Once or twice a month I am privileged to teach the Bible at the local county jail. At times I will begin the session with the question, “Why are you here?”. Typically, the men attending will answer by reciting the various criminal offences that have made them “guests” of the county. Then I clarify the question; “why are you here in this world – what is the purpose of your existence – your ultimate reason for getting up every morning?” This usually elicits blank stares, confused looks and difficulties in articulating an answer. And I suspect that would be the response of most of mankind and unfortunately, even some who would identify themselves as Christians. I must admit to being guilty of this through all too much of my Christian life.
However, God clearly reveals in the scriptures the reason as to why we are here, the reason we and everything that exists other than God exist, and that is for His glory, that the perfections of God’s eternal being, His infinite beauty, goodness, wisdom, power and justice would be known, proclaimed, displayed and delighted in by men and women He would create in His image and likeness, to know, love and be loved by Him and one another (Isaiah 43:7).
The term glory in general, when used as a noun, refers to the brilliant radiance, the inherent beauty, excellence and splendor, the weightiness or immense value of an object, person or event that evokes in us joy and delight, and from us praise and honor, admiration and adoration.
When it is used as a verb, to glory in or glorify something or someone, it means to boast of, magnify or exalt in that in which we experience great pleasure and delight and/or we determine to be of ultimate value or importance to our happiness and wellbeing. God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 9:23-24 commands, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; 24 But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord.
God values above all else – finds His greatest joy, His greatest pleasure, His greatest satisfaction in His own glory (Isaiah 42:8). There is none happier, nor more fulfilled, nor more satisfied than God is in God, who existing in three divine persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirt, have existed in an eternal love relationship of unimaginable joy, pleasure and delight (2 Corinthians 13:14) (1 John 4:8). His creation of man in His image and likeness was out of the overflow of that love, wherein we would know our greatest joy, our greatest pleasure, our ultimate satisfaction and significance within our relationship with God, not as divine equals, but as beloved children (Jeremiah 31:3) (1 John 3:1).
When the Bible speaks of God’s glory, it is proclaiming that which makes Him infinitely worthy of being known intimately, trusted explicitly, obeyed perfectly and worshiped and adored exclusively as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy (Deuteronomy 6:4). And it is our glorious privilege and responsibility to proclaim the same when we speak of God, both in our words and deeds (1 Corinthians 10:31) (Psalm 145:4) (Exodus 20:7).
In Genesis 1:1-25, the eternal God, reveals that He designed and spoke into existence an expansive, spectacular universe displaying awesome wonders, and a world within that universe of great beauty and splendor that He filled with trees bearing delicious fruit, delightful plants, nutritious vegetation, amazing animals, birds, fish and insects, majestic mountains, great oceans and flowing rivers, all displaying the glory of His goodness, His beauty, wisdom and power, all created for man’s pleasure and delight (Psalm 19:1-6) (Psalm 104:1-35).
Beginning with Adam and Eve, God creates man in His image and likeness, an immortal spirit, endowered with His righteous nature and character, equipped with the capacity for thought, emotions, affections and volition, with the ability to communicate and act on the same. He clothes them with a physical body that would uniquely display in them and in each person that would proceed from them His beauty and magnificence, with five senses by which we would behold, experience and delight in all the wondrous things He placed in this world for us to freely enjoy, including one another (Psalm 8:4-9) This body would be capable of procreation, reproducing other image bearers to enjoy and be enjoyed by God, with God’s first command being for men and women, within marriage, to do so (Genesis 1:28) (Genesis 2:24).
Thus, God’s glory would be seen, displayed, proclaimed, enjoyed and delighted in by His image bearers who would live in His immediate presence, dependent upon His providential goodness and care, living under His kind and gracious rule and authority as rulers of His good and glorious natural creation, knowing only fullness of joy and ever increasing pleasures forevermore (Psalm 121:7-8) (Genesis 1:26-31) (Psalm 96:11-12) (Psalm 16:11).
Tragically, the glory of God, both in nature and in the totality of man’s being, has been severely marred and corrupted by sin; uglified if you will by mankind’s rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over our lives and our opposition to His wise and perfect order and design for human flourishing and our individual happiness in Him (Romans 3:23) (Psalm 2:1-3) (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
This “uglification” is both the natural consequence of sin (Genesis 3:7) and the result of God’s just judgement for sin, which is death – our being cut off from the glorious life with God for which we were created and made subject to His wrath – His hatred and hostility toward sin and those who engage in it (Romans 1:18-31).
As such, the peace and harmony – the Shalom that existed between God and man, man and man, and man and nature is broken, with God pronouncing a curse upon the earth wherein nothing is now the way it is supposed to be, most significantly our relationship with God and one another, and wherein all life that comes into the world suffers under this curse (Genesis 3:17-19) (Romans 8:22).
The Bible reveals that we all come into this world in a state of spiritual death, subject to the lies and deceptions of the “prince of the power of the air” – the devil, with hearts that are “deceitful and desperately wicked” and minds that are “debased”, hostile to God and His ways (Ephesians 2:1-3) (Jeremiah 17:9) (Romans 1:28).
Our bodies are now subject to physical death and all of its precursors – sickness and disease, personal violence and war, and various natural and technological calamities. And upon physical death, we face the “second death”, everlasting destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His goodness and grace in Hell, forsaken forever to the torments of our sin (Hebrews 9:17) (2 Thessalonians 1:9) (Revelation 21:8). And the Bible makes it clear that we are helpless in ourselves to do anything about it, nor do we truly desire to (Jeremiah 13:23) (John 15:5) (John 3:19).
It is revealed in Romans 5:12-18 that it was through one man, Adam, whom God had established as the federal head of the human race, that sin, death and God’s judgement of sin originated, with Adam joining the devil in his rebellion against God, and thus producing a race of beings that would do the same (John 8:44)
However, the great and glorious eternal God, who created us for His glory, planned “before the foundation of the world” that He would display His glory most prominently in the redemption of His sin corrupted creation, in reconciling men and women to Himself and restoring both man and nature back to the glory, the Shalom, in which we were created, and even better (Ephesians 1:3-6) (2 Peter 3:13) (1 Corinthians 2:9).
And God would accomplish this through one man, the man Jesus Christ, God the Son, the King of Glory, who through His sinless life of love and compassion, substitutionary death on the cross in payment for our sin and His miraculous resurrection as the first born of a new creation of mankind, would reveal the glory of God to man and restore the glory of God in man , bringing forth a new and glorious universe and earth (Romans 5:18-21) (Psalm 24:7-10) (John 1:14) (2 Corinthians 5:17-18) (Revelation 21:1-3).
It is the glory of Jesus, our redeemer, and His worthiness to be know intimately, loved supremely, trusted explicitly, obeyed perfectly and pursued passionately as our greatest joy that I hope to look more closely at in upcoming posts (Romans 3:24) (Psalm 43:4).
Grace and Peace ×
Note: I Will Glory in My Redeemer is the title of a song written and composed by Steve and Vicki Cook which you can listen to through this link I Will Glory in My Redeemer.