2: The Plan of God: The Basic Christian Orientation
2
THE PLAN OF GOD
The Basic Christian Orientation
IS THERE A PLAN?
People today feel lost and astray. Modern art, poetry, and novels, or five minutes’ conversation with any sensitive person will assure us of that. It may seem odd that this is so in an era when we have more control over the forces of nature than ever before. But it really is not. It is God’s judgment, which we have brought down on ourselves by trying to feel too much at home in this world.
For that is what we have done. We refuse to believe that one should live for something more than this present life. Even if we suspect the materialists are wrong in denying that God and another world exist, we have not allowed our belief to keep us from living on materialistic principles. We have treated this world as if it were the only home we shall ever possess and have concentrated exclusively on arranging it for our comfort. We thought we could build heaven on earth.
Now God has judged us for our impiety. During the past century we had two “hot” world wars and one “cold” one, the latter in some respects still continuing. We find ourselves today in the age of nuclear warfare, racism, tribalism, global racketeering, torture, terrorism, and all sorts of brainwashing. In such a world it is not possible to feel at home. It is a world that has disappointed us. We expected life to be friendly. Instead, it has mocked our hopes and left us disillusioned and frustrated. We thought we knew what to make of life. Now we are baffled as to whether anything can ever be made of it. We thought of ourselves as wise men. Now we find ourselves like benighted children, lost in the dark.
Sooner or later this was bound to happen. God’s world is never friendly to those who forget its Maker. The Buddhists, who link their atheism with a thorough pessimism about life, are to that extent correct. Without God, man loses his bearings in this world. He cannot find them again until he has found the One whose world it is. It is natural that nonbelievers feel their existence is pointless and miserable. We should not wonder when these bitter, frustrated souls turn to drugs and drink or when teenagers respond to the traumatic chaos around them by committing suicide. God made life, and God alone can tell us its meaning. If we are to make sense of life in this world, then, we must know about God. And if we want to know about God, we must turn to the Bible.
READ THE BIBLE
So let us read the Bible—if we can. But can we? Many of us have lost the ability. When we open our Bibles, we do so in a frame of mind that forms an insurmountable barrier to reading it at all. This may sound startling, but it is true. Let me explain.
When you read a book, you treat it as a unit. You look for the plot or the main thread of the argument and follow it through to the end. You let the author’s mind lead yours. Whether or not you allow yourself to “dip” before settling down to absorb the book, you know that you will not have understood it till you have read it from start to finish. If it is a book that you want to master, you set aside time for a careful, unhurried journey through it.
But when we come to Holy Scripture, our behavior is different. To start with, we are not in the habit of treating it as a book—a unit—at all; we approach it simply as a collection of separate stories and sayings. We take it for granted that these items represent either moral advice or comfort for those in trouble. So we read the Bible in small doses, a few verses at a time. We do not go through individual books, let alone the two Testaments, as a single whole. We browse through the rich old Jacobean periods of the King James Version or the informalities of the New Living Translation, waiting for something to strike us. When the words bring a soothing thought or a pleasant picture, we believe the Bible has done its job. We have come to view the Bible not as a book, but as a collection of beautiful and suggestive snippets, and it is as such that we use it. The result is that, in the ordinary sense of “read,” we never read the Bible at all. We take it for granted that we are handling Holy Writ in the truly religious way, but this use of it is in fact merely superstitious. It is, I grant, the way of natural religiosity. But it is not the way of true religion.
God does not intend Bible reading to function simply as a drug for fretful minds. The reading of Scripture is intended to awaken our minds, not to send them to sleep. God asks us to approach Scripture as his Word—a message addressed to rational creatures, people with minds, a message we cannot expect to understand without thinking about it. “Come now, and let us reason together,” said God to Judah through Isaiah (Isa. 1:18 KJV), and he says the same to us every time we take up his book. He has taught us to pray for divine enlightenment as we read. “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Ps. 119:18 KJV). This is a prayer for God to give us insight as we think about his Word. But we effectively prevent God from answering this prayer if after praying we blank out and stop thinking as we read.
