plhrwma plērōma, fullness and sanctification.[13] We could add greatness, hope, majesty, power, honor, and many others.

Some of these terms have a causal relationship like joy springing from hope when glory is displayed. Some of these pairs are “reflexive.” Glory is defined or explained by the other term in the pair. For example, “glory and praise”; “glory and the name” (1 Chronicles 16:10, 35), “glory and majesty,” “glory and holiness,” “glory and fullness.” “Glory” and ascendant words of praise like “on high,” “upward,” “toward heaven,” reflect particular aspects of glory by means of the other term that defines an aspect of glory that the writer has in view. So, “glory and praise” could mean that glory is expressed by praise; “glory and majesty” could mean that glory is “majestic,” related to the nobility, regal nature, or reign of the King who is glorious.

Glory appears in many places in Scripture ascribing greatness, majesty, holiness, wisdom, strength, and like qualities, to God. Verses that give adulation to God are notable where they omit “glory” in their litany of praise.[14]  This is the language of praise.

Some of these groupings may be used with glory interchangeably or reflexively. E.g., the glory of God and the name of God seem to point to the same excellency within the divine person.[15]

Here is a listing of all the groupings, bearing in mind that “glory” occurs almost 400 times in the Biblical text, these word-sets are a small set of the total. The order of the words in the text is preserved.

Dyads, sets of 2

Glory and beauty: Exodus 28:2, 40; Isaiah 28:5

My glory and my signs: Number 14:22

Glory and greatness: Deuteronomy 5:24

Glory and strength: 1 Chronicles 16:28; Psalms  29:1; and 96:7 

The power and the glory [|| the victory and the majesty] 1 Chronicles 19:11

Glory and splendor [|| majesty and dignity]: Job 40:10

Crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty: Isaiah 28:5

Righteousness and glory: Isaiah 62:2

My fame, my glory: Isaiah 66:19

In glory and in greatness: Ezekiel 31:18

Glory and joy: 1 Thessalonians 2:20

Glory and praise: Philippians 1:11

Glory and dominion: 1 Peter 4:11; and Revelation 1:6 (cf. Daniel 7:14 Triad)

Glory and honor: Revelation 21:26 (cf. Romans 2:7; 2:10; 4:9; 4:11 Triads)

Triads, groups of 3

Dominion, glory, and a kingdom: Daniel 7:14

Glory, honor, and immortality: Romans 2:7

Glory, honor, and peace: Romans 2:10

Praise, glory, and honor: 1 Peter 1:7 (cf. Philippians 1:1 Dyad)

Glory, honor, and thanks: Revelation 4:9

Glory, honor, and power:  Revelation 4:11

Salvation, glory, and power: Revelation 19:1

Quadrads, groups of 4

Power, glory, victory, and majesty: 1 Chronicles 29:11

Kingship, greatness, glory, and majesty: Daniel 5:18 (referring to Nebuchadnezzar)

Blessing, honor, glory, and might: Revelation 5:13

Heptads, groups of 7

Power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing: Revelation 5:2

Blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, and might: Revelation 7:12 (cf. Revelation 5:13 Quadrad)

 

It is just here that the complexity of this study can be overwhelming. The glory of God is a study for eternity. We can gaze in wonder at these linguistic relationships and try to build sound theology out of it all, but the fact remains that we cannot master this subject. A student of glory must bow in wonder before the grandeur and beauty of the subject. We can know more of God’s glory as we wrestle with this subject, but this is a study that leads into the very nature of God as God and it necessarily leads to unanswered questions about God’s inner life and his yet-to-be-revealed virtues that can only point us to greater worship, not simply to more knowledge about the divine Person.

Glory, praise, and name

The Septuagint (the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) commonly translated the Hebrew for “glory” dwbk (kabod) by the Greek doxa (doxa), from dokeo (dokeo) which means “to think, to seem.”

The New Testament followed the Septuagint using doxa for God’s glory. This was a “striking departure” from “accepted Greek meanings of doxa in translating the Hebrew term kabod when applied to God.”[16] Doxa was tied closely to thought, opinion, and reputation, in passages outside the Biblical text. The choice of doxa for kabod is striking because this word did not carry a theological sense prior to its selection in the Septuagint. Doxa became uniquely identified with “the revealed being of the character of God,”[17] by this selection by the translators of the Hebrew text into the Greek of the Septuagint. The writers of the New Testament were uniformly aware of and often quoted from the Septuagint. Accordingly, doxa apparently was carried into the New Testament from this usage in the Greek Old Testament.

The difference between the biblical and extra-biblical uses of doxa are important to keep in mind as we study this subject. The glory of God is not what people think or imagine about God’s nature and actions, as the root (dokeo, dokeo, “to think, to seem”) might suggest. It is not what one thinks about God or what seems to a person to be glorious about him that matters. What is central to our understanding of this term is what God has revealed about his very nature, person, character, actions, and attributes. Glory goes far beyond human reputation or opinion as it is used in the Bible.

The New Testament is written in the shadow of the person and work of Jesus Christ. While the Bible has a broad range of uses of the word glory, it is its use in describing the divine person that is our interest. When glory is used to describe God’s nature, it rises to the highest expression of human language. It points to ideas and concepts that are beyond human understanding yet are grounded in history, language, and miracles done in the open for all to see. Glory touches on action, work, words and miracle, but then it rises to the zenith as it cries “Glory” to the praise of God’s ineffable and infinite person. Glory is a word that we use in worship, but its content needs to be refined around the whole of the divine person, not just the lifting of our hands, or the untranslatable emotion of transcendent ecstasy. To the contrary, the glory of God is focused, specific, and it is derived from defined qualities within the Godhead that God himself has made known. Worshipping the glory of God is to worship God. Idolatry lies near every attempt that falls short of this high mark.

