A state of nature is a state of enmity against God. Man is naturally an enemy of the sovereignty and dominion of God. Not subject to the law of God.[1]

Sometimes a soul thinks or hopes that it may through grace be utterly free from this troublesome inmate. Upon some secret enjoyment of God, some full supply of grace, some return from wandering, some deep affliction, some thorough humiliations, the poor soul begins to hope that it shall be freed from the law of sin. But after a while … sin acts again, makes good its old station.[2]

The one who has seen something of the glory of Christ will count everything else as “rubbish,” that he might know Christ better and see more of his glory (Philippians 3:8–10).[3]

The glory of God is locked in a mortal conflict with the glory of man. Christ was insistent to reject any glory men offered him. He said, “I do not receive glory from people,” John 5:41 (cf. vs. 44). Sin insults the majesty of God. If we are to become true worshippers, our insult to God’s glory must not masquerade as an offering of praise to him. Christ was hostile to the glory offered to him by men. He wanted nothing to do with it. Christian worship must not embrace what Christ categorically, angrily rejected. Worship is not an invention of men. It is our response to God, ordered by who he is, and how he desires to be adored and praised.

God is not in need of anything man can give him. There is in the attempt to “glorify God” from the inventions and imagi-nations of men, a diminution of the honor that is truly due to God. For the sake of his true nature and holiness, worship must be limited to what God has permitted and omit what he has forbidden. When we attempt to worship God with the glory of men, there is in this effort a terrible falling, and in that very act that was called “worship,” an audacious act of God-offending idolatry.

Instead, though his excellencies are seen by us in shadows and understood by us incompletely, still, God can be worshipped. We study the glory of God in all its manifold displays and we are immensely changed by this knowledge. By grace, we offer these excellencies of the divine person back to God as a pleasant and acceptable act of praise to him. In this way God is glorified.

Throughout all eternity, the Son has acted as the Revelator, the Mediator of God’s Presence, the Communicator of God’s character and words, and the One who has displayed all the glory of the Father. Men’s glory is an affront to the redeeming work of the Son. When men act to create praise to God from themselves, every aspect of that offering is polluted with their sin, their poor thinking, misuse of words and concepts, and omissions and additions that make their affirmations about God incomplete or errant. But the Son has perfectly displayed the character of the Father. He has accurately, fully, and sinlessly explained and demonstrated the perfections of the Father and he made known the wisdom, glory, and honor of his person. The Son has infallibly communicated who the Father is and has completely defended his beauty, his perfections, and his holiness, by his own moral excellencies, his absolute wisdom, and ultimate obedience. These qualities in the Son are possessed by no sinful man.

God is dangerously jealous of his glory. Men cannot invent, create, or enlarge upon God’s glory. Men cannot possess the glory of God; they cannot manufacture, invent, or create more of it; from within themselves they do not know it, nor can they fathom its nature, qualities, or depth; and they are repeatedly forbidden to give their glory to God and are rejected by God in the attempt to glorify him by their efforts or concoctions. The glory of men is not God’s glory in the least degree. God hates and is repelled by the glory of men.

Both Jesus and Paul steadfastly refused to accept glory from men.

I do not receive glory from people. (John 5:41)

I do not seek my own glory. (John 8:50)

So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’” (Hebrews 5:5)

But far be it from me to boast [NIV “glory”] except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)

Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. (1 Thessalonians 2:6)

Sinful man desires to separate the glory of God from his holiness. We seek our glory with all our hearts. We long to be high in reputation, regarded as wise, beautiful, or successful. But we do not desire holiness nor to be arrested by the moral purity true holiness would form within us. Sinful man hates holiness and he is an enemy of it.

Separating holiness from glory, we follow Adam and Eve in the way of sin (cf. Psalm 1:1). When we separate holiness from glory, instead of a glory that reflects the true nature of God and rehearses his accomplishments and celebrates his moral perfections, we create an alien, ugly glory that originates from man and is only about man and only results in a great offense offered to God, and is separated from his true holiness. Edwards describes the life of man separated from holiness:

They never gave God the honor of one of his attributes. They never gave him the honor of his authority by obeying him. They never gave him the honor of his sovereignty by submitting to him. They never gave him the honor of his holiness and mercy by loving him. They never gave him the honor of his sufficiency and faithfulness by trusting in him, but have looked upon God as one not fit to be believed, and have treated him as if he were a liar. 1 John 5:10, “He that believeth not God hath made him a liar.” They never so much as heartily thanked God for one mercy they have received in their whole lives, though God has always maintained them, and they have always lived upon his bounty. They did not so much as even once heartily thank Christ for coming into the world. They never would show him so much gratitude as to receive him when he was knocking at their door, but have always shut the door against him, though he has come to knock at their door upon no other ground but only to offer himself to be their Savior.[4]

Glory and holiness are eternally married and they must not be torn asunder. A glory without holiness would be about fame but not about purity; about effulgence but separated from integrity; about the praise of men separated from the character of God. Holiness is the power and life of glory. In God’s life or in a man’s, holiness provides the substance, the themes, and it defines the extent of glory. When glory is pulled apart from holiness, God becomes a buffoon demanding worship or man believes in his arrogance that he is deserving of every blessing and gift God gives him. Apart from holiness, glory never resolves conflicts within God’s nature. Wrath and love are forever vying for supremacy and grace and justice are locked in an unending war.