God wants us to read the Bible as a book—a single story with a single theme. I am not forgetting that the Bible consists of many separate units (sixty-six to be exact) and that some of those units are themselves composites (such as the Psalter, which consists of 150 separate prayers and hymns). For all that, however, the Bible comes to us as the product of a single mind, the mind of God. It proves its unity over and over again by the amazing way it links together, one part throwing light on another part. So we should read it as a whole. And as we read, we are to ask: What is the plot of this book? What is its subject? What is it about? Unless we ask these questions, we will never see what it is saying to us about our lives.
When we reach this point, we shall find that God’s message to us is more drastic and at the same time more heartening than any that human religiosity could conceive.
THE MAIN THEME
What do we find when we read the Bible as a single, unified whole, with our minds alert to observe its real focus?
We find just this: The Bible is not primarily about man at all. Its subject is God. He (if the phrase may be allowed) is the chief actor in the drama, the hero of the story. The Bible is a factual survey of his work in this world—past, present, and future, with explanatory comments from prophets, psalmists, wise men, and apostles. Its main theme is not human salvation, but the work of God vindicating his purposes and glorifying himself in a sinful and disordered cosmos. He does this by establishing his kingdom and exalting his Son, by creating a people to worship and serve him, and ultimately by dismantling and reassembling this order of things, thereby rooting sin out of his world.
It is into this larger perspective that the Bible fits God’s work of saving men and women. It depicts God as more than a distant cosmic architect, or a ubiquitous heavenly uncle, or an impersonal life-force. God is more than any of the petty substitute deities that inhabit our twentieth-century minds. He is the living God, present and active everywhere, “glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders” (Exod. 15:11 KJV). He gives himself a name—Yahweh (Jehovah: see Exod. 3:14-15; 6:2-3), which, whether it be translated “I am that I am” or “I will be that I will be” (the Hebrew means both), is a proclamation of his self-existence and self-sufficiency, his omnipotence and his unbounded freedom.
This world is his, he made it, and he controls it. He works “all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11 KJV). His knowledge and dominion extend to the smallest things: “The very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:30). “The Lord reigns”—the psalmists make this unchangeable truth the starting point for their praises again and again (see Ps. 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1). Though hostile forces rage and chaos threatens, God is King. Therefore his people are safe.
Such is the God of the Bible. And the Bible’s dominant conviction about him, a conviction proclaimed from Genesis to Revelation, is that behind and beneath all the apparent confusion of this world lies his plan. That plan concerns the perfecting of a people and the restoring of a world through the mediating action of Jesus Christ. God governs human affairs with this end in view. Human history is a record of the outworking of his purposes. History is in truth his story.
The Bible details the stages in God’s plan. God visited Abraham, led him into Canaan, and entered into a covenant relationship with him and his descendants—“an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. . . . I will be their God” (Gen. 17:7ff.). He gave Abraham a son. He turned Abraham’s family into a nation and led them out of Egypt into a land of their own. Over the centuries he prepared them and the Gentile world for the coming of the Savior-King, “who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God” (1 Pet. 1:20ff. KJV).
At last, “when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4ff. KJV). The covenant promise to Abraham’s seed is now fulfilled to all who put faith in Christ: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29 NKJV).
The plan for this age is that this Gospel should be known throughout the world, and “a great multitude . . . of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” (Rev. 7:9 KJV) be brought to faith in Christ; after which, at Christ’s return, heaven and earth will in some unimaginable way be remade. Then, where “the throne of God and of the Lamb” is, there “his servants will serve him. They will see his face . . . and they will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:3-5).
This is the plan of God, says the Bible. It cannot be thwarted by human sin, because God made a way for human sin itself to be a part of the plan, and defiance of God’s revealed will is used by God for the furtherance of his will. Joseph’s brothers, for instance, sold him into Egypt. “You thought evil against me,” observed Joseph afterwards, “but God meant it for good . . . to save much people alive” (Gen. 50:20 KJV); “So it was not you that sent me hither, but God” (Gen. 45:8 KJV). The cross of Christ itself is the supreme illustration of this principle. “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” said Peter in his Pentecost sermon, “ye . . . by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23 KJV). At Calvary God overruled Israel’s sin, which he foresaw, as a means to the salvation of the world. Thus it appears that man’s lawlessness does not thwart God’s plan for his people’s redemption; rather, through the wisdom of omnipotence, it has become the means of fulfilling that plan.