Carl Henry follows Everett Harrison[18] in summarizing the broad range of meanings of “glory” in the Bible that point to the whole of the divine person, not merely the attribute of glory considered alone, or some lesser use of the term. Henry writes:

The glory of God may be comprehended, says Harrison, as the absolute uniqueness of his person in view of the completeness and perfection of his attributes.

The New Testament not only uses the term glory of one or more of God’s perfections (Romans 1:23, 3:23, 6:4; Colossians 1:11) but also declares God to be “the Father of glory” (Ephesians 1:17). When it refers to the panoply of God’s attributes, we may consider the term glory to be the preferred biblical equivalent for the term infinitude or infinity in respect to the divine nature.[19]

Glory often occurs in the biblical text in connection alongside other qualities within the divine person. For example, Edwards writes that glory and praise are “often equivalent”, and that God’s name and his glory “very often signify the same thing in Scripture.”[20] Henry also understands that glory is more than a single attribute of God’s nature. He explains:

In respect to God the Bible routinely and impressively translates kabod by doxa [as noted above, is the way the Hebrew word for glory was translated in the  Septuagint, and carried over into the New Testament] to convey the meaning of glory, honor, excellency, majesty, splendor, power and beauty, as well as holiness and mercy. Yahweh is the God of glory (Psalms 28:3) and the King of glory (Psalms 24:7).[21]

There is some debate about the era to which glory points in the New Testament. Some hold that glory in the New Testament hearkens back to the Old Testament theophanies (“God’s appearance” in visible, physical form before the Incarnation of Christ). But Piper observes that doxa refers “in only one place in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 3:1–11) to an Old Testament theophany.”[22] Piper expands:

The absolute use of doxa without modifier (as in Romans 9:4b) refers regularly in Paul not to a past, but to a future eschatological glory (Romans 2:7, 10; 8:18; 9:23; Colossians 1:27; 3:4; 2 Timothy 2:10; and 2 Corinthians 4:17).[23]

Glory appears to have a future referent in mind when he makes promises to Israel through the Covenant. Those promises are completely fulfilled and when the Kingdom of God is fully manifested on Earth with the appearance of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.

But if glory, as Edwards explains it, is about the work of the Son of God making the glory of God manifest both in Old Testament types and theophanies and in New Testament fullness, the question of glory primarily in the future or essentially in the past is less important. What matters is the out-shining of the glory of God, the display of the glory of God, as the Son made God known in every era and from eternity past, and extending through to eternity future (John 1:18). Everywhere glory is revealed, it is by the Son of God.

There is no need to create an either/or dilemma between past or future glory, if Christ’s mediation of the Father’s glory is the essential, even the definitional point of clarity regarding the nature and the source of all glory, mediated by the Son in every epoch. All past glory was mediated by the Son. All future glory will be demonstrated by the Son. Edwards, in his typically convoluted grammar, points to the superlative role of the Son giving glory to God in the crucial verse, Romans 9:4, cited by Piper above:

The same glory is doubtless here meant whose departure was lamented when the ark was taken, when it was cried by the true friends of Israel, “The glory is departed from Israel” meaning the ark and the cloud of glory in which appeared above upon it, or rather, Jesus Christ, with respect to these tokens of his friendly presence.[24]

Edwards saw every manifestation of the Father’s glory in the Old Testament story as mediated through the “friendly presence” of the Son (who had not yet taken on human flesh). The glory of the Father was revealed in the Old Testament dispensation and in the New by the Son of God. There was no essential difference in the role of the Son as the glorifier of the Father in eternity past, the Old Testament era, the present age, or in eternity future, except that in the Old Testament the clarity was less fully presented, was more in shadows; and in the New it is clear and articulate, full and absolutely profound because God has spoken in his Son for all to hear. The exaltation of the Father was, is, and shall be the primary occupation of the “only begotten God” (o{ monogenhvV qeo;V) who has made the Father known (John 1:18).[25]

Yet, many people heard the voice of God on Mt. Moriah (Isaac’s sacrifice), during Angel visitation, at the Burning Bush, from Mt. Sinai, Mt. Carmel, and the like. Then, whose voice did they hear and who did they see in those events? Was it not the Son who spoke the Father’s word and revealed the Father’s glory? Yes, the Father was revealed, but it was the work of the Son to make him known in every epoch.

The Son spoke only what the Father said. He did only what the Father chose for him to do. But the Father remained and remains hidden: “No one has seen God ….” (John 1:18, 6:46; 1 Timothy 6:16; and 1 John 4:20). It was always and only the Son who has made him known. This is how God can be invisible, hidden, silent, and unknown, and very much seen, revealed, heard, and known on the most personal of terms, by Jesus Christ. Christ reveals the very name of God, so he may be known by those who see the Son and hear his voice.

