SOLI DEO GLORIA

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The Holy Spirit opens our hearts to the Glory of God. What is God's glory, and how important is it? The glory of God is the holiness of God put on display. That is, it is the infinite worth of God made manifest. Notice how Isaiah shifts from "holy" to "glory":

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" (lsa. 6:3).

When the holiness of God fills the earth for people to see, it is called glory. The basic meaning of holy is "separated from the common." Thus, the holiness of God is His infinite "separation" from all that is common. God's uniqueness as the only God - His "Godness" - makes Him infinitely valuable, or holy. In speaking of God's glory, the Bible assumes that this infinite value has entered creation.

It has, as it were, shone. God's glory is the radiance of His holiness, the out-streaming of His infinite value. And when it streams out, it is seen as beautiful and great. It has both infinite quality and magnitude. Therefore, we can define God's glory as the beauty and greatness of His manifold perfections, because specific aspects of God's being are said to possess glory.

For example, we read of "the glory of his grace" (Eph. 1:6) and "the glory of is might" (2 Thess.1:9)

God Himself is glorious because He is the perfect unity of all His manifold and glorious perfections. But this definition must be qualified. The Bible also speaks of God's glory before it is revealed in creation.

For example, Jesus prays, "Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed" (John 17:5).

God's glory is the outward radiance of the intrinsic beauty and greatness of His manifold perfections. We must constantly remind ourselves that we are speaking of a glory that is ultimately beyond any comparison in creation."The glory of God" is how we designate the infinite beauty and the infinite greatness of the Person who was before anything else. This beauty and greatness exist without origin, without comparison, without analogy, without being judged by any external criterion. God's glory is the all-defining, absolutely original standard of greatness and beauty.

All created greatness and beauty come from it and point to it, but such things do not comprehensively or adequately reproduce it. "The glory of God" is a way to say that there is an objective, absolute reality to which all human wonder, awe, veneration, praise, honour, acclaim, and worship are pointing.

We were made to find our deepest pleasure in admiring the infinitely admirable-the glory of God. This glory is not the psychological projection of unsatisfied human longing onto reality. On the contrary, inconsolable human longing is evidence that we were made for God's glory.

 

HOW CENTRAL IS THE GLORY OF GOD?

The glory of God is the goal of all things (1 Cor. 10:31; Isa. 43:6-7). The great mission of the church, through the power of the Holy Spirit,t is to declare God's glory among the nations.

"Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!" (Ps. 96:1-3; Ezek. 39:21; Isa. 66:18-19).

Our ultimate hope is to see God's glory through the Holy Spirit.

"We rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Rom. 5:2).

God will "present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy" (Jude 24).

He will "make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory" (Rom. 9:23).

Jesus, in all His person and work, is the incarnation and ultimate revelation of the glory of God (John 17:24; Heb. 1:3). The book of James has an unusual sentence construction that links the word glory with the name of Jesus:

"My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality" (James 2:1).

In this verse, the words "Lord of glory" have alternate renditions. Some translations read, "Our glorious Lord." Still another possible translation reads, "Jesus Christ, who is the glory." B. B. Warfield, in his book The Lord of Glory, says that Jesus was the glory of God, the shekinah, while others say the shekinah is the Holy Spirit. 

According to the Old Testament, the shekinah was the visible manifestation of the invisible God through the Spirit. The shekinah was a radiant cloud or brilliant light within a cloud that signalled the immediate presence of God. For Jesus to be identified with the shekinah was to be equated with the presence of God Himself. But we see Jesus preincarnate in bodily form. But this more likely applies to the Spirit. 

In Jesus, we see the full manifestation of God's majesty. That the New Testament writers ascribed glory to Jesus was a clear indication of their confession of His full deity. Glory, in the sense it is used with reference to Jesus, is a divine attribute.

It is the glory of God that He refuses to share with any man. The angels sang "Glory to God" at Christ's birth. The heavenly elders give glory to God around His throne. Why don't you follow their example and give God glory today in every circumstance of your life?

  • John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
  • Psalm 104:31: "May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works."
  • Psalm 138:5: "Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord." 

Moreover, we will not only see God's glory, but we will also, in some sense, share in His glory.
"So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed" (1 Peter 5:1).

"Those whom he justified he also glorified" (Rom. 8:30).

 


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