Glory

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.”

(Psalm 19:1–6 NIV)

Glory isn’t a mirage, but there are mirages, vainglories—lies. 

“For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”

2 Corinthians 11:14–15

There are little glories too. A grain of sand and a mountain are made from similar things, but trading one for the other implies both a fool and a con in the deal. Yet, even the tiny parts of creation show the overwhelming glory of God. Everything God gives, he gives freely of himself so that his nature might be displayed. And he warns us—

 

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”

Romans 1:25

What is glory?

Defining glory, as many have admitted, is impossible for us. But we can get pointed in a general direction. When the truth about God is made known or displayed, he is glorified, because, as it turns out, he is glorious, and there is nothing we can do about that. If you squeeze a wet sponge, water comes out. And when God does things, glory is revealed. When we understand what he has done and what he is doing, his glory is displayed because his nature is reflected in what he does. It’s like reading the ruling from a just judge. It is good. It is glorious to hear the truth ring out—”good is good, and evil is evil.” They are not the same. And when a just ruling is read, the judge is proven to be just in the ears of those who hear, and that is his glory.

We can wonder, “what is God really like? Who is he, really?” We can be wrong, and we can be right. But our imagination cannot change what he is. So then, imagine how terrible it would be if God were bad. There would be nothing we could do. Take courage, for though God is too big to measure, he has demonstrated his love for us, and that he is good.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

(Romans 5:6–8 NIV)

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8 ESV)

Does this glory matter? More than we can imagine. The actual word it comes from means weight. Great glory is great weight. Sometimes we say we have something weighty to talk about—something heavy. We mean we have something that matters. 

Another way we talk about this is with the word gravity. Does gravity matter? Desperately, and you must take it into account; it will not be ignored. 

God has gravity that is so powerful that ultimately everything will come into his orbit. Gravity is a powerful force. But glory is the gravity of the one who made gravity—and it results from his relentless goodness. 

“And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.””

(Exodus 33:19–20 NIV)

Why all this talk in such serious tones when we’re talking about something good like the glory of God? God isn’t partly anything; he isn’t lukewarm.  He’s so good, his goodness is terrifying. His goodness will destroy you. And that’s a problem for us and him, because he takes no pleasure in our destruction. So Jesus laid his glory aside and became a servant, offering himself up as a sacrifice for our sins. Think of that. He protected us from the weight or gravity of his glory, and he became a servant. And he taught us to do the same. He said, the one who is greatest is the servant of all. Make nothing of yourself, make much of God, and he will make much of you at the proper time. 

“The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

(Matthew 23:11–12 NIV)

Is glory the same as light? No. But sometimes glory is displayed as light. And certainly, light displays God’s glory. And it is written that God is light. His whole being is glorious.

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

(1 John 1:5 NIV)

The sun helps us understand the glory of God. The Sun is heavy, and we orbit around it. It shines so bright that we cannot look at it without harming our eyes. It nourishes us, and gives the whole earth energy. If we were to stand in its presence we would be burned up. Yet, it sustains us. We walk by its light, and by its light we see more of what God has made. And in seeing more of what God has made he is known more—all of this is God’s glory—a revealing of the truth about him.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

(James 1:17 NIV)

“I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.

And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.””

(Isaiah 6:1–3 NIV)

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

(Romans 1:20 NIV)

Could Jesus Have Sinned?

 “Could Jesus have sinned?” is not a new question. It is a question that typically arises from the scriptural realization that Jesus was genuinely human, and that Jesus was genuinely tempted, and as Hebrews says— 

“Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

(Hebrews 2:18 NIV)

And

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

(Hebrews 4:15–16 NIV)

There are a host of verses that express that Christ was sinless such as,

1John 3:5, 1Peter 2:22, Hebrews 9:14 …and there are many more.

But proponents of the idea that Christ could have sinned argue that if there was no possibility of him sinning, there was no genuine temptation and therefore his life does not accomplish what Hebrews 2:18 claims it accomplished. While this logical step is understandable, it assumes incorrect ideas about what sin is, and who Jesus is. It also probably makes incorrect assumptions about what temptation is. But once we correct the definition of sin and the identity of Jesus, the whole discussion disappears. 