The revelation of glory is the revelation of the very nature and character of God. To reveal God’s glory is to do more than to rehearse his attributes, it is to make God known. This is reported as “making the name of God known” (Exodus 6:3;  Psalms 105:1; Ezekiel 39:7; and especially John 17:26).  The manifestation of the name of God is said by Jesus to have been his primary work, and the focus of his earthly ministry (in John 17:26). The name of God is closely associated with revelation of the glory of God especially in the display of his mercy and in his dispensing of it to whom he will (especially in Romans 9:15ff) . Piper writes:

… God’s glory and his name consist fundamentally in his propensity to show mercy and his sovereign freedom in its distribution. Or to put it more precisely, it is the glory of God and his essential nature mainly to dispense mercy on whomever he pleases apart from any constraint originating outside his own will. This is the essence of what it means to be God. This is his name.[26]

The glory of God is closely related to God’s electing grace. This is so because his sovereignty in election is an act of God’s essential nature; election is not arbitrary, but is an act of his whole person, derived from before eternity and borne from the very heart and center of God’s nature. Glory is the outshining of the divine person, and it is seen no more clearly than in his electing mercy. His grace to the redeemed and his election of his own people are expressive of the nature and glory of God. He elected his people from before the foundation of the world because he willed to do so. Christ’s redemption of his people is (by this eternal and glorious election) the most glorious action ever taken by God. In redemption Christ has made God known, heard, and seen, and all focused on the glorious redemption of his people, to the praise of the glory of his grace (see Ephesians 1:6).

The range of glory in the Bible

The range of the term “glory” is broad, extending from ideas as paltry as a person’s “human reputation” (see Genesis 49:6, 2 Samuel 1:19, 1 Chronicles 22:5, Job 40:10, Psalms 7:5, et al.); extending to a promise to tell the truth in an oath, “Give glory to God” (see Joshua 7:19 and John 9:24); escalating up to a single attribute of God (Psalms 66:2, 78:61, et al.); and culminating as a summary term identifying the whole of the divine person as glorious with a view especially to his character, attributes, words, and works, redemption and judgment (cf. Matthew 16:27; Acts 7:2; Romans 6:4; and Ephesians 1:17).

There is an important economy within the divine person relative to glory. The glory of God is eternally revealed by the work of the Son. The display of the glory of the Father is the primary work of the Second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Every work wherein God is glorified in all of history necessarily flows through the mediatorial and revelational work of the Son. By divine choice, the glory of God was given its greatest display in the death of Christ for sinners. The glory of the Cross is the greatest display of the glory of God. He is most glorified in the Cross of the Son of God. That was his purpose in coming to Earth from the Throne of Heaven (see John 12:27 and 18:37; Philippians 2:9; and Ephesians 4:10). He came to seek and to save that which is lost (Luke 19:10).  

Furthermore, glory is made known by the Holy Spirit’s person and work (see Acts 7:55; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 3:3; 2 Corinthians 3:18; and 1 Peter 4:14 et al.). The Spirit applies the work of Christ to the lives of God’s elect. God’s people are so affected by this glory within them that they can now bring to God the “glory due his name.”[27]

Glory in the Bible is inseparable from the work of Christ—both as Jesus reveals the nature of the Father’s glory in the Old Testament and by his work of redemption in which he gives content and explanation of God’s by coming to make God plain (John 1:18). The concert of all God’s attributes work together to accomplish his will and purposes, and they do this most publicly, and in demonstration of his glory most clearly, in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Christ reveals the glory of God in all of creation and redemption, providence and revelation. Christ is the highest expression of God’s character and the richest display of his purpose to bring God glory in everything (Colossians 1:19, 2:9). The Cross of Christ is the consummate expression of the glory of God.

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The glory of God is the primary motive driving God to reveal himself, to create all that is, and for wanting people to live with him forever.. All that exists, every molecule and all the galaxies, every person and drop of water is for God’s glory. Even evil and death become, under his sovereignty and overarching power, difficult and humbling expressions of God’s glory when justice is satisfied, wrath is poured out, and Hell is filled full.

The glory of God is written upon everything, everywhere. The heavens declare it. People are created in God’s glorious image. Animals in their complexity and purpose, or their simplicity and elegance, mirror it. Every star is positioned by and for the glory of God. Every flower and animal, all the floating clouds and every acts of men and angels, are correlated into a grand chorus under the baton of  Providence, to extol, defend, and declare the glory of God. Even the moments of our own deaths, are resolved under the reign and realm of the glory of God. Everything that is or shall be, exists is for the glory of God, so that all of it, all and everything, shall give praise to God. Even the most evil of men will bow their knees one day before his Majesty, to the praise of his glory and justice; the best and most godly, will bow in worship of the God who is glorious. Nothing can be by-passed, nothing and not one can be exempt from the power, the purpose, or the grandeur of his glory. In the end, everything is accountable to the glory of God, because nothing is more important. Nothing is equal to it. Nothing can overthrow it and it cannot be minimized nor can it be marginalized. The glory of God is the supreme fact of all facts, because it is the chief aspect of the Person of God.

Glory has been the chief occupation of God from before time and until eternity never-ending. It will be the chief, the sole occupation of all God’s people one day. Until that glory breaks forth in unimaginable splendor—the unending brightness of majesty and unparalleled, inexpressible beauty from God for all to see—there is much to learn about his glory and there is much we can do to proclaim all God’s excellencies with greater clarity and purpose. This requires our attention, our study, our devotion, and the illumination of the Spirit of God. Glory captivates our worship and it becomes the great theme of the Church. Worship exists primarily for the glory of God and it is, therefore, essential for the church.

