Season 1, Episode 7
Glorifying God
We all know that God wants to be glorified in and through us – but in my experience there is very little awareness among Christians of what that really means.
England, where I lived for many years, is dotted with church buildings – from tiny village churches to massive cathedrals – some of them dating back centuries, and most of them will have a foundation stone with an inscription beginning with: ‘To the Glory of God’.
Those five words, and their variations, are still common in our churches, our conversations and our worship, and you can feel pious just dropping them into a conversation. Many years ago, as a young Christian, I was often stirred by the old hymn that begins: ‘To God be the glory, great things He Has done, so loved He the world that He gave us His Son…’ The words and the music of that hymn combined to make it a rousing declaration of something I truly believed. Yet, even as I heartily sang it, was I really giving glory to God?
At the beginning of my previous episode, I focused on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and His anguished praying to His Father as He prepared for His imminent suffering and crucifixion. As ‘the Son of Man’ that prospect was as horrendous to Him as it would be to any one of us. Yet, as the Son of God who came into this world to lay down His life for us, the threat of the cross was no match for His overwhelming desire to glorify His Father.
Shortly before that night in Gethsemane, Jesus said to His disciples: “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Immediately, there came a voice from Heaven saying: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” God knew that He would be glorified by Jesus in the midst of everything that was about to take place: His suffering, His crucifixion, His resurrection … and then the miraculous birth of His Church.
God is always glorified whenever He is seen and known for who He really is … and that’s not something you can get your mind around, regardless of how vivid your imagination! Have you ever tried reading those parts of the Book of Daniel, or Ezekiel, or Revelation, where God’s presence and glory are graphically described? If you have, then what does your mind immediately do with them? It starts creating pictures! More than that, it also tries to interpret and enlarge on the vivid imagery those words conjure up. Your heart, though, simply wants to respond!
When it comes to Revelation – that last book of the Bible has, for centuries been the subject of a multitude of explanations, expositions, diagrams and charts. Yet, right there, at the end of Revelation we find a potent warning to anyone who attempts to add to or take away from “…the words of the prophecy of this book...”.
Everything that God reveals to us comes from His Spirit and is aimed at our spirits … that part of us that has been made alive by God’s Spirit. Everything that takes place between you and God begins right there – at the very depth of your being. Which means that everything God does in your life to transform you from a mere human being who does not know Him, into someone equipped to live for His glory – is the work of God's Spirit in and through you.
So, we need to talk about God’s desire to be glorified in your life. When Jesus came into this world, his outward appearance was no different to that of any other newborn baby … yet within that tiny human frame lying in a manger of animal feed, was the Word who was with God in the beginning ... through whom all things were made! This was no stylised nativity scene – it was a smelly stable made for animals. Yet that was the place and the manner in which the Eternal Son of God entered this world. Certainly, there were the angel choirs and the shepherds and the wise men, but for everyone else around them, life went on. There was nothing remarkable … nothing to see.
Likewise, for most of His 33 years on this earth, there was nothing outwardly remarkable about Jesus. The baby became a child, who became a teenager, who became an adult. Eventually, when He was 30, He became an itinerant preacher and began to be noticed. Then He began performing miracles … and a lot more people took notice! People began to respond – some loved Him, and some hated Him. Eventually they crucified Him – and that limp, human form, hanging on the cross seemed to be all that remained.
But then, Jesus was never meant to be humanly impressive in any way. Long before He came into this world, the prophet Isaiah had already introduced Him with these words: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him”. You had to be drawn to what was within Him. That humanly-unattractive man came into this world with just one purpose – to glorify God. And that’s exactly what He did. Not just at the end of His life, but throughout it.
As a follower of Jesus, you have the immense privilege of not only belonging to God … not only being born of His Spirit … not only experiencing Him … not only experiencing His great love for you. But above all these, you have the privilege of living for His glory, just as Jesus did. There is no higher calling than that!
Jesus was never intended to be a unique one-off – the Son of God who came into the world to do the works of God, to lay down His life for the sins of the world, to be resurrected and then return to Heaven. Yes, Jesus did accomplish all those things, but He also came as ‘the second Adam’ – the beginning of a whole new race of God’s people who would continue what He began. That’s why, after returning to His Father, He poured out the Holy Spirit upon those first 120 believers in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, creating the Church “which is his body, the fulness of him who fills everything in every way” – through which God would be glorified in this world … no just through one person, but through a whole body of people!
That body – the Church – is not an institution, not a religious system. It is a living, mystical body of people which is a true expression of God. ‘Mystical’ because the Church is a spiritual body, as unseen as the Son of God was when He came into this world as the Son of Man. Just as Jesus was God ‘clothed in flesh,’ so is His Church. You might see a bunch of people together claiming to be part of the Church. You might even see them worshiping. Maybe what you are seeing really is the Church. Maybe you’re not. But God alone knows those people on the inside, and whether or not He is being glorified in and through their lives.