ACCEPTING THE PLAN
This, then, is the God of the Bible—a God who reigns, who is master of events, and who works out through the stumbling service of his people and the impudence of his foes his eternal purpose for his world. Now we begin to see what the Bible has to say to our generation that feels so utterly lost and bedeviled in an inscrutably hostile order of events. There is a plan, says the Bible. There is sense in circumstances, but you have missed it.
Turn to Christ. Seek God. Give yourself to the fulfillment of his plan, and you will have found the elusive key to living. “Whoever follows me,” Christ promises, “will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). You will have a motive: God’s glory. You will have a rule: God’s law. You will have a friend in life and death: God’s Son. You will have found the answer to the doubting and despair triggered by the apparent meaninglessness, even malice, of circumstances: You will know that “the Lord reigns,” and that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). And you will have peace.
The alternative? We may defy and reject God’s plan, but we cannot escape it. For one element in his plan is the judgment of sin. Those who reject the gospel offer of life through Christ bring upon themselves a dark eternity. Those who choose to be without God shall have what they choose: God respects our choice. This also is part of the plan. God’s will is done no less in the condemnation of unbelievers than in the salvation of those who put faith in the Lord Jesus.
Such are the outlines of God’s plan, the central message about God that the Bible brings us. Its exhortation to us is that of Eliphaz to Job: “Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you” (Job 22:21 NKJV). Since we know that “the Lord reigns,” working out his plan for his world without hindrance, we can begin to appreciate both the wisdom of this advice and the glory that lies hidden in this promise.
“ALL THINGS FOR GOOD”?
“The Lord reigns.” This, we now see, is the first fundamental truth we must face. The Creator is King in his universe. God “works all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11 KJV). The decisive factor in world history, the purpose that controls it and the key that interprets it, is God’s eternal plan. The sovereign lordship of God is the basis of the biblical message and the foundation fact of Christian faith, and we have noted that on it is built the great assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” If this is so, it is marvelously good news.
But can this assurance stand? The claim it makes raises problems for sensitive and thoughtful souls at many points. It does not admit of rational demonstration, and circumstances on occasion prompt painful doubts. Some of the things that happen to Christians in particular hurt and bewilder us. How can these misfortunes, these frustrations, these apparent setbacks to God’s cause, be any part of his will? In response to these things, we find ourselves inclined to deny either the reality of God’s government or the perfect goodness of the God who governs. To draw either conclusion would be easy—but it would also be false. When we are tempted to do this, we should stop and ask ourselves certain questions.
THE SECRET THINGS
Ought we to be surprised when we find ourselves baffled by what God is doing? No! We must not forget who we are. We are not gods; we are creatures, and no more than creatures. As creatures, we have no right or reason to expect that at every point we shall be able to comprehend the wisdom of our Creator. He himself has reminded us: “My thoughts are not your thoughts. . . . As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are . . . my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9 NKJV). Furthermore, the King has made it clear to us that it is not his pleasure to disclose all the details of his policy to his human subjects. As Moses declared when he had finished expounding to Israel what God had revealed of his will for them: “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us . . . that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29 KJV).
The principle illustrated here is that God has disclosed his mind and will, so far as we need to know them for practical purposes, and we are to take what he has disclosed as a complete and adequate rule for our faith and life. But there still remain “secret things” that he has not made known and that, in this life at least, he does not intend us to discover. And the reasons behind God’s providential dealings sometimes fall into this category.
Job’s case illustrates this. Job was never told about the challenge God met by allowing Satan to plague his servant. All Job knew was that the omnipotent God was morally perfect and that it would be blasphemously false to deny his goodness under any circumstances. He refused to “curse God” even when his livelihood, his children, and his health had been taken from him (Job 2:9-10). Fundamentally he maintained this refusal to the end, though the well-meant platitudes that his smug friends churned out at him drove him almost crazy and at times forced out of him wild words about God (for which he later repented). Though not without struggle, Job held fast his integrity throughout the time of testing and maintained his confidence in God’s goodness.