Can there be anything more worthy of our attention than God’s glory? The other attributes of God all echo the shout that God is glorious. All that he has done is to display his glory. Redemption, holiness, justice, eternity, veracity, impeccability, and all the other attributes of God, are glorious displays of the nature and character of God. But glory, in this world tainted with sin, and with our minds and hearts so tarnished by our fallenness, causes the sinful man to react, to withdraw, and to grow angry with God. Sin has fractured our hearts so, glory is now alien to us – alien because we are now alienated from him. The sinful heart resents the glory of God and seeks glory unto itself. We see this even in Christian worship, when glory to God is stolen from God and claimed, stolen for men. Because glory is essential to God it is hostile to our self-interest, self-reward, and self-worship. It is perhaps when we are engaged in the worship of God who is most glorious that our warfare is most severe and the battle most difficult. Our sin creates odium toward the beauty of holiness and the goodness of God. We can find ourselves warring against God even when we are praying to him. We struggle in our brokenness with giving deference to the honor of God and engage in battle with him, that we may be praised and honor stripped from him and given to us instead. We rob God of glory at the very instant when we should be most grieved by our failures and desperate to relinquish to him all our crowns, our achievements, intellect, and accomplishments, it light of the majesty of his glory. We may, in our sinful selves, find that we are growing angry at the glory of God when we suffer in our weaknesses, are stricken by diseases, or know the pain of broken hearts. Yet when that same glory of God is rightly focused upon in our prayers, and by redemption’s power it accedes to its rightful place in our minds and hearts, where it is established as the delight of our souls and the deepest longing of all our affections, this then is redemption’s work that calls us to worship God alone. Then it is in this life that we begin to experience and with these eyes to see, just as Jesus promised we would, the glory of God (see John 11:40).

Glory does not automatically pour out of our veins. It doesn’t come to us naturally. We do not possess it within ourselves. We must teach our hearts what glory is, or what it ought to be—then we drive, exhort, and severely prod our hearts into singing about this majesty that begins with fleeting glimpses of understanding and ends in unspeakable praise and intimate, deep, soul-worship before the Face of God (see 2 Corinthians 4:6). When that praise is offered in worship by the angelic host and at the celebration of all creation with the new song of Heaven-and-Earth-made-new is sung by the guardians of glory and holiness, we understand the reach and span of glory. It is an excellency unlike any other. The more we praise God for his glory, the more glorious he becomes in us. The grander our praise becomes and the more we think about him, the deeper we go peering into the light of this same glory, and we find that there, as in no other place, is more to know, to learn, to adore, and to worship. Glory will be entered into, by every person who shall know God. In Heaven they say:

…“Amen! Blessing and glory and thanksgiving and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 
(Revelation 7:12)

Christian worship is so very imperfectly done in this life. But though we struggle with our inabilities, sins, and poor understanding, our worship becomes glorious worship to God and absolutely acceptable to him through the mediation and redemption of Jesus Christ. By Christ sinful people are declared righteous. Our imperfect praise, out-of-tune songs, our misplaced need for praise, and even the remnants of our sins of greed and pride are covered, conquered, and cancelled by the work of our Savior, to the praise of his glorious grace. Our worship will never be perfect in this life, but it is reckoned to be perfect before the Father through the work of Jesus Christ. But this should not invite sloppiness and casuality in worship because Jesus has made it acceptable. We must do our best. But we know it is not our best efforts that makes our worship acceptable to God. It is Christ. Christ presents our praises to God the Father and it is Christ alone who qualifies them for access to the mind of God. He makes them sufficient (though they are very imperfect). He makes them adequate, when measured by God’s standards they would be anything but adequate. But most of all, he makes them glorious, for his Name’s sake, our praises bring honor to God by Jesus Christ.

God wonderfully desires that we experience him, live with him, and know him. By the Spirit of Christ we personally connect with God.  We come into the very glory that before was impossibly out of reach – it was God’s glory and infinitely beyond human comprehension. That glory of God now becomes our grandest theme and our deepest passion – the glory of God becomes our life and it is held out to us as our incredible future. “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2).

God now gives us the message of his glory. It is the duty of those who know God to tell others about his nature, his actions, his wisdom, and his love. The honor that God demands of us, because of his immense glory, would be absurd even comedic for any person to claim for himself. But God boldly claims all glory as his own, and he is perfect and right for establishing his ownership of it all. God would not be God if he were not deserving of such praise – the praise that God deserves as God. Such praise, if is were offered to a man from men, would be a staggering embarrassment. All glory is God’s alone. Such honor is “the glory due his Name” (see 1 Chronicles 16:29; Psalms 29:2 and 96:8). The glory of man always fails, but to claim God’s glory for ourselves is blasphemous.  The glory of man, our praise for accomplishments and our power over others, always results in disappointment and ultimately, in our abject failure. But the glory of God is forever, unfailing, and unfading forever.

Men will always “fall short of the glory of God” because of their status as creature, their limitations as human beings and finitude and distance from divinity (they are finite not infinite), their short lives, their condition of dependency upon the Creator, and most horribly because of their sin (Romans 3:23). God is glorious within himself, forever glorious, perfectly glorious, and glorious in holiness. There is no one like God (see Exodus 8:10).

Such boastings about glory in human beings would be outrageous, but not in God. God can take credit for creating everything for his glory, because he is God. It is not sinful boasting for God to demand that his name be glorified in all the earth. He is glorious because of who he is and for what he has done. He possesses no pride or sin whatsoever in his demand to be worshipped in the splendor of holiness (see 1 Chronicles 16:29; Psalms 29:2; and 96:9).

But he is utterly without sin even when he demands all glory that is or ever shall be directed toward himself and to no one else. He is perfect and he is holy when he commands that all the worship be given only to God. He is right to defend his glory and to command all worship and praise from his creation as only God must receive. For a human being to receive an ounce of glory that is rightly deserved by God and that is defended by God’s command and his holy wrath would be grotesque idolatry and the most appalling sacrilege for any human being to claim any of the glory and honor  that God alone deserves.

