The Revelation of God's Glory

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.”

Exodus 33:18-19 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Finney takes Moses' request — "shew me thy glory" — as a striking sign that even someone who had already spoken with God face to face, and who had already received God's promise of His presence, did not consider this enough. Moses wanted something more than assurance about God; he wanted a clearer, more personal apprehension of God's actual character, because he sensed that the enormous task ahead of him could not be sustained on anything less. Finney reads God's answer — "I will make all my goodness pass before thee" — as identifying God's true glory not with His raw power or incommunicable attributes but with His moral character as a whole: mercy and justice, patience and righteous severity together, none of them left out. He is careful to note the limits built into the encounter as well; God shields Moses in the cleft of the rock because a mortal mind can bear only so much of this revelation at once, a detail Finney takes as a pattern for how God graciously measures every fresh revelation of himself to what a person is actually able to receive.

From this scene Finney draws a lesson about how believers today actually come to know God, insisting that a call from God to any task functions as an implicit promise that the knowledge and grace needed for that task will be supplied to those who ask. He warns against two common but opposite distortions that come from an unbalanced view of God: one class of Christians dwells so exclusively on mercy that they lose all sense of God's holiness and justice, drifting toward presumption, while another dwells so heavily on judgment that they can hardly pray in faith for the desperate cases around them, drifting toward a joyless legalism. Both errors, in Finney's account, come from the same root — a partial revelation mistaken for a complete one — and both are corrected the same way, by persistent, importunate prayer like Moses' own, refusing to be satisfied with what has already been learned about God and asking instead to know Him more fully as each new calling requires.

Main theological themes

• Knowing God is meant to be an ongoing, personal encounter, not a settled body of facts learned once and considered sufficient.
• God's true glory lies in His whole moral character — mercy and justice together — and a partial view of either distorts genuine piety.
• A calling from God carries with it an implicit promise of the grace and knowledge needed to fulfill it, if it is earnestly and persistently sought.

Key ideas

• Even Moses, already commissioned and assured of God's presence, still considered his knowledge of God insufficient for the task ahead and asked for more.
• God's glory, in His own answer to Moses, is located in His moral goodness — mercy, patience, justice, and holy severity together — not merely in raw power or majesty.
• Believers unbalanced toward only mercy drift into presumption; those unbalanced toward only judgment drift into joyless legalism; both stem from a partial revelation of God.
• A revelation of God is measured out according to what a person can actually bear, which is why fresh callings call for fresh, persistent prayer rather than reliance on past experience alone.

Important concepts

• Essential vs. declarative glory — Essential glory is whatever in God's own nature is inherently worthy of honor; declarative glory is the actual showing forth of that nature to a creature's understanding — what Moses was asking God to do for him.
• Sovereign grace — God's freedom to bestow mercy according to His own perfectly wise good pleasure rather than by any external compulsion — not arbitrary favoritism, but a wisdom answerable to no one but himself.
• Balanced piety — Spiritual maturity shaped by a full apprehension of God's character, holding mercy and justice together, in contrast to a lopsided devotion built on only one or the other.

Related Bible references

• 2 Corinthians 3:18
• John 17:3
• Philippians 3:10
• Isaiah 6:1-5
• Ephesians 1:17-19

Practical Christian application

• Following Moses' example, pray this week a specific, persistent prayer asking God to reveal more of Himself for a particular responsibility currently in front of you.
• Examine honestly whether your picture of God leans mostly on His mercy or mostly on His justice, and deliberately study a passage that emphasizes the side you tend to neglect.
• Before your next significant responsibility, claim God's call to it as an implicit pledge of the grace you will need, and ask for that grace boldly rather than assuming you must supply it yourself.

Questions for study