I have worked on an article called, “Sin” that helps to move us off some wrong understandings of sin. It was not designed to be comprehensive but to help get us pointed in the right direction for understanding the heart of sin. In the process of writing that article, it became very apparent that, in order to correctly understand sin, a person needs to spend a lot of time in scripture. Simply quoting some laws or lists of rules will not help someone understand sin. There are verses that seem to equate sin with simple definitions, for example… 

“All wrongdoing is sin…,”

(1 John 5:17 NIV)

“Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”

(1 John 3:4 NIV)

And you will have heard someone say that sin is “missing the mark” or “falling short of the glory of God.” These are, of course, productive—helpful at putting an image together. But there is much more to the picture, and most of the picture is tied to the person of God himself because sin is really anything that is at odds with the heart of God.

Sin is a heart condition toward the heart of God. A sinner is an enemy of God. And God has demonstrated love for his enemies. 

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”

(Romans 5:10 NIV)

Once you begin to see that sin is a heart problem as Jesus described, you will begin to see the problem with the idea that Jesus could have sinned. 

“What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.””

(Matthew 15:11 NIV)

“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

(Luke 6:45 ESV)

We say, and it is well established, that Jesus claimed to be God. And to believe what he said is true is the first step to putting your trust in him. In other words, when we say someone is a Christian, we assume that they believe what Jesus said about himself—that he was and is God.

“Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

(John 8:58 ESV)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

(John 1:1–4 ESV)

Problems come when people consider that he set aside his glory and took on human limitations. And it is true that he did that.

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

(Philippians 2:6–8 NIV)

Someone might wonder, “if it’s true that God is the same today as he was yesterday, how can The Word have taken on human limitations as a man, if those limitations are not true about God? Think of it like this. I am Ryan. If you remove my arm, I’ll still be the same person. I will be missing an arm. But it is not my arm that makes me. I am a person with an arm, not an arm with a person. God is powerful, and he doesn’t change. But he is more than his power. 

When we read that God does not change, it is referring to his character, his heart—his person. It means that he was and is and always will be trustworthy. But it doesn’t mean that he’s static, that he doesn’t do anything. And it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t do new things. Jesus—The Word becoming flesh, was and is a new thing—God’s only begotten son. It is a person of the Godhead taking on human frailty, trusting God the Father to watch over him and guide him as he takes on human limitations. It’s like doing a trust-fall except incomparably bigger. 

““I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

(Malachi 3:6 NIV)

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

(Hebrews 13:8 NIV)

““Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

(Isaiah 43:18–19 NIV)

Okay, if you’re tracking so far, you should begin to see the problem melt away right here. It is God’s heart, specifically his person, that does not ever change. And the real issue with sin is that it is a heart problem. If God’s heart and trustworthiness are what never change about him, then sin was never on the table in Jesus. Of course, that begs the question, then what was Jesus tempted to do? 

“The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’””

(Matthew 4:3–4 NIV)

Jesus was tempted to turn the stones into bread. He was hungry. His body wanted to eat. He felt the forces of his weak human body and emotions. He knew it would taste good. He knew his body needed it. And this may ruffle a feather, but the real struggle here is that Jesus had the right to turn these stones into bread. As The Word for eternity past, he created these very stones—John1. He was even holding them together, Colossians 1:17. They were already his to do with them as he wished. So there was no question about sin here. He wasn’t tempted to sin. He was tempted to do something in his frail human flesh, that was at odds with his own heart of God—his flesh desired bread, his heart desired our salvation.

“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.””

(Matthew 16:21–23 NIV)

The question was not, “could Jesus have sinned?” because this is not a logical possibility, if we believe Jesus was who he said he was. If Jesus was God, and sin is ungodliness, it doesn’t work. Jesus could not be unJesus. 

But he did not have an obligation to save us. God did not need to save us to be God. 

Jesus freely set aside his own human desires to do something far beyond just not sinning. He willingly gave himself up, his rights as God, and set his glory aside, to become sin itself on the cross. His temptation was not to sin, his temptation was to leave us in our sin. And he did all of this to answer this question once and for all—

“Does this Only-Sinless-Holy-Powerful-God love us enough to, in the weakness of a man, take on the hell of our sin and save us into his own family forever?” And this is the answer he walked out every day of his life, leading him to death on a cross. The answer is, yes.

Holy God

Is God a snob?

When you hear the words, “God is Holy” what do you think of?  Maybe you think God is a snob, like he can’t be bothered to get dirty and meet us where we are? But snobs don’t send their beloved son to bear the hell of our sin. Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors who knew they needed healing, and he met them exactly where they were, and he did take the hell of their sin on the cross, being reduced to a cursed, dead corps—then bursting from the grave, he overcame the hell of their sin and ours, rising from the dead, defeating it, and offering to include us in resurrection, spiritual now, and physical later. 