But God is perfectly right to demand and to desire to receive all the honor and glory that God alone deserves as God. He is utterly without sin in this desire for worship and glory. His motives are completely holy when he defends his perfections by his holiness and wrath. He establishes his reputation by his holy actions, his punishment of sin, his righteousness discipline of those who are his, and he can sustain any objection to his righteous deeds, with his holy jealousy against any who would accuse God of injustice or attempt to fault his wisdom or his infinite goodness.

God defends his glory and holiness with his righteous might and by infinitely fierce wrath. “My glory I give to no other” (Isaiah 42:8 and 48:11). This is the true picture of God that needs to be recovered. Such a God is demanding of our praise and all our worship. He is worthy of every praise we can offer him. There is nothing he lacks in himself, but he has commanded his praises and it is right and proper for his creation and his children to offer him praise and thanksgiving for being God. ***

There is neither any fault or sin within God, nor in his demand that we worship him. He is due the honor we bring to his name. He and no other, is perfectly deserving of all praise and honor and glory. His wisdom and every action are perfect in the extreme and holy in the absolute. He never fails to keep his word. His promises are sure and eternally valid. His love is predictable and solid. His loyalty and patience are from everlasting to everlasting. His grace is infinite. His mercy is from before time.  This God is absolutely glorious in all he is and in everything he does. There is nothing we add to him when we praise him. There is nothing that we praise or extol that he hasn’t already make abundantly clear and repeatedly made known in history, by prophets, by his Son, of his own decisions and desires to make himself known to people for all to see. There is no out-shining of his glory that we must bring into existence or cause to be seen by our effort which he has not already clearly articulately, beautifully, powerfully communicated and shown publicly in miracle, promise, covenant, and redemption. Most clearly and most undeniably God has spoken to humankind by his Son (see Hebrews 1:2).

The Cross is the most glorious display of the nature and holiness of God. His justice and love are there shined forth with undeniable, unmistakable clarity. By the Cross of Jesus, in the most robust and articulate display of the glory of God, we see God.  We marvel at this eternal and startling brightness of this Light of God (see John 8:12, “I am the light of the world”). We see the wisdom and mind of God. There is the power of God in resurrection and victory over death. There is love and justice balanced perfectly and judgment is just where holiness is assaulted and severe where rebellion was lawless or cruel. We worship at the foot of the Mountain of God (wherever he makes himself known) and tremble at his glory. And we know that he is God and conclude: How very different he is from us. He is glorious and we are not.

Nothing is more offensive than a human being who demands attention and seeks to be noticed for what he has accomplished. It is unseemly for a singer to command applause from his audience or a preacher to solicit praise for a sermon. When glory is demanded by others, we are repelled by the demand precisely because we are familiar with this lust for praise within. The arrogant desire for praise, the demand to be appreciated in others is repellant to good taste, but we must be honest and say that it also exposes within our hearts the very same desires—our desires for praise for our performance and congratulations for our relative goodness. Such self-congratulations are audaciously selfish and utterly contrary to true humility and godly contrition.

But God is deserving and demanding of his own glory and he expends absolute wrath in defense of it. We find it obnoxious for a human being to demand praise for his deeds. But God’s demand for glory is to be received with sober humility as we bow before the One who Rules-over-All.[2] God’s glory and man’s are completely different operations. One is generated from within the divine person and is absolutely justified, perfect, and wholly deserved. The other is stolen from God and imitative of his glory and is essentially and completely false.

Even that demand by God for the declaration of his glory and of his jealousy of it, puts us at enmity with him. We cannot know glory in the way that God knows it. Glory doesn’t belong to us. It is God’s.

The praise of people is forbidden because it is in every way hostile to God and forbidden by God’s command. All we do falls short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Sin is alien and hostile to God and repellant of his glory. That fact doesn’t slow down our parade of self-congratulations, attempts at usurping God’s honors, or our efforts to steal glory that originated in God and are intended for God and should be rightly given only to God. Glories’ praises and honors are rightly and solely for deity, and this is true in spite of our agonizing struggles to focus on God and to give God alone the glory due his name. People are competitors of God’s glory. We want it and lay claim to it.

Inasmuch as people should never be the recipients of praises that belong to God, even so God cannot be made more glorious by anything that people do. For people to aspire to praise is idolatry. Praise is God’s alone. How do people “glorify God”? How do we who are not to steal it, offer it to God? Can we glorify God and enjoy him forever? We will explore how glory is to be expressed, and how we are to give glory to God in the chapters to follow.

God doesn’t need our praises. When we sing about him, he is not helped, made happier, more delighted, more pleased, or more encouraged by our songs than he would have been had we remained silent. God is infinitely happy and completely satisfied in himself apart from anything we do. His greatest efforts extending from before time and projecting into eternity future are to glorify himself. Our additions to his own chorus of praise regarding his mighty acts are completely eclipsed by what God has done in display of his own character and by what he has said to reveal his nature and holiness. It is not God who is benefited by our praises. God is not more glorious because we glorify him. The benefit rests elsewhere. God is not helped when we bring glory to God. We are.

Contemporary Christian worship often fails because people think they have something to bring to God, something to invent or to create to offer to God as an act of praise. They seem to need to experience some new emotion or repeat old ones in order to feel about God in some way which they mistake for worship, as they offer him what they mistake for his glory.

But if all glory comes from God and already resides in God, then it is our privilege to see his power and learn about what God has done, to hear and read what God has said, and to study what God has purposed for human life and to study the end that God has designed for the universe at large. It is our blessing to hear his wondrous stories, to contemplate his self-revelation, and to study his works of promise and fulfillment that accomplished our salvation.