Job’s confidence was vindicated. For when the time of testing ended, after God had come to Job in mercy to renew his humility (40:1-5; 42:1-6) and Job had obediently prayed for his three maddening friends, “the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” (42:10 KJV). “You have heard of the perseverance of Job,” writes James, “and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11 NKJV). Did the bewildering series of catastrophes that overtook Job mean that God had abdicated his throne or abandoned his servant? Not at all, as Job proved by experience. But the reason God had plunged him into darkness was never revealed to him. Now may not God, for wise purposes of his own, treat others of his followers as he treated Job?
But there is more to be said than that. There is a second question to ask.
Has God left us entirely in the dark as to what he is doing in his providential government of the world? No! He has given us full information as to the central purpose that he is executing and a positive rationale for the trying experiences of Christians.
What is God doing? He is “bringing many sons unto glory” (Heb. 2:10 KJV). He is saving a great company of sinners. He has been engaged in this task since history began. He spent many centuries preparing a people and a setting of world history for the coming of his Son. Then he sent his Son into the world in order that there might be a Gospel, and now he sends his Gospel through the world in order that there may be a church. He has exalted his Son to the throne of the universe, and Christ from his throne now invites sinners to himself, keeps them, leads them, and finally brings them to be with him in his glory.
God is saving men and women through his Son. First he justifies and adopts them into his family for Christ’s sake as soon as they believe, and thus restores the relationship between them and himself that sin had broken. Then, within that restored relationship, God continually works in and upon them to renew them in the image of Christ, so that the family likeness (if the phrase may be allowed) shall appear in them more and more. It is this renewal of ourselves, progressive here and to be perfected hereafter, that Paul identifies with the “good” for which “all things work together . . . to them that love God . . . the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28 KJV). God’s purpose, as Paul explains, is that those whom God has chosen and in love has called to himself should “be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he [the Son] might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:28-29). All God’s ordering of circumstances, Paul tells us, is designed for the fulfillment of this purpose. The “good” for which all things work is not the immediate ease and comfort of God’s children (as is, one fears, too often supposed), but their ultimate holiness and conformity to the likeness of Christ.
Does this help us to understand how adverse circumstances may find a place in God’s plan for his people? Certainly! It throws a flood of light upon the problem, as the writer to the Hebrews demonstrates. To Christians who had grown disheartened and apathetic under the pressure of constant hardship and victimization, we find him writing: “Have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons?— ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished [better, reproved, RV] by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . We have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? . . . He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:5-11 RSV, quoting Prov. 3:11-12, emphasis added).
It is striking to see how this writer, like Paul, equates the Christian’s “good,” not with ease and quiet, but with sanctification. The passage is so plain that it needs no comment, only frequent rereading whenever we find it hard to believe that the rough handling that circumstances (or our fellow Christians) are giving us can possibly be God’s will.
THE PURPOSE OF IT ALL
However, there is still more to be said. A third question we should ask ourselves is: What is God’s ultimate end in his dealings with his children? Is it simply their happiness, or is it something more? The Bible indicates that it is the glory of God himself.
God’s end in all his acts is ultimately himself. There is nothing morally dubious about this. If we say that man can have no higher end than the glory of God, how can we say anything different about God himself? The idea that it is somehow unworthy to represent God as aiming at his own glory in all that he does reflects a failure to remember that God and man are not on the same level. It shows lack of realization that, while sinful man makes his own well-being his ultimate end at the expense of his fellow creatures, our gracious God has determined to glorify himself by blessing his people. His end in redeeming man, we are told, is “the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). He wills to display his resources of mercy (the “riches” of his grace and of his glory—“glory” being the sum of his attributes and powers as he reveals them: Eph. 2:17; 3:16) in bringing his saints to their ultimate happiness in the enjoyment of himself.
But how does this truth, that God seeks his own glory in all his dealings with us, bear on the problem of providence? In this way: It gives us insight into the way in which God saves us, suggesting to us the reason why he does not take us to heaven the moment we believe. We now see that he leaves us in a world of sin to be tried, tested, belabored by troubles that threaten to crush us—in order that we may glorify him by our patience under suffering and in order that he may display the riches of his grace and call forth new praises from us as he constantly upholds and delivers us. Psalm 107 is a majestic declaration of this truth.
