Have you ever thought about God’s glory? It’s not a word we use often these days. We can recite it at the end of the Lord’s Prayer – “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” But do we ever stop to think about what glory is? Why it belongs to God alone?
I’ve been thinking about glory these past few weeks, and as often happens when I’m pondering something, my mind segues from one idea to another. I hope I can pull my thoughts into a few comments that make sense because God’s glory is so far above me. Above us all.
In the Old Testament, God showed His glory in several ways.
When He did something miraculous, He was displaying His glory.
When He created the universe, His glory was in super power mode, beyond our understanding.
When He allowed the people of Israel to glimpse Him, His glory appeared in either a cloud or fire.
But both the cloud and the fire were not approachable.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God could only show Him his back, and even then protected Moses in the cleft of a rock. Humanity cannot see God’s glory and live, no matter how close to Him we might be. In these earthly bodies, without the blood of Christ covering us, we would be consumed by the glory that is God’s alone.
Scripture says we fall short God’s glory because we are sinners. (Romans 3:23) Have you ever wondered what falling short of God’s glory really means?
If we tried to enter His presence in our sinful state, the fire of His brilliance would consume us. That is why the Bible calls God “a consuming fire.”
God said in the Old Testament (Isaiah 42:8) that He will not give His glory to another.
In Christ, however, we are heirs, and will one day share in His glory. There will be a day we will see it and share in it, but sharing in God’s glory comes with the cost of also sharing in Christ’s sufferings. (Romans 8:17)
We can’t share the glory without the suffering. But suffering cannot compare with separation or having the glory of God be that consuming fire to us. It’s not popular to say it, but this kind of consume means judgment and destruction, and whether we admit it or not, we don’t want this. Ever.
God’s Glory is so much more than we can envision. We think of the sun as bright, and it is. Get too much exposure to it and we’re going to get burned. Look straight at it for too long and we might become blind. Fly a spaceship too close and the sun would consume the ship. Nothing can live in the same space as fire.
Moses came back from his backside encounter with glory bearing a face so bright it frightened the people of Israel. He had to veil his face because even a glimpse, even being near the glory of God is too much for human eyes to see.
We cannot bear to look upon Him. And He cannot allow us to.
Even as a believer in Christ, I live in human flesh, and until I am given a new glorified body, I cannot view the glory of Christ as He truly is.
Jesus veiled, actually He laid aside His glory when He came to earth so that He could walk among us. It boggles my mind to realize that He did that for me! For you!
He put on human flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory – what He would reveal – and even then He only showed it to those there at the time through His miracles and His transfiguration on the mountain to His three closest disciples.
He laid aside His glory in order to die and take our sin upon Him, so that one day we can stand before His Father and not be consumed by the blazing glory.
I fear mere human words will never justly describe the glory of God. How can it?
We underestimate the consuming fire aspect of God because we want to focus only on His love.
But love is part of His glory. Perhaps love is what sets God ablaze in His magnificence.
Either way, His love will either set us free to love Him in return, or it will consume us because He can do nothing less. And He loves us too much to step in where He is not wanted.
We fall short of seeing God’s greatness when we are preoccupied with our own lives, and we miss the mark when we leave Him out. We risk passing up the greatest joy and future we could ever know when we do not see Him for who He is.
~Selah
#thegloryofgod #thineisthekingdomandthepowerandtheglory #gloryofgod #livegraceSeptember 18, 2018