It is God’s most glorious gift to us to give us the message of the Cross. The Cross is God’s greatest glory and the subject of our highest praise and our most precious and enduring hope (see Galatians 6:14; 1 Corinthians 2:2).[3]

God’s people know the glory of God. Those who worship in Spirit and truth understand the glory of God and when they worship they participate in God’s glory personally. We study his works and words. Those astounding events tell who God is. His inspired words were spoken and written for us, and they are more precious than life to us.

Participating in the glory of God must begin with the confession of our ingloriousness. We cannot generate the smallest measure of glory to God. We cannot add to the glory of God. We cannot improve the glory of God. God’s glory is God-determined, God-defined, and God-defended. It is displayed resplendently in all that has been made. It is independent of the praises of men. God himself has declared, proclaimed, and exalted his own glory. We are invited to experience it. We are called by God to understand more of his glory and to be immersed in it by contemplating its cause, purpose, and end, and then to be changed by the ineffable and superlative display of God’s glory, forever.

God delights in displaying his glory in us and to us. The only reason God would have us participate in his glory is as an act of his grace, to benefit us. God does not increase his glory by revealing it to us. God doesn’t need to promote his own glory. It is our benefit alone when God shares it with us. God’s glory doesn’t require our acknowledgement or we do not make it greater by studying it or by praising God’s glory. The glory of God is comprehensive in itself and it is complete within God. Our inclusion in the knowledge and participation in God’s glory is all the more astonishing. That God would share his glory with his people can only be understood when we grasp the greatness of his grace towards us who have been redeemed. His most precious quality and one of his most jealously protect quality (along with holiness) is shared with us. We are made to be a glorious body (see Ephesians 3:21; and Philippians 3:21).

But out of his love for us, he desires to include us in the display of his glory. We have seen his glory (John 1:14). We have beheld his glory in what God has done. We have heard his glory in what he has said. We have known God’s glory in who God is in himself. His glory has been portrayed before the whole world in creation and in redemption, in revelation and in providence (to name a few). We are helped by seeing, knowing, hearing about his glory, his work, his words, his redemption, his power and moral perfections. Sharing God’s glory with us doesn’t make God any better. It doesn’t help God in any way, when we praise him or offer him glory. We are the ones who benefit. By merely telling God who God is, he is pleased and we are benefited. God desires to share his glory with us. In that expansive expression of his love for us, we see his glory.

His glory is complete and displayed in a multitude of ways for all to see. His glory is not discovered or made clearer by the poet’s line. It is not made less mysterious by the psalmist’s ecstatic verse. But those efforts are an attempt to see, to experience, and to honor God for being glorious. Those offerings add nothing to his glory but they seek to experience it. Offerings of praise, done right, declare what already exists and has existed forever. We are invited to observe and to understand, to recount and retell, to describe and to celebrate the God who is, essentially, eternally, and personally glorious.

By glory we see God.  Giving God the praise due his holy Name changes us and it gives us unspeakable joy in pondering it. By studying glory and loving it, our hearts are expanded to love God more, and our minds are set upon God to know him better.

Jonathan Edwards reminds us that God is not in the least “rewardable” with reference to our praises for his glory. As well-intentioned our praises may be, God is not helped or assisted, made more worthy of praise, nor is he more precious or deserving of worship and absolute trust. Edwards writes:

… [God is] infinitely above all capacity of receiving any reward or benefit from the creature; he is already infinitely and unchangeably happy, and we cannot be profitable to him.

The Scripture everywhere represents God as the highest object of all these:  there we read of the soul’s magnifying the Lord, of loving him, with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength; admitting him, and his righteous acts, or greatly regarding them as marvelous and wonderful, honoring, glorifying, exalting, extolling, blessing, thanking and praising of him giving unto him all the glory of the good which is done or received, rather than unto men; that no flesh should glory in his presence; but that he should be regarded as the Being to whom all glory is due.

His works communicate everything we know about God. We learn of his character (who he is determines what he does and why he does it), his amazing knowledge (he knows everything, extensively and inclusively), his purposes (everything is for him, to him, and through him), and his grand plan for all things and all people (he rules over everyone and everything, forever), are all made clear by what God chooses to do or not to do. If we are to study the glory of God we must understand something of the scope of it. God glory is by the very nature it is derived from and displayed from the divine Person. It is vast, expansive, all-encompassing, and essential to the nature of God’s character and beauty, his wisdom and truth. And so God’s glory has unlimited scope, to measure it would be to crush the instruments of measurement, it would expend every measure that sought to grasp the lengths and depth, height, and width of it. No mortal can understand the vastness and depth of his wisdom. Studying the grandeur of glory would drive us through the extent of his works of creation, it would study the light of revelation but never own it or fully grasp its message. It would fall down in praise of the redemption of God as well as his righteous and ominous judgment.  In every event where God is active, in every act of redemption, in all he has said, God is most glorious and he stands in every measure beyond our comprehension.

Everything that exists is about the glory of God. Everything that has happened or will occur in the future either is or will be about the glory of God. Glory is the greatest thought we can have as creatures. Nothing exceeds the glory of God. Nothing is higher. Nothing is more worthy of honor or more deserving to capture our affections.