Is it a hard saying? Not to those who have learned that their chief end in this world is to “glorify God and [in doing so] to enjoy him forever.” The heart of true religion is to glorify God by patient endurance and to praise him for his gracious deliverances. It is to live one’s life through smooth and rough places alike in sustained obedience and thanksgiving for mercy received. It is to seek and find one’s deepest joy, not in spiritual lotus-eating, but in discovering through each successive storm and conflict the mighty adequacy of Christ to save. It is the sure knowledge that God’s way is best, both for our own welfare and for his glory. No problems of providence will shake the faith of the one who has truly learned this.
THE GLORY OF GOD
The crucial fact we need to grasp, then, is that God the Creator rules his world for his own glory. “To him are all things” (Rom. 11:36); he himself is the end of all his works. He does not exist for our sake, but we for his. It is the nature and prerogative of God to please himself, and his revealed good pleasure is to make himself great in our eyes. “Be still,” he says to us, “and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10 KJV). God’s overriding goal is to glorify himself.
Or is it? Because the claim is so crucial and is so often found offensive and dismissed, I want now to sharpen the focus on it and spell it out more fully. Once this concept is clear in our minds beyond any shadow of doubt, everything else in Christianity will fall into place and make sense. However, as long as we are uncertain about it, the rest of the biblical faith will set us constant problems. Look again, then, at the thing that is being said here about the Maker of us all.
Its reasonableness. That God aims always to glorify himself is an assertion we at first find hard to believe. Our immediate reaction is an uncomfortable feeling that such an idea is unworthy of God, that self-concern of any sort is incompatible with moral perfection and in particular with God’s nature as love. Many sensitive and morally cultured people are shocked by the thought that God’s ultimate end is his own glory, and they strongly oppose such a concept. To them, it depicts God as essentially no different from an evil man or even the devil himself! To them it is an immoral and outrageous doctrine, and if the Bible teaches it, so much the worse for the Bible! They often draw this conclusion explicitly with regard to the Old Testament. A volume, they say, that depicts God so persistently as a “jealous” Being, concerned first and foremost about his “honor,” cannot be regarded as divine truth. God is not like that. It is blasphemy, real even if unintentional, to think that he is! Since these convictions are widely and strongly held, it is important to consider what validity, if any, they have.
We begin by asking: Why are these convictions asserted with so much heat? On other theological matters people can disagree calmly enough. But protests against the doctrine that God’s chief end is his glory are made with passion and often angry rhetoric. The answer is not difficult to see, and it does credit to the moral earnestness of the speakers. These people are sensitive to the sinfulness of continual self-seeking. They know that the desire to gratify self is at the root of moral weaknesses and shortcomings. They are themselves trying as best they can to face and fight this desire. Hence they conclude that for God to be self-centered would be equally wrong. The vehemence with which they reject the idea that the holy God would exalt himself reflects their acute sense of the guiltiness of human self-absorption.
Is their conclusion valid? We repeat: It is in fact a complete mistake. If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to have the same goal? If man can have no higher purpose than God’s glory, how can God? If it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, it would be wrong for God, too. The reason it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if he were God, is because he is not God. However, it cannot be wrong for God to seek his own glory, simply because he is God. Those who insist that God should not seek his glory in all things are really asking that he cease to be God. And there is no greater blasphemy than to will that.
If the objectors’ line of reasoning is so clearly false, why do so many today believe it? The plausibility of the argument derives from our habit of making God in our image and thinking of him as if he and we stood on the same level. In other words, his obligations to us and ours to him correspond—as if he were bound to serve us and further our well-being with the same selflessness with which we are obligated to serve him. This is, in effect, to think of God as if he were a man, albeit a great one. If this way of thinking were right, then for God to seek his own glory in everything would indeed make him comparable to the worst of men and to Satan himself.
But our Maker is not a man, not even an omnipotent superman, and this way of thinking of him is gross idolatry. (You do not have to make a graven image picturing God as a man to be an idolater; a false mental image is all that is needed to break the Second Commandment.) We must not imagine, then, that the obligations that bind us creatures to him, bind him as Creator equally to us. Dependence is a one-way relationship and carries with it one-way obligations. Children, for instance, ought to obey their parents—not vice versa! Our dependence upon our Creator binds us to seek his glory without committing him to seek ours. For us to glorify him is a duty; for him to bless us is grace. The only thing that God is bound to do is the very thing that he requires of us—to glorify himself.