In a man, glory separated from holiness equals sin, pride, jealousy, human arrogance, and spiritual death. Pascal writes about man’s condition after he has separated holiness from glory:

Man’s eye then beheld the majesty of God. He was not then in the darkness that now blinds his sight, not subject to death and the measures that afflict him.

But he could not bear such great glory without falling into presumption. He wanted to make himself his own center and do without [God’s] help ….

Pascal writes further:

That is the state in which men are today. They retain some feeble instinct from the happiness of their first nature, and are plunged into wretchedness of their blindness and concupiscence, which has become their second nature.[5]

The rejection of the glory of men was crucially important for both Jesus and Paul. A virulent hostility to the glory of man is essential for living the Christian life.

The Lord Jesus knew well the difference between the glory of God and the glory of man. We are taken aback by the vehemence with which Christ rejects the glory of men. One might suppose given the opposition Jesus faced and the paucity of success of his ministry of found among men, that he might welcome the affirmation of men. But he never received even the smallest token of the glory of men.[6]

Such praise and honor would seem to be especially encouraging when Christ was building his ministry, teaching the crowds, and riding to Jerusalem to the shout of “Hosanna!” But Christ knew that man’s glory was fickle, self-serving, and sin-motivated. Man’s glory comes from “within man”[7] not from God. Charles Spurgeon writes:

If the Master’s head had been turned by the hosannas of the multitude, then his heart would have sunk within him when they cried, “Crucify him, crucify him.” But he was neither lifted up nor cast down by men: he committed himself unto no man because he knew what was in man.

The innermost reason for this quiet heart [of Jesus] was his unbroken communion with the Father. Jesus dwelt apart, for he lived with God: the Son of man who came down from heaven still dwelt in heaven, serenely patient because he was raised above earthly things in the holy contemplations of his perfect mind. Because his heart was with the Father, the Father made him strong to bear anything that might come from men.[8]

The failure of man’s glory

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

The warning to live in humility would be unnecessary if we didn’t wage war against rivalry and conceit. If those qualities were rare in us, pride and jealousy would not be so challenging.

Conceit in this passage comes from two Greek words, kenoV (kenos), “empty, vain,” and the familiar term, doxoV (doxos), “glory.” The word kenodoxoV (kenodoxos) means, “conceited” and “vain,” or “worthless” and “cheap.”

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:26)

Man’s glory is not acceptable to God because man does not honor God as God. God has directed how he wants to be honored. The presumptuousness within the human heart is so expansive that the mendacious and corrupting qualities of false glory offered to God can be justified, excused, and even lauded. Worship of God is a dangerous occupation. We are so familiar with themes of love and mercy in our modern worship that to approach God as holy and just is alien to our sensibilities. In our sin we can bring an anthem of praise to God that is no less offensive to him than a wooden idol carved in our own image, while believing that God is praised by our neglect of his person and work. We would create a novel experience filled with sights and sounds of this world and of men’s works, rather than create an accurate and beautiful reflection of the divine person and work from which God has shown us of his glory.

Worship has been captured by the self-focused, driven by the praises of men, filled with the machinations of sinful people, and it collapses infinitely short of the measure of the height, the content, the wonder, the divine dignity, and the redeeming splendor of Glory and Majesty. But what we do in public worship, we also do in private. Our prayers devolve into demands of God; our thanksgivings turn into self-congratulations; our confessions sink into complaints; our study erupts into spiritual pride; our man-made god is worshipped when we seek to fulfill our desires. When glory is lost, we fall back into ourselves and become idolaters yet again and all the more.

Man’s glory cannot illuminate the perfections and virtues of God. Deriving only from man, it can only be about the accomplishments and values of man. It is impossible for man in himself to lay aside his own words about God. Though he may think he is praising God, his self-conceived ideas or his self-invented psalms and hymns and spiritual songs rise only to the level of man. When he seeks to worship God, and performs worshipful actions, he depends not upon God for his acts of worship and the God-filled attitudes that should attend such a beautiful and rich experience, but he falls short of the rich Biblical content of true praise. All he says, all he does, is drawn only from within himself, and it is the very opposite of worship. Jesus knows what is within man and he does not receive glory from men. He was rejecting of it, dismissive of it, resistant to it, and kept himself removed or disassociated from it his entire life and in every moment of his ministry.