You may recall that, in the Old Testament, when God instructed Moses to build the Tabernacle, He gave him strict specifications for every detail – both for the Tabernacle itself and also for the Ark of the Covenant that was the centrepiece of Holy Place within the Tabernacle. Whenever the Ark of the Covenant was to be transported – as it was during the 40 years the Israelites wandered around in the desert – God instructed that it must be carried on the shoulders of the priests. But they were not permitted to touch the Ark itself, so it had metal rings at each of its four corners, through which poles were passed, by which the Ark could then be carried on the shoulders of those priests.
With the Ark weighing around 340 kgs, why did God not instruct Moses to construct some sort of cart, for it? Because the Ark of the Covenant was the visible symbol of God's presence and glory in the midst of His people. As such, it had to be carried by the priests as an expression of His desire to be glorified in and through human flesh. Which brings us to the reason why Jesus came into the world as God incarnate or ‘God in human flesh’.
That has always been God’s desire since He made Adam in His own image and breathed His life into that human form. From that moment Adam became a living soul – the Crowning Glory of God’s Creation … the life of God in a man of flesh! And that’s how it would have remained forever if Adam and Eve had not disobeyed God. They were created, not to be mortal but to live forever.
From the time of Adam’s fall, God longed to once again be seen, known and glorified through humanity. He created us to glorify Him, and that continues to be His purpose for the entire human race. This is both our privilege and the very purpose for our existence. People talk about ‘the accident of birth’ – meaning how, why, when and where, you and I just ‘happened’ to be born. It makes a lot of sense and it’s not hard to see the rationale. Yet the truth is, your entry into this world was not just a case of ‘another baby was born and it happened to be you’. Believe it or not, God had a purpose in you being born into this world – and at the heart of that purpose is His desire to be glorified in and through your life. And that can only be fulfilled in the same way as God was glorified in and through the life of Jesus.
Jesus came for just one purpose – not because He had no choice, but because He had total choice and, as a man who was as human as you and me, He chose to glorify God. Having succeeded in that, He then left behind Him generation after generation of flesh-and-blood people who would glorify God as He did.
Those of us who, by our choice, belong to Him, know that one day we will see His glory in a way we can never see it in this life. But can we really live for Him within the human limitations of these mortal bodies that grow old and die, while contending with the difficulties and challenges of this world? How tempting it is to think that we do pretty well if we manage to somehow struggle through and hopefully come out the other end not having done too badly as Christians. Tempting, yes – but that is not your calling! It is not what you were created for – and it is certainly not why Jesus died for you!
Not only that, but it is certainly not what was in His heart for you when He responded to your desire to know Him! God responded to you so that, like Jesus, you would have the privilege of saying to Him from the depths of your heart: ‘Father, glorify your name. I want all of my life to be for your glory.’
The apostle Paul put it in the simplest of terms when he wrote this to the church at Corinth: “…whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” When God’s glory is the reason for our lives, even the most everyday things take on a whole new meaning.
As I share these things with you, I am also aware of something that is common among God’s people. It begins with us focusing on something to do with our relationship God – that stirs our hearts and challenges our humanity. Then, when we return to our everyday life, we begin to reduce it to something we can handle – justifying it with so-called rational excuses, such as: ‘you have to be sensible and not to be too idealistic’ or ‘you need to live in the real world and not go to extremes.’
Can you imagine Jesus doing that? ‘Yes, I have come to glorify my Father and to lay down my life for the world. But, of course, that's the best-case scenario, and I'll have to see how it all works out in practice. Though I will give it my best shot!’
In my own experience, many of God’s people end up having that sort of approach, even after being inspired and making all sort of promises and resolutions. Even worse, they then encourage one another along the same lines with an approach that says: ‘Let’s shoot for the moon but be happy if we hit the treetops.’
But the apostle Paul wrote: “I urge you to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God”. He did not say, ‘This is just a suggestion I’d like you to consider – but I don’t want to be demanding or put too much pressure on you!’ Paul placed definite expectations on those Christians that God had placed in his care.
The apostle John wrote: “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” They sure aren’t. They are a privilege! I mean, why would you want to live in any other way? How can any of us claim to be God's people, unless we abandon our lives to Him and live for Him and His glory?
There is nothing definitive about this. There is no prescription. There is no ‘how-to’. Yet if, from the depths of your heart, you want God to be glorified in your life – and if you abandon your life into His hands, giving up all your ‘rights’ in favour of doing only what God wants – He will be glorified in your life, and you will be a worthy brother or sister of Jesus, of those who love Him as you do, and of the many who have loved Him and lived for Him in years gone by.
Following on from the long list in Hebrews chapter 11 of those who did amazing things by faith – some of them having literally laid down their lives – there is a statement which directly applies their lives of faith to ours: “…since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
We have a race to run. We have a reason to go all the way with God. Others have lived, have died and have glorified God before us – and now we have the privilege of glorifying Him today as they did in the past!