We conclude, then, that it is the reverse of blasphemy to speak of God as self-centered; on the contrary, not to do so would be irreligious. It is the glory of God to make all things for himself and to use them as a means for his exaltation. The clearheaded Christian will insist on this. He also will insist that it is the glory of man that he is privileged to function as a means to this end. There can be no greater glory for man than to glorify God. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God”—and it is in so doing that man finds true dignity for himself.
The humanist, who believes man is at his noblest and most godlike when he has thrown off the shackles of religion, will say that we rob human life of all real worth by asserting that man is no more than a means to God’s glory. The truth, however, is the opposite. Life without God has no real worth; it is a mere monstrosity. When we say that human beings are no more than a means to God’s glory, we also say that they are no less than that—thus showing how life can have meaning and value. The only person in this world who enjoys complete contentment is the person who knows that the only worthwhile and satisfying life is to be a means, however humble, to God’s chief end— his own glory and praise. The way to be truly happy is by being truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly.
Its meaning. But what does it mean to say that God’s chief end is his glory? To many of us the phrase “the glory of God” is rather empty. What significance does Scripture give it?
In the Old Testament the word translated “glory” originally expressed the idea of weight. Glory came to be applied to any characteristic of a person that makes him “weighty” in other people’s eyes and prompts them to honor and respect him. Jacob’s gains and Joseph’s wealth are called “glory” (Gen. 31:1; 45:13). Then the word was extended to mean honor and respect itself.
Accordingly, the Bible uses glory with reference to God in a double connection. On the one hand, it speaks of the glory that belongs to God—the divine splendor and majesty attached to all God’s revelations of himself. On the other hand, it speaks of glory that is given to God—the honor and blessing, praise and worship that God has a right to receive, the only fit response to his holy presence. Ezekiel 43:2ff. reflects the link here: “The glory of the God of Israel came . . . and I fell upon my face.” The term glory thus connects the thoughts of God’s praiseworthiness—the majesty of his power and presence—and of the worship that is the right response when God stands before us and we before him.
Take these two thoughts separately for a moment.
In revelation God shows us his glory. Glory means deity in manifestation. Creation reveals him. “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). “The whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3). In Bible times God disclosed his presence by means of theophanies, which were termed his “glory” (the shining cloud in the tabernacle and temple, Exod. 40:34, 1 Kings 8:10ff.; Ezekiel’s vision of the throne and the wheels, Ezek. 1:28; etc.). Believers now behold his glory fully and finally displayed “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Wherever we see God in action, there we see his glory. He presents himself before us as holy and adorable, summoning us to bow down and worship.
We give God glory. We do this by all our responses to his revelation of grace:
1. By worship and praise. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me” (Ps. 50:23 KJV); “Give to the LORD the glory due His name” (Ps. 96:8 NKJV); “Glorify God for his mercy” (Rom. 15:9 KJV).
2. By believing his word. “Thy word is true” (Ps. 119:160 KJV); “Thy words are true” (2 Sam. 7:28 RSV).
3. By trusting his promises (that was how Abraham gave glory to God, Rom. 4:20ff.).
4. By confessing Christ as Lord, “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11).
5. By obeying God’s law. “The fruits of righteousness” are to “the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:11).
6. By bowing to his just condemnation of our sins (so Achan gave God glory, Josh. 7:19ff.).
7. By seeking to make him great (which means making self small) in our daily lives.
Now we can see the meaning of the statement that God’s chief end is his glory. It means that his unchanging purpose is to display to his rational creatures the glory of his wisdom, power, truth, justice, and love so that they come to know him and, knowing him, to give him glory for all eternity by love and loyalty, worship and praise, trust and obedience. The kind of fellowship that he intends to create between us and him is a relationship in which he gives of his fullest riches, and we give of our heartiest thanks—both to the highest degree. When he declares himself to be a “jealous” God and proclaims: “My glory will I not give to another” (Isa. 42:8 KJV; 48:11), his concern is to safeguard the purity and richness of this relationship. Such is the goal of God.
