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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