RMC # 37- The Importance of Glory

Sometimes the obvious is not so obvious to we humans. Or, at least not to this human.

My “understanding” and importance of glory really began when I read C.S. Lewis’ sermon called “The Weight of Glory” about a year ago. I thought that an odd title. It’s as if glory had a negative. As if glory weighs on men. That didn’t seem right. glory seemed more like an uplifting a goal of men and women.

Lewis said much about glory, but in the end, for me, it came down to a fairly simple thought:

“For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all of our lives will open at last.”

He goes on and discussed the divine accolade when we are before God and He says to you or me: “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

So to Lewis, and to my mind at that time, glory meant to be accepted by God… an altogether overwhelming thought for me. “I can only imagine…” to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite songs of the same title by Mercy Me.

I was then led by a wise man into another reading. It was a book written by John Piper which including the writing of Jonathan Edwards. The Piper book is called “God’s Passion for his Glory” and the complete version of Edwards writing was “The End for Which God Created the World”.

Yep, some more lightweight reading for the Durkster.

Piper writes of his discovery of the writings of Edwards who was a famous pastor and writer in the early days of the American colonies. He wrote this particular book in the 1760’s. Its importance is still felt today.

The book was written in an era I have little affinity for. To say it was difficult and unusual for a 21^st century reader was obvious from the get go even with Piper’s impassioned lead-in.

But in his writing Edwards would stack argument on top of argument saying over and over how glory was the virtually sole reason of God. His Glory.

I hung in there as a long as I could trying to figure out where all of this groundwork was leading to.

And to my astonishment it leads directly to Scripture: Old Testament and New Testament Scripture.

Over and over and over in scriptural examples, Edwards showed how important Glory was to God.

In legal terms Edwards was delivering a “preponderance of evidence” that God’s sole reason for helping His creatures (you and me) was for His Glory.

As I read these familiar scriptural passages in a new light I saw over and over again what Edwards was getting at, in his words:

“There are many reasons to think that God has in view, in an increasing communication of himself through eternity, is an increasing knowledge of God, to love him, and joy in him. And it is to be considered that the more those divine communications increase in the creature (you and me- my parentheses), the more it (us- my parentheses) becomes one with God; for so much more is it (us) is united to God in love, the heart is drawn nearer and nearer to God, and the union with him becomes more firm and close, and at the same time, the creature (you and me) becomes more and more conformed to God. The image is more and more perfect, and so the good that is in the creature (us) comes nearer and nearer to an identity with that which is in God. In the view therefore of God, who has a comprehensive prospect of the increasing union and conformity through eternity, it must be an infinitely strict and perfect nearness, conformity and oneness. For it will forever come nearer and nearer to the strictness and perfection of union which there is between the Father and the Son.”

The Glory of the Father is best realized when you and I become as close to Him as he is to his Son.

Then Edwards says:

“God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God’s glory.”

So the next time you read the Bible, look to see how many times the word “glory” is used. It is the clue to God we must not miss.

God Bless You to the Glory of God and His Son.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Glory, RMC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.