Category Archives: Jesus Christ makes God’s glory known

Glory of God, Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

Glory of God — the great work of the Son of God

Some have seen that holiness is “a coordinating relationship between other qualities” within the divine person. In Dutch this is Verhältnissbegriff, the coordination of the divine attributes within the divine person, working together for a common purpose: The glory of God.

Each of the attributes of God coordinates with one another, never competing, limiting, or hindering the ultimate outcome of each individual attribute, but each attribute of God propounding and protecting aspects of the divine person relevant to each, accomplishing together and ultimately all that is within the divine will. Holiness is the means by which this coordination of every divine attribute within the attributes of the divine person is established and expressed.

Wrath and love might be first thought to be competing qualities seeking different ends, just as grace might be viewed as waging war against justice. These qualities are coordinated by means of God’s overarching, holy intention to work all things together for his own glory in everything he does and says (cf. Romans 8:28, “we know that God causes everything to work together for the good …” NLT), satisfying the demands that every quality within the divine person be glorified because they are God’s.

This coordination and purposefulness within the divine person, especially seen in his holiness and glory, is most definitively displayed in the Cross of Christ. No quality within the Godhead is usurped. No aspect of God’s nature is diminished. God is wrathful toward sin and yet he loves his elect people. Certainly the most glorious aspect of the Cross is that every attribute of God is displayed without confusion, competition, or diminution; all are displayed gloriously, yet the redemption of Christ fulfilled God’s intention to save the sinful and to punish sin, thus God honored his own nature as the Holy God while magnificently displaying his love and electing grace. God acted as One to redeem (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29).

There is a wondrous singularity in the purpose of God to save. This especially is the display of his holiness. Holiness may be studied as a particular attribute of God, along with God’s other attributes, e.g. wisdom, eternity, goodness, patience, and the like. Holiness also may be studied as a Verhältnissbegriff, by which God coordinates all his qualities and attributes in the accomplishment of his holy will. But it must be said that there is much about these matters that begin to touch the inner economy of the divine person that is necessarily, rightly, protectively, graciously, and forever hidden from our view. Some things within the divine person are unknown to us, not only because God so values our humility as creatures, but much more because he so greatly prizes within himself the glory of his divinity. He has determined that much of this divine economy has been shielded from our knowledge simply because he is God. We should study what we can and love what God has revealed, but the end of this inquiry of the economy within the divine person must be worship, not philosophy.

From More Glory by W. Thomas Warren (2013).

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Glory of God, Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

The love of God and glory.

The grandeur of God’s glory and of its incredible, powerful, impact on those who are redeemed. Glory works in us by the love of God for us.

We first see how glorious God is in his power and creation.

Psalm 89:
Vs. 5 “Let the heaven praise your wonders…”
Vs. 8 “Who is mighty as you are?”
Vs. 9 “You rule the raging of the sea …”

We see how amazing God is in his nature and wonders.

Exodus 8
Vs. 10 “There is no one like the LORD …” (see 9:14 for parallel)
Vs. 22 “That you may know the I AM the LORD in the midst of the earth…”

Exodus 10
Vs. 2 “That you may know what I have done … that you may know that I AM the LORD.”

From these few verses (and there are dozens more in the Old Testament) we see that God desires people to see him, to know his excellencies, and to experience who God is by what he has done. When we see what God has done, we know there is no one like Him.

But how does God’s glory translate into the lives of people? Into the lives of God’s people?

God’s glory is “vastly distinguished” as being utterly different from anything in humans. He is categorically different from his creation. He is far more wonderful! But he wants people to know how immeasurably rich is his glory, and how unsearchable he is as God.

Glory is not just touting God’s greatness. Glory becomes a personal interaction between God and his people. God wants them to know the glorious God, and to know that glory as worthy of every praise by those who worship him.

How does glory turn into worship?

It happens only through the working of the love of God. Love makes the glory of God known in people. The glory of God for the believer is supremely seen and experienced in the love of God for sinners. What a surprise this is! Glory leads us to his love — his eternal, saving love for his people is where glory is made perfect!

When Jonathan Edwards (one of the greatest minds every to write on theology and the nature of God) sought to describe how the Holy God could come into a relationship with sinful people, he found that language failed him. He could not express what he was experiencing as a Christian adequately, even in the loftiest language. His great gifts, his mighty intellect, could not describe the glory of God well-enough. But love could.

Edwards used the language of love to describe God’s glory! He could only turn to the language of love to describe how the Glorious God had come into his life. We see that the love of God is tied to the glory of God.

We will unpack some of the archaic phrases Edwards uses, but look for the language of love:

Edwards wrote this way, “Tis the soul’s relish of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature, inclining the heart to God as the chief good” (Edwards, Treatise on Grace, 48).

He speaks of relish (delight of the soul), of inclining the heart, and of God as the “chief good.” Edwards didn’t leap into complex language about the attributes of God or even the stilted language of redemption (reconciliation, substitution, salvation, propitiation, and the rest) to describe God’s glory. He spoke of God as the greatest good.

God is the most wonderful Person in his life, “inclining the heart to God as the chief good.” We might say that we are “declaring our love for God as our most precious and enduring Treasure. He is more to us than anything or any one.” The language of love becomes the way we offer praise and glory to God.

