Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor
and glorious gift, and man's highest honor, excellency, and happiness, whereby he is partaker of the divine nature and becomes a God-like creature? If God was so jealous for the glory of so small a gift, how much more for so high an endowment, this being that alone, of all other things, by which man becomes like God? If man takes the glory of it to himself, he thereby will be in the greatest danger of taking the glory to himself that is due to God, and of setting up himself as standing in competition with God, as vying with the Most High, and making himself a god and not a man. If not giving God the glory of that which is least honorable, provokes God's jealousy, much more must not giving God the glory of that which is infinitely the most honorable. It is allowed, the apostle insists upon it, that the primitive Christians should be sensible that the glory of their gifts belonged to God, and that they made not themselves to differ. But how small a matter is this, if they make themselves to differ in that, which the apostle says is so much more excellent than all gifts!
9. How much more careful has God shown himself, that men should not be proud of their virtue, than of any other gift! See Deu. 9:4; Luke 18:9, and innumerable other places. And the apostle plainly teaches us to ascribe to God the glory, not only of our redemption, but of our wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification; and that no flesh should glory in themselves in these things, 1 Cor. 1:29-31. Again, the apostle plainly directs that all that glory in their virtue should glory in the Lord, 2 Cor. 10:17. It is glorying in virtue and virtuous deeds he is there speaking of, and it is plain that the apostle uses the expression of glorying in the Lord, in such a sense, as to imply ascribing the glory of our virtue to God.