Injury to God’s holiness

From his vain heart, man injures the holiness of God by ascribing to God qualities that are inferior to the divine person. Charnock writes:

The holiness of God is injured, in the unworthy representations of God, and imaginations of him in our own minds.

The holiness of God is injured in charging our sin upon God.[9]

God’s holiness is not benefited when we create content out of the air for use in the praise of God. It is immensely offensive to God to create a fiction about him and then to ascribe it to his character, and especially so, in an act of worship. Ascribing to God some endorsement of our actions, choices, or aspirations, or ascribing to God motives or desires that he has not revealed, are some examples. Sinful men put words in God’s mouth.

Saying something about God that is rooted only in human imagination may appear clever, it may move deep and stirring emotions, but it would always be extremely offensive to the holiness of God and results not in glory to God but in a diminution of his glory.

Instead of learning from the inspired record the nature and qualities of God that should be praised and aligning our worship with the patterns of praise and adoration that God approves, man creates inferior content that would seek to bind God in the service of man (making God our slave), that dismisses his Sovereignty (making man the sovereign), and that seeks an experience over the presence of God (dismissing the glory and holiness of the true God over a moment of ecstatic emotion). We are infected with “vanity,” and on that account we are apt to say things about God that are flatly wrong as to the facts. We are inclined to be imbalanced in the doctrines we ascribe to him and in the manner in which we practice our faith in him in practical terms (prayer, service, humility, sacrifice for others, and the like). Vain men place primary importance on matters that are of secondary significance. We neglect the content that makes worship true and essential, reflective of the character and affections of God and we substitute a language in worship that is inferior in content and it lacks the comprehensiveness of a Biblical view of God. This human language of praise is an incomplete, inferior, imaginary, and speculative set of divine qualities and attributes. It is dismissive of hard or offensive aspects of the divine person. The moral demands of God are softened to make God indifferent to sin and nonreactive to what sinners do. The teaching is plainly errant when it declares what is not true of God and declares as the oracles of God that which is out of accord with the revelation of Christ. When the creeds are soiled and the meaning of words and doctrines redefined, God is not glorified.

From those insufficient stones modern man erects a building of vapid, paltry, insipient praise to God. It is not God who is praised by these words or by these actions in the least degree. We have exchanged the worship of the glorious God for the worst form of idolatry—the worship of man (see Romans 1:25).

Holiness is injured when we charge God as the responsible agent for our sin. The holiness of God is offensive to sinful man. He stands against us when we desire to sin. He speaks by Law and against our sinful longings and actions. When we sin, our passions must overcome the fact of God’s holy presence. We do not sin in isolation from God. Everything we do is done before God, in his presence. Sinful man may place blame for his temptations on God’s account. Holiness is not, by that insult, lessened.

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being temp-ted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13)

It is within the hearts of men to place blame for our sins at the foot of God. As sinful men we refuse to accept responsibility for our actions. But when holiness is established in our praise, we experience a conflict between what is within us (our sin) and what is within God (his holiness). Jesus’ holiness caused his opponents not only to argue with him but to hate him.

Holiness is not a benign quality of polite religious inquiry. It is offensive to sinful men; it is the chief enemy of sinful men. As sinful men, we detest the holiness of God. When holiness is displayed, rather than confessing our failures to be holy, we desire to accuse others as the agents and catalysts of our sins. We deflect accountability for our actions upon others or upon God. We react to holiness not by declaring our failure to measure up to God’s standard of purity and moral rectitude, but we react to holiness by growing angry with God, as if it were not for him, we would not be guilty of the least offense. The holiness of God is the chief enemy of men.

We react to holiness by seeking to make God guilty for our sin. If God tempted us, caused us to be tempted, did not intervene to prevent our sin, or did not remove the occasion for our sin, then it is not we who are guilty. It is God. How we hate holiness!

The glory of God is revealed by his powerful oversight and rule over all things on one account, and in our accountability to God for our actions, on the other. The sovereignty of God places God neither as the author of sin nor as the cause of any temptation. But Scripture also presents God as directing the affairs of men, their comings and goings, the events of providence and nature, determining the days of their births and deaths, and God’s personal working in “all things” (Romans 8:28) that touch their lives.

God controls all things by his sovereignty. Yet men are personally responsible for their actions. The holiness of God is praised as these two principles (God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility) are held together in perfect tension and balance. But these qualities are not equal in importance. The sovereignty of God is primary. The believer’s heart yields in submission and love to God’s sovereignty, it agrees with the holiness of God, and then accepts responsibility for actions lived out before the holy God.

We believe God is working, active, and directing the affairs of men. We also believe that men are accountable to God as moral agents who will give answer before the tribune of the Holy God who will judge the world.