Does all that cause problems with your view of holiness? It’s easy to make the mistake of separating the end result from the process that achieves it. Because the holiness of God is related to his sinlessness, it is easy to assume that the process of becoming holy is as clean as the result. But the process of God making us holy is not tidy because we are filthy. God has never needed what we need. He has always been sinless. But do not mistake his hatred of sin with hatred for you. When you love people, you also hate what destroys them. He hates your sin by the very fact that he loves you. 

Is God far away and impersonal?

Perhaps you think it means he’s far away from you, impersonal, detached? But read what David said in the psalms.

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.  

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.”

(Psalm 139:7–15 NIV11-GK)

For thousands of years people around the world have affirmed that this Psalm expresses the truth about God’s loving personal pursuit of us and our doubts and fears and struggles to understand. That may not be your experience so far, but consider something else that is written in Revelation.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

Revelation 3:20 NIV.

Being holy is not something that keeps God from pursuing us. But it is part of the reason he pursues us. He pursues us with a desire to bring us into his family and make us holy and eternally incorruptible like himself. Nothing that is unholy can survive His presence, so becoming holy is the only option that leads to life for us. 

Being called out of everything that passes away, into an eternal purpose and being joined to God himself—that is the context of God’s holiness and how it relates to us.

What does the word Holy mean? 

The word holy actually means “set apart.” But to understand holiness, like the holiness of God, we have to understand much more than just the idea of being different or separate. God is completely other than everything else in existence. And that means, while we can learn things about God from the things that are made, we can’t understand all of Him that way. In fact, understanding all of Him is something we will spend eternity working on.  And this otherness about God is very important to consider. 

For example, wood is different from hay, but they can be near each other—their being together doesn’t cause a problem. And we don’t need to think about hay when we’re using wood to build something. In fact, when you’re using wood, there’s very few reasons to think about hay—unless you’re building a barn. 

Fire, however, is different from both of them, but not in the way that hay is different from wood. Fire is different in such a way that the difference must be taken into account in almost every decision we make about wood and hay—like how and where we will store them, how we will use them, and what we will use them for, and how we will dispose of them when we’re done using them. There are all kinds of codes related to buildings and fire for this very reason. You can probably remember movies you’ve watched where a house is burning down—failure to properly navigate the relationship between wood and fire has catastrophic effects that have impacted our lives on a daily basis, as well as impacting our cultures and stories. 

God is different from everything else in some very important ways, and we must take him into account in everything we do. First, God is the creator of everything. But God Himself was not created. He calls Himself, The I Am—a phrase by which he means, he just is. He has no beginning and he has no end. That is different from everything else in existence, ever. You may have heard someone say that there was some kind of uncaused cause that started the universe. When Jesus calls himself, I Am, it’s another way of saying I Am the Uncaused Cause. 

God made mankind in his image—to display the truth about himself. Therefore, the very purpose of all of us includes being holy. And that is why sin leads to death—it is the denial of our purpose which brings us to an end. To sin is to do something that is incompatible with or contrary to the nature of God.

Is God a blood thirsty rage monster?

“And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the LORD. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the LORD had struck the people with a great blow. Then the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us?” So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the LORD. Come down and take it up to you.””

(1 Samuel 6:19–21 ESV)

Without really understanding the context, it is easy to come to a passage like this and think that perhaps God is a blood-thirsty rage monster who needs his pound of flesh in order to be satisfied. But this passage is pointing us to an unchangeable, eternal fact of reality. God is a certain way (he is holy) and he cannot change. We, with God’s power, can be transformed. If we are not transformed to be like him, we will not survive him. The very nature of his own self will ultimately destroy anything that is not also holy. But remember, with no limit to personal expense, this unchangeable holy God loves you enough to save you from that reality. But we must all accept that offer in faith.

““For  God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”

(John 3:16–19 ESV)

“This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

(Hebrews 12:27–29 ESV)

“How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

(Hebrews 10:29–31 ESV)

Sin

 Is sin simply a societal concept used to maintain a power differential? You know, like “rule” in “the golden rule”— “whoever has the gold makes the rules” (Hart, 1964). Maybe we could adapt it to say something like, “The Big Rule” as in, the Big Man makes the rule? Or just go straight to “might makes right?” 

I did not understand sin correctly for a long time. I always thought of it as a list of dos and don’ts. Do you understand sin?