To praise God as glorious is a response of the worshipper that is not only right for us to do, it is commanded by him that we worship him this way. Lewis observes:

It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God … to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness … to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.[5]

From glory to worship

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” (Luke 4:8)

Jesus’ command is very hard to bear. The exclusionary command to worship and serve only God sweeps away human (or demonic) ambition, pride, and our insatiable hunger to be first. Jesus didn’t say, “Worship God alongside other people and all your possessions and ambitions.” His words point to a new, a greater ambition for believers in Christ: to place God first with no second in view; to have him and no other (cf. Luke 14:33); to have him with nothing of equivalent value—and there to learn that God’s glorious presence in our lives defines, evaluates, judges, and potentially redeems, every other love and longing we have. To know God is to gain everything we had longed for and to lose everything we had cherished in place of him (cf. Matthew 13:46).

 When we understand that God is the sole focus of worship—the only one we serve regardless of the cost of our service to him—his glory measures every other longing we possess against the weight and value of that ultimate treasure. By studying God, we learn about his character, life, heart, wisdom, desires, abilities, capacities, and his silences and hiddenness. We personally experience God’s glory.

As we study God’s glory, our understanding of ourselves is clarified. When we look closely at our hands or examine a leaf through a microscope or a star through a telescope and we see the expressions of God’s creative power, as redeemed people, we are profoundly moved by these evidences of God’s glory in his splendor, majesty, wisdom, and power. Studying the expressions of God’s glory is to study God. In studying this holy subject, we are warned and instructed so that we can keep clear of the many forms of idolatry in the way we love things and worship ourselves, instead of God alone. This idolatry extends back to our greatest flaw. God’s glory exposes our sin and wages war against it.   

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! (Psalms 115:1)

God’s glory stands supreme and inviolate. God defends his nature against all rivals. He acts with unmitigated power to defend his glory when it has been assaulted or diminished in the least degree. Though men and demons seek to destroy it, God demonstrates his jealousy, his passion for his glory, and his protection of it, to ultimate extremes. This glory is established, declared, defended, and promised by God. Nothing and no one can stand against it. After all, glory will stand unassailed.

God is not inviting us to share Heaven’s Throne with him (see Matthew 20:21). Our fallenness confuses our understanding of God’s glory and attempts to usurp it, to overthrow it. It works to change glory into forms and expressions that are alien to God’s life. Sinful man fails to give God glory. He cannot glorify God. He has no glory to give him, and what he perceives to be honor to God is rejected completely by God. Though he may use the vocabulary of glory and speak much of God, sinful man can only worship himself. He will infallibly, invariably, always draw glory away from God and give it to himself. Only by faith can we bring glory to God and give him the honor that he will receive and take joy in.

When man’s sinful robbery of God’s glory covertly takes over a worship service purported to be for God’s honor, nothing could be more grotesque, and nothing moves God more to act in defense and protection of himself.

To profess to give God glory, to speak and sing using words of praise to God, to employ the language of praise, in the house of praise, among the people who are called to worship, and to do everything in the name of God, but yet, to actually do all of it for man, to receive praises from men, to exalt men, to use the words invented by men, to create our substitute concepts of glory and to consider no inspired text on the subject, to recount no act of holy majesty, to speak of no blazing fire, to repeat no redemptive promise, to feel no heat from the fire of the prophet’s ecstasy, and to neglect the very words of the Savior, but only to hear men’s inventions, men’s ideas about God, men’s paltry rhymes and empty doctrines, is to fall short of the glory of God.

Giving God glorious praise must contain the content of God’s glorious nature and it must redound in praise for who he is and what he has made known about himself. To neglect so great a mountain of content that explains, exalts, describes, honors, repeats, and applies the glory of God to all that exists, to every human soul, and across every moment of history — to neglect so rich a resource of unending riches, is not merely laziness and pride, but it is idolatry. To praise God with our words and in our language, in our offerings concocted with inferior thought, inferior content, inferior purpose, and inferior presentation, is to put ourselves in the place of God as those who determine how he is to be worshipped and by what means he is to be exalted. God never intended it to be so. Worship is to enter into the praise of the glory of God. To substitute our words, our ideas, our understandings, our silly rhymes and pointless repetitions, is to do an intolerable injustice to the glory of God. We should not extend our grasp so high. By finding our place as worshippers who stand before the glorious God, we are able to give him that glory that he is due by faith, and by faith alone.

In the worst of cases, our true agenda in “worship” seeks only to praise ourselves. Using the words of God or the praises of God as a vehicle to display our talents and desire for self-praise, we fail at any true worship whatsoever. Such “worship” fails at every point. Worse, it puts us at a very dangerous place where we become not worshippers of God at all but violators of the command that God alone is to be worshipped, becoming competitors for God’s glory. We cannot worship both God and man.

When we have stolen worship from God in this way, we have diminished God’s honor and his rightful praise and adoration. We who fail in this way know full well when we stand before an assembly, eager for applause or praise—speaking the words of praise to God, but heaping up the reward for ourselves, we know when the words we speak or sing about God, are merely means of our own self-aggrandizing. Our hearts betray us in these moments of theft.

We know in our hearts when we have used glory as a vessel to make ourselves seem great or worthy of much praise, instead of being awestruck by God’s excellencies, his works, his redemption, his self-disclosure. When we “reward” God with our paltry praise, imagining in our delusion that God was made better, happier by our ditties, by our audacious display of senseless, silly, emotions, or by our attention-getting performances, that is no worship at all. It is pure, horrid, and disgusting idolatry. How easily our sinful selves extol our greatness and become consumed with our praise, uplifting our gifts, extoling our importance, or delighting in the praise we are so desperate for from men. Jesus said, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve,” (see Deuteronomy 6:13; 1 Samuel 7:3; Matthew 4:10; and Luke 4:8). We must place the worship of God at the center of our affections and aspirations. God’s glory must possess us deeply inside our heart and in our will, at the most profound and unalterable place within our loves and passions. We distinguish between the glory of God and the glory of a human being. We know they are entirely different realities.