We are drawn to love the glory of God by the love of God. We worship God most gloriously when we know his love and receive his redemption most personally.

Then God become our “chief good.” He is our greatest love. God is known in us, by his love for us, as most glorious.

From More Glory, W. Thomas Warren.

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Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

Glorious joy.

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

John 15:11

Joy should be sought after and found in the presence of God, in the company of God’s people, and in the exercise of worship. If joy is not the essential experience when God’s people gather, there is something missing. Joy is the universal experience of people in the presence of God, from those who have been redeemed, and from those who understand the Gospel of peace.

Joylessness is a diagnosis, not something to be allowed or admitted into the celebration of grace, the declaration of our freedom in Christ, or the grasping of hope that never fails. Joylessness is utterly incompatible with the true and saving Gospel. There is no excuse for joylessness. There should be no room permitted for it, no songless worship, no gathering of people who somberly recite, retell, and then forget the wonders of grace, the depth of forgiveness, and the breadth of mercy that God has lavished, LAVISHED on his people.

Joy comes from Christ. It is his gift to us. If there is no joy, then we have not worshiped completely. If there is no joy, we have exchanged the sorrow of sin for the joy of salvation. If there is no joy, then reconciliation has not completed its work, turning aliens and strangers into sons and daughters of God. If there is no joy, then singing has been replaced with self-obsession. If there is no joy, Christ has neither been seen nor has he been heard. For when the glorious Savior speaks, he speaks joy to his people. When the glorious Savior appears, he gives joy to everyone. When the glorious Savior teaches, he teaches us to rejoice, and again I say, rejoice.

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definitions of glory, Jesus Christ makes God's glory known, Philosophy of ministry.

Fighting false glory.

The glory of God is the grandest idea that the human mind can think about. It will be the only subject we will study in Heaven. The depth of glory as a subject is the depth of God himself. It can never be exhausted. It can never be totally grasped. It is more and more satisfying to our souls. It is a magnificent privilege to be invited into the world of God’s glory.

But men are at war with glory. This is a war not of bullets and bombs. This is a war of priorities and values. The glory of God boldly asks us: What do you love the most?

A love for God is different from all other loves. There is no greater love that can captivate our hearts. We may struggle to stay faithful through the trials and temptations of life, but the overwhelming desire of our heart will be to return to God, and to find our comfort, our meaning, our purpose, our holiness, and our hope in him alone.

The powerful work of sin tries to move us to love God and to love our sin at the same time. Churches and pastors who teach the prosperity gospel embarrass those who are faithful to the Gospel of holiness by teaching that you can be full of pride and self-promotion, you can be greedy for more and more money, and you can live any way you want, and God will love and forgive it all, as long as you ask Jesus into your heart. For them, Christ never becomes more precious than gold; Christ is never sought above fame; and Christ is never more important that personal success. False glory leads to a false faith. And you can be sure: false faith always disappoints.

The glorious church will not be self-promoting. It will not promise material wealth to those who become members. It will seek to nurture faith, not use people. It will focus on the value of the gospel and the cost of discipleship, not the esteem of the individual and cheap grace.

Sin takes every aspiration of men and it uses them as competitors for God’s glory. Sin convinces whole generations to change the meaning of key ideas and themes within the Gospel, and they redefine terms like “salvation,” “new birth,” “sanctification,” “justification,” and the rest. But then it gives rights of entry to the church to those who believe very little of the content of the true Gospel. Sin would want to believe in Jesus, but deny his sinlessness. Sin would believe in Christ, but deny that he rose from the dead. Sin would invite us to trust in Jesus, but hold that there are many ways to God, and that Christ is only one valid option.

Or it can be very subtle. Sin can take faithful people and plant in their hearts the desire to become famous. It can take a pastor and make him into a rancher (meaning that he just herds the people, but doesn’t care for them individually). It can take success and inflate the soul so that the people become proud of their accomplishments for God even when they verbally and publicly ascribe all their success to God. But secretly they think they did it all themselves.

Personally, sin can take modest spiritual growth and turn it into a desire to control others, or to become hungry for praise or position. It can turn reading the Bible into a dreaded and exhausting discipline, rather than it being the means of joy and worship for a lifetime.

False glory must be guarded against, fought hard with, and it must be defeated. Every church will struggle with false glory, no matter how wonderful the worship, how uplifting the messages, how incredible the music. It makes every church worse. It robs God of his rightful glory and it exalts man too much. It must be defeated.

Day by day, hour by hour, we must keep central in our minds that God alone is the center of all we do. That nothing we do, nothing we can plan or create, no program or activity, no advertisement or campaign, can create success. The only success is that the Lord will add daily to our number those who would be saved.

The glorious church must pursue the glory of God in everything we do. We must be careful that God is the sole and exclusive focus; he is the cause for every blessing; and he alone is our reward.

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Jesus Christ, our hope.

“Again, 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 1:18). And there you see those precious and glorious objects, about which that hope that accompanies salvation is exercised.”

Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (1654), 278.

Jesus Christ, who sits at the Father’s right hand, is our Hope.

Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

Jesus Christ, our Hope.

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