Unfortunately, defining sin as a list from an all powerful God isn’t too far off of what has been taught in Sunday School. I’ve even heard someone, while teaching a Bible class, say, “at the end of the day we follow God’s rules because he’s big enough to make them stick.” Of course, all effective lies have a little truth in them to help them slide down. God is big enough to make the rules stick. But the lie is, “he has a list of rules.”

God doesn’t have a list, he has himself. The commandments are a short list about a few things that are true about God, and they help us tell the truth about God. But keeping that list is both impossible and in-adequate. Jesus says the entire law and all the prophets are summarized by the command to love God and love your neighbor. Does it still sound like a list? And Jesus says the law from Moses was pointing to himself and that he came to fulfill the law. It is also written about God, that he is Love.

Trying to bring clarity to sin by talking about love is challenging with all the misunderstanding of love in our culture. Let’s clarify something—eros is eros, and agape, agape, but only one fulfills the law. There is only one Christian love—Christ defined it in his death and embodied it in his life. It is forgiving, self sacrificing, life giving, enemy including, agape. While there is nothing admirable about eros, agape is rare, holy—divine.

Back to sin. Sin cannot be defined in a list anymore than God can be defined in a list. Sure, you can make a list of sins. But you won’t have defined sin. God cannot and does not change. That doesn’t mean he is static. It is referring to his character, his trustworthiness. And it means that, the way he is, must be taken into account. He calls himself the I Am. And there are things that are not compatible with him. In Hebrews he is called a consuming fire. In Genesis he says nobody can look at him and live. When people are confronted with his presence they are terrified. Sin is sometimes called ungodliness (that which is not like God). This definition helps us see the personal nature of sin. Sin is a personal offense against God because it is something we do that is not like him. You might think, “well opposites attract, nobody wants to marry themselves, right?” We will always be distinct people. God does not want to make us all the same. He loves variety, and he loves us. But that is not the problem I’m getting at. It has to do with being compatible. We must be made into something that will survive God’s presence if we are going to live with him for eternity. And if you think, well, then I’ll just be separated from him for eternity. Well that brings up another problem. He is life. And I hate to state the obvious, but you cannot live without life.

Think of sin like this. Sin is that which is incompatible with God. All people are incompatible with God because they all sin. But God loves people, and you, and he made a way for everyone to become compatible with him so that you could not only survive in his presence, but thrive beyond all imagination or thought. And doing this was very expensive for God. It cost him the very thing he loved the most.

He had to send his Son, Jesus, to enter into our story as a genuine man, live a very hard life, give himself up to death as a sacrifice in payment for our sin—meanwhile showing us what it means to do right and not sin. And if you look closely at Jesus' life, what you will see is that doing right means completely entrusting yourself to God, believing what he says, and submitting your life to him. Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

(John 6:38 ESV)

The definition of being a true Christian is someone who trusts Christ and therefore follows him in submission to God. Scriptures are clear that this isn’t something we are perfect at and the condition for this salvation is not for us to act perfectly without sin. The condition is this, that you believe Jesus, that you trust him. And if you actually trust him, you will follow him. And he will change you into a new creation that can and will be with God, alive for eternity. 

Understanding sin as incompatibility with God is very helpful in some ways. But this all gets a little sterile without actually talking about the ugliness of sin. If you look into examples of sin, almost all of them have to do with hurting other people or not helping them—lying, murder, cheating, abuse, etc. And the others have to do with not showing others what God is truly like. For example, God says not to worship another god besides Him. He says that for multiple reasons. He doesn’t need our worship. He desires our good and the good of others. We are made in his image. If we bow down to another god we are saying that God is not God, and that is a lie that could harm other people and ourselves. Our identity and purpose is wrapped up in God. If we deny him we deny our purpose and that is bad for us and for others. When you spend more time looking at examples of sins, it becomes very clear very quickly that God is good and we are not. The fact that God is good, is very good news.

—reh

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

(1 John 4:8 NIV11-GK)

“But you are the same, and your years will have no end.””

(Hebrews 1:12 ESV)

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

(Hebrews 13:8 ESV)

““For I the LORD do not change;”

(Malachi 3:6 ESV)

““Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.”

(Isaiah 58:6–9 NIV11-GK)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

(2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

(1 John 3:2 ESV)

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

(1 Corinthians 1:18 ESV)

“Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”

(Psalm 107:1 ESV)

“And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living…”

(Mark 12:26–27 ESV)