It can be said with great sadness that today we have largely lost this essential distinction between God and us and the differential between the glory of God and the glory of man. Especially is this the case in our modern corporate worship. God’s glory should be the privilege of knowing, seeing, studying, handling with our greatest attention, and receiving to our complete transformation, the glory of God. And we come to understand the utter failure of the worship of God when we substitute the worship of God for something that wholly comes from within ourselves. As sinful people, we are betrayed by our desire to worship ourselves and, despite the horrific consequences of such an action, to use God and his glory for our benefit or as a way for us to be praised.

Those who give praise to God experience his transforming presence. They enter into the thoughts of God, the things of God, the Words of God, the mighty acts of God, the providence of God, the creation of God, and supremely, the redemption of God in the Cross of Christ.

Those who praise themselves as they stumblingly attempt to ascribe glory to God are perhaps attempting to give God some gift he is missing or trying to delight him in some way that would benefit him. And in that quest they miss glory altogether. And they grotesquely offend God. They turn the worship and service of God into negotiations for reward, believing somehow that God can be rewarded by their offering, made richer or happier by their praise, or that they can give to God something he is lacking within himself or that he needed from them. This blasphemous idolatry has confused God with man. How strongly can we say this? God needs nothing from man. Man needs everything from God. Glory is not from man to God. It is God’s display of his nature and works to man.

Self-admiration at enmity with God’s glory

The highest act of worship—giving glory to God—can be twisted into the most arrogant and sin-filled display of human sin and selfishness imaginable. Our sin has done this. Stephen Charnock writes:

Every sin is a defacing our own souls, which, as they are the prime creatures in the sensible world, had greater characters of God’s wisdom in the fabric of them. But this image of God is ruined and broken by sin.

… God has shown infinite art in the creation of man, but sin unbeautifies man, and bereaves him of his excellency.[6]

Man, bereft of his holiness, is also bereft of beauty and excellency. Beauty and excellence are essential qualities of the glory of God. Holiness, therefore, is required of those who rightly give God glory. So if man is to glorify God, his holiness must first be restored. Holiness and glory are causally related to one another: holiness is the interaction, the interplay, the self-consistent expression of those elements of the divine character, balancing and supporting each one (love and justice, mercy and wrath, e.g.); glory is the demonstration of God’s holy character.

God desires to be merciful and redemptive, just as he is critical and rejecting of every human virtue. Every characteristic of God is bound by his nature to act with all the power and holiness of divinity in defense of his glory.  As we long for the beauty and excellencies of the nature of God—as we desire to abandon our ambitions and hopes so that we may be consumed, lost in those qualities for which we so deeply yearn, from the best parts of our redeemed human souls—we begin to know God.

Our desire as restored man is not merely to observe God’s beauty and wonders; it is to be identified with those excellencies and to know them in a way that knowing is not sufficient to describe. We need more profound and better words, more beautiful songs, more splendid paintings, deeper and more transformative friendships, more courageous experiences, and higher, grander, clearer insights in order to declare the greatness of his glory. Our tools of speech and human language, our arts and sciences, do not give us the sufficient vocabulary or rich enough understanding to express what we know of God. We cannot even pray to him adequately. The longing we have in our souls about God cannot be contained within us. It spills over into all we do, everything we know, and into every relationship we have. Neither does our world seem very substantive to us in comparison to the solidity, the eternity, the profundity of God who made it all for his glory. Something more real has come to us and now is in us. We have seen his glory.

So worship is to participate in the holy; it is to know God’s glory face to face; and it is to find our longings and aspirations fulfilled in his presence. Lewis wrote lyrically about this longing, not only to understand but to be joined with God’s glory:

Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.[7]

By engaging in a direct quest to know and to extol the virtues, the words,  and actions of God, we find true and abundant life and a glimpse of the life that is ahead. Then we will see clearly and can say exactly what we mean and we begin to praise God without omission, delusion, or distraction. We are stirred by his gracious invitation to examine his glory without shadow or cloud, engaging these themes with all our faculties and with all our affections. All of these realities flow from his loving heart and result in our greatest good. There is no greater blessing that to know and to experience the glory of God.

How liberating and delightful it is to know that whether we give God glory or not, he will never need us or our praises in any way. To say it so plainly seems harsh. But it is really the most tender way to say it. The complete competency of God, his God-ness, is our greatest delight. His independence from us and his complete delight in himself give him such great solidity, such inalterability, that he is most strong, most powerful, most able to keep his promises, and therefore he is most glorious. And our worship of him is the worship directed to the One who alone deserves all the praises of his creation.

God is not contingent on us for anything. He is self-defining, self-existing, and self-affirming. It brings us to our knees to declare that we cannot contribute to God’s happiness, though we sometimes grotesquely imagine God pining after our praises. God pining after us? May it never be!

He is infinitely happy in himself. Our worship of God is properly established only when we accept that he is completely satisfied in himself apart from us altogether. Only this kind of God is worthy of worship. His glory is established, therefore, not by us, but by God alone. And the grace and miracle of this is that we are most benefited when we know, by faith and through his grace, that he is God alone. After that, we can settle in our minds and hearts, with deepest humility, upon the corollary to this greatest truth of all: We are not God.

God’s decision to reveal his glory to his people rests behind every other gracious act he has ever done or ever will do. Therefore, God is not and cannot be, helped by us when we give him glory. He cannot get more glory from us. He already possesses it all in himself. When we give glory to God, it does not help God at all. It helps us.

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