The Glory of God

Throughout the Bible is one central theme that binds all other themes. Thousands of topics ranging from business to family life to personal holiness are all unified by one theme that can be found no matter what page of the Scripture that you may light upon. That theme is the glory and supremacy of God.

It becomes clear as we study and meditate on the Bible that the great causation of all things is God, and all things exist and have their being for His purpose. Romans 11:36 sums up this truth as well as any other- “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” God makes it clear throughout His Word that His motivation in all that He does is to bring Himself glory. God created man for His glory (Isaiah 43:6-7), God chose Israel for His glory (Isaiah 49:3), God chose His people for His glory (Ephesians 1:4-7), and God’s aim is to fill the whole earth with the knowledge of His glory (Habakkuk 2:14). In all things God works to show forth His glory and have it seen and enjoyed by His creation. For God, it is the most loving that He can do for us is to affect our hearts so that we might see and savor His glory, as it is the greatest and most delightful pleasure in the universe.

Despite the great emphasis that God gives in His Word to His glory, explicitly and implicitly, many people still read the Bible and almost totally miss it. The Bible becomes a book of what God can do for us instead of a book displaying His glory for us to see and enjoy, especially His glory that is displayed in His marvelous grace given to undeserving sinners. Instead, we have turned the Gospel into an escape from a less than ideal situation, and the cross into a show of the worth of man, that God would sacrifice His only Son to rescue us. If we are to preserve the glory of God in the Gospel, there needs to be a drastic overhaul in the way that we understand the Gospel, and in the way that God works in the Gospel to draw sinners to Himself. If we are to exalt and glorify God in our hearts, we must settle some things in our minds concerning the factual elements of what makes the Gospel good news and how it is worked out practically in our lives.
One of the greatest texts to show the glory of Christ and the necessity to see that glory in the Bible is found in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In these verses, Paul is clarifying the reason that he conducts His ministry in the way that He does- because salvation is the revelation of the glory of God, not simply of a mental assent to a list of facts or adherence to some sort of a moral standard. Paul gives in verse 3 a reason for why some respond negatively to the Gospel, because their eyes are blinded from seeing the glory of Christ. The wording Paul uses is similar to that he uses to describe the veil that is upon the hearts of the Jews when they read the Old Testament that keeps them from seeing Christ in the Old Testament. So Paul says that if people do not believe, it is because they cannot see. In verse 4 Paul says that Satan is doing his best to keep people from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. So it seems in this verse that Paul is trying to draw a connection between belief and the ability to see the glory of Christ. In Paul’s mind being able to see the glory of Christ has a causal tie with faith. So Paul in this verse precludes our thinking that faith is merely believing facts, but that faith grows out of seeing and delighting in glory.

Paul goes on to tell us how true faith is born. In verse 6, Paul begins by referencing God’s creation of light in the beginning. He speaks of the same God who commanded, “Let light shine out of darkness.” Using this analogy of God’s supernatural, creative work, Paul says that this same God has shined a light in our hearts to give us the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” So God, through His supernatural creative act of light, gives us knowledge of the glory of God. I see three main things that are implicit in this text:
1. This creative act of light is supernatural, and part of the sovereign working of God.
2. We are made to perceive this glory in beholding Jesus Christ with unveiled hearts that we might see in Him the beauty and glory of God.
3. In contrast with Satan’s attempt to blind people from seeing the glory of Christ with a result in unbelief, God creates this light for us to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and we are drawn irresistibly to faith in God. Nowhere in this text does Paul imply that we can truly behold the glory of God and turn away from it.

So in this text we see that the good news of the Gospel is that God transforms our hearts in the new birth so that we can perceive spiritual beauty and delight in it (1 Corinthians 2:10-16) as we could not when we were in our flesh. He has brought us to faith in Him by opening our eyes to see His self-authenticating glory and tasted in some measure by faith His goodness and His glory. So the Gospel is essentially God’s display of His glory in mercy for the good and delight of His people.