All God’s works are a means to this end. The only answer that the Bible gives to questions that begin: “Why did God . . . ?” is: “For his own glory.” It was for this that God decreed to create and for this he willed to permit sin. He could have kept man from transgression. He could have barred Satan from the garden or confirmed Adam so that he became incapable of sinning (as he will do to the redeemed in heaven). But he did not. Why? For his own glory. It is often said that nothing in God is so glorious as his redeeming love—the mercy that wins back transgressors through the bloodshed of God’s own Son. But there would be no revelation of redeeming love had sin not been permitted first.
Again, why did God choose to redeem? He need not have done so. He was not bound to take action to save us. His love for sinners, his resolve to give his Son for them, was a free choice that he did not have to make. Why did he choose to love and redeem the unlovely? The Bible tells us: “To the praise of the glory of his grace . . . to the praise of his glory . . .” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14 KJV).
We see the same purpose determining point after point in the plan of salvation. Some he elects to life; others he leaves under merited judgment, “choosing to show his wrath and make his power known . . . to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy . . .” (Rom. 9:22ff.). He chooses to make up the bulk of his church from the riff-raff of the world—persons who are “foolish . . . weak . . . base . . . despised.” Why? “That no flesh should glory in His presence. . . . that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD’” (1 Cor. 1:29-31 NKJV). Why does God not root indwelling sin out of his saints in the first moment of their Christian life, as he will do the moment they die? Why, instead, does he carry on their sanctification with a painful slowness so that all their lives they are troubled by sin and never reach the perfection they desire? Why is it his custom to give them a hard passage through this world?
The answer is again that he does all this for his glory—to expose to us our own weakness and impotence so that we may learn to depend upon his grace and the limitless resources of his saving power. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” wrote Paul, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Cor. 4:7 KJV). Once for all, let us rid our minds of the idea that things are as they are because God cannot help it. God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11 KJV), and all things are as they are because God has chosen that they should be, and the reason for his choice in every case is his glory.
THE GODLY MAN
Let us now define what godliness is. We can say at once that it is not simply a matter of externals but a matter of the heart; and it is not a natural growth, but a supernatural gift; and it is found only in those who have admitted their sin, who have sought and found Christ, who have been born again, who have repented. But this is only to circumscribe and locate godliness. Our question is: What essentially is godliness? Here is the answer: It is the quality of life that exists in those who seek to glorify God.
The godly person does not object to the thought that one’s highest vocation is to be a means to God’s glory. Rather, he or she finds it a source of great satisfaction and contentment. His ambition is to follow the great formula in which Paul summed up the practice of Christianity—“glorify God in your body. . . . Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 6:20 KJV; 10:31). The dearest wish of the godly is to exalt God with all that they are, in all that they do. They follow in the footsteps of Jesus their Lord, who affirmed to his Father at the end of his life here: “I have glorified thee on the earth” (John 17:4 KJV), and who told the Jews: “I honor my Father . . . I seek not mine own glory” (John 8:49ff. KJV). They think of themselves in the manner of George Whitefield the evangelist, who said: “Let the name of Whitefield perish, so long as God is glorified.”
Like God himself, the godly are supremely jealous that God, and only God, should be honored. This jealousy is a part of the image of God in which they have been renewed. There is now a doxology written on their hearts, and they are never so truly themselves as when they are praising God for the glorious things that God has already done and pleading with him to glorify himself yet further. We may say that it is by their prayers that they are known—to God, if not to men. “What a man is alone on his knees before God,” said Robert Murray M’Cheyne, “that he is, and no more.”
In this case, however, we should say, “and no less.” For secret prayer is the veritable mainspring of the godly person’s life. When we speak of prayer, we are not referring to the prim, proper, stereotyped, self-regarding formalities that sometimes pass for the real thing. The godly do not play at prayer. Their hearts are in it. Prayer to them is their chief work. Their prayer is consistently the expression of their strongest and most constant desire—“Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. . . . Father, glorify thy name. . . . Hallowed be thy name” (Ps. 21:13; Ps. 57:5; John 12:28; Matt. 6:9 KJV). By this God knows his saints, and by this we may know ourselves.