What is God's glory?

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 Paul’s use of glory is determined by two factors—the OT and the revelation of Christ to Paul on the Damascus road. The OT and Jewish traditions form the proper context for interpreting glory in Paul. The appearance of the resurrected and exalted Christ to Paul was the key for understanding Paul’s specific appropriation of glory language.

 In glory (doxa) Paul inherited a word already invested with meaning. The OT refers to God’s glory (kabod), His visible presence, in several different contexts: (1) the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai and in the tabernacle (Exod 24–40); (2) the regular celebration of God’s revelation of glory in creation and at the temple in Jerusalem; and (3) the promised revelation of God’s glory which will inaugurate the recreated kingdom of God (see Isa 40–66; Ezek 40–48).
 In particular the graphic description of God in Ezekiel 1:28 (and to a lesser extent Isa 6) exerted a powerful influence on the development of glory in the Jewish traditions.

 In line with this longstanding glory tradition, Paul closely connected, if not actually Identified, Christ as glory. Paul entitled Christ the “Lord of Glory” (1 Cor 2:8; see Eph 1:3, 17). The crucified, resurrected, and exalted Jesus reveals God’s glory (for example, see Eph 1:18; 3:16; Col 1:27). The gospel that Paul preached—a gospel that features the death, resurrection, and future coming of Jesus—is a “gospel of glory” (see 2 Cor 4:4; 1 Tim 1:11).

 Paul’s close connection of Jesus and glory is tantamount to claiming that Jesus was the special agent of God—that He is the Son of man, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Suffering Servant, or even God Himself. What was it that allowed Paul to make such a bold identification?

 The revelation of the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus road was the catalyst for Paul’s identification of Christ as glory. Like the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai, God revealed His glory to Paul in a special appearing (2 Cor 3:4–4:6). And like the call of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, Paul was commissioned by God’s glory (Gal 1:11–17).

Further, the revelation of God’s “glory” to Paul in the Damascus Road experience signals the inauguration of the promised new age of salvation and re-creation (see Acts 9:1–31; 1 Cor 15; Rom 8). In short, Christ’s appearance to Paul was a revelation of God’s end-of-time “glory” in the resurrected person of Jesus.

 Paul’s use of “glory” is not without importance for the followers of Christ. Believers share the future of Jesus and thus live in anticipation and hope of their transformation into “glory,” that is, resurrection life in the unmediated presence of God.

 To hear and believe the gospel is to possess the “hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:2). To be changed into the likeness of Christ is to be changed “into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor 3:18).

 Through Christ God calls the believer to His own “kingdom and glory” (1 Thess 2:12, 14), while through the “glory” of Christ, God furnishes the enabling power to live the life of a disciple (Col 1:11).

 The future sharing of Christ’s “glory” eclipses any suffering experienced in the earthly life (Rom 8:17–18; 2 Cor 4:16–17). The exchange of suffering for “glory” occurs at Christ’s second coming (see Phil 3:21; Col 3:4; 2 Thess 1:9; Titus 2:13). On that day believers, and creation itself, will experience the fullness of God’s glory in Christ.

Dockery, D. S. (Ed.). (1992). Holman Bible Handbook (p. 680). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.

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