Sinful men buck against the holiness and sovereignty of God. They resist holy person and his superseding authority in all things and over all events. They cry out against his law. They resent his intrusion into their lives. They do not delight in God’s overarching and undefeatable power, but resist his rule and resent his dominion and power to completely. Men left to themselves prefer Hell to Heaven.

The glory of God is displayed in his patience with men, even the worst sort of men who blame their sin on God, by giving them time to repent (2 Peter 3:9). Men have every reason to believe that God is glorious. But they find every reason not to believe him. Charnock:

God loseth his glory by us. It is an unreasonable thing, if we do not believe him for his word, yet not to believe him for his work’s sake (John 14:11).[10]

Man breaks against the sovereignty of God. He resists the fact of God’s existence and his moral nature. Man usurps God’s place as the center of praise and glory and puts himself in the place of God, judging God instead of worshipping him. He then ascribes to God the most horrid acts: holding that God is the cause of his sin, and accusing God of being unjust in his wrath. Sinful man isolates himself from the person of God.

Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment. (Proverbs 18:1)

Does this not explain why Christ was so averse to the glory of men? It is a glory that debases God. It is a glory that complains of God’s injustice. It is a glory that assumes no responsibility. It is a glory that challenges God’s truthfulness, justice, and honesty. Harrison writes:

[Esteem and honor of men are] incompatible with faith. Paul, following the example of Jesus (John 15:41, 8:50; cf. Hebrews 5:4f; 2 Peter 1:17), did not seek glory from men (1 Thessalonians 2:6). He voluntarily accepted dishonor (2 Corinthians 6:8, 4:10), strove to carry out his service to the honor of the Lord (2 Corinthians 8:19ff.), and looked to the honor and praise which Christ would give him as a reward on his day (1 Thessalonians 2:19f), Philippians 2:16). Paul’s statement that in the final judgment the righteous will receive ‘glory and honor and immortality’ refers to eternal life itself (Romans 2:7, 10; 5:2).[11]

Solomon gave a kind of fame to God, but not glory to his nature and to his divine perfections. He spent seven years building the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 7:1, 8; cf. 5:5; 6:38, 11:1-7), but he took 13 years to build his personal dwelling, his palace. It was when he was building the Temple that Solomon took Pharaoh’s daughter as his wife. He was acting for his own fame and pleasure, but not for the honor of God in obeying his Word or in living by his Law. Calvin writes:

To sum up, man cannot without sacrilege claim for himself even a crumb of righteousness, for just so much is plucked and taken away from the glory of God’s righteousness.[12]

We see this in Cornelius (Acts 10:25). He was not advanced so ill in godliness as not to pay God alone the highest reverence. Therefore, when he prostrated himself before Peter, undoubtedly he did not intend to worship Peter in place of God, yet Peter earnestly forbade him to do it. Why, unless because men never so articulately discern between the honoring of God and of creatures without indiscriminately transferring to the creature what belongs to God. Thus, if we wish to have one God, we should remember that we must not pluck away even a particle of his glory and that he must retain what is his own.[13]

We must regain a hatred for man’s glory and a love for God’s. Only then can we worship God as he requires us to worship. To love the glory of man is to hate the glory of God. To love the glory of God is to hate the glory of man.

Added from Facebook post 12.13.12

From More Glory.

“Christ was always the sort of Person who would lay his life down for his own.  If you could journey to the most distant point in past eternity and there meet with Jesus, you would have seen him to be the same Person and to be just as glorious then as when he died; and just as glorious when he died as he is now. He was always and eternally glorious; never less glorious; nor more so, but always fully and infinitely glorious.

For you see, the Cross did not create his glory. The Cross is a point in history in which his glory, rich, fully resplendent, and majestic, is demonstrated for all to see. It is the place and time when he, Perfect Man and Glorious God, died for sin to redeem his own. The Cross showed us what he has always been and always will be: Glorious Redeemer.”

[1] Charnock, Works: Truth and Life, Vol. 5, 462.

[2] Owen, The Works of John Owen: The Work of the Spirit, Vol. 4, 204.

[3] Owen, The Glory of Christ, 117.

[4] Edwards, The Wrath of Almighty God, 7.

[5] Pascal, Penseés, [writing for “The Wisdom of God”] 149, p. 76ff.

[6] “I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:8. “So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’” John 6:67.

[7]“But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” (italics added). John 2:25. Greek:  tiv h\n ejn twÆ÷ ajnqrwvpw÷.

[8] Spurgeon, The Miracles of Our Lord: Part One, 234.

[9] Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, Vol. 2, 172, 174.

[10] Charnock, Truth and Life, Vol. 5, 213.

[11] Harrison, “Glory,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, 47.

[12] Calvin, Institutes, Vol. 1, 3, 13, 2, p. 764.

[13] Ibid, 1, 12, 3, pp. 119–120.