“The whole earth is full of His glory” Isaiah 6:3b.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace

The glory of God is His reputation. It is His stature in the eyes of His creation, His renown. To glorify Him is to esteem Him highly, to enhance His fame. Of course, apart from all that is made, God is perfect and has no need for anyone to glorify Him. He is perfectly glorified in Himself. That is what Jesus (the second person of the Trinity) referred to when He conversed with the Father (the first person of the Trinity):

“Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. (John 17:5)

If God were completely simple, then glory within Himself does not make sense. But because there is community within God, in a Trinitarian understanding (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), then glory is shared and given within God perfectly, and thoroughly enjoyed.

What Jesus said to His Father in John 17:5 literally means, “… the glory which I had with You before the cosmos existed.” God was already glorified before He made the universe. Yet, the universe, and in particular the “earth” (Isa. 6:3), do reflect His glory. While we may not know God’s entire reason for creating all things, we can at least know that He found great joy in doing so, for it became a mirror to Himself. The general tenor of Scripture seems to indicate that God brought the universe into existence for His own pleasure; it was not because He lacked something or was incomplete without creation. No, His creativity flowed out of His joy, not to increase His joy (which would be impossible since God is perfect in every way.)

In Genesis 1, after each of the six days of creation, the Lord proclaimed, “It was good,” with the last one doubling His joy at bringing humankind into existence: “It was very good.” He made everything for Himself, not for us! The Genesis passage does not say that humans saw it all and declared it to be good! Of course, we agree that creation is good, but it is more about God’s affirmation of goodness; it’s all about Him:

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. (Col 1:16)

We were not brought into existence so that we could enjoy life; God created us as an expression or outworking of His enjoying Himself. We are the secondary beneficiaries, not the primary.

God’s glory in what He made is a reflection of Himself in stepped-up gradation. The so-called natural world reveals God in certain general particulars:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20)

No one can claim ignorance for not seeing and acknowledging God by observing the physical world. To glorify God is to join with Him by acknowledging and esteeming Him for the reflection of His eternal power and divine nature. Nature is passive in showing His glory, but we are active in purposely proclaiming back to Him the glory we see.

In humanity, though, we see how much more wonderful God is, for He made us to be like a magnifying glass to focus on His image. We show His image by carrying out our daily lives of thinking, creating, willing, relating, and loving. Of course, we often come short of living out that purpose, and we call that sin. But even so, we reflect God to a greater degree than the natural world around us, for we show that He is a thinking, creating, willing, relating, and loving God. We exhibit His character when we express our gifts and abilities by living a life of grace and love in service of others. In so doing, we actively demonstrate what God is like. If we do good to our fellow human beings, we demonstrate that He is good; and He reiterates, as it were, “It is very good.” Permit me to use human terminology to make a point: after God created the universe in five days, on the sixth day, He outdid Himself when He made us in His image! As theologians put it, we humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation!

We must take the gradation one step further in talking about God’s glory, and that is seeing His glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. God is glorified most supremely by His grand entrance into the world. He had created all that is not-God, and all that is not-God exists to reflect His glory. He entered creation as a human being in the most significant event of history, namely the incarnation, when the Creator God infused Himself into a physical, created body in a way that has mesmerized theologians and Christian thinkers for the last two thousand years. As early as circa AD 63, the apostle Paul wrote:

By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (1 Tim. 3:16)

Though we may not fully understand this truth, we stand amazed by it! God has become one of us. Imagine an artist creating a self-portrait and then stepping directly into the portrait himself. God injected Himself literally and actually into the cosmos created to reflect Himself. Listen to the implication of this as written by the writer to the Hebrews:

And [Jesus] is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high … (Heb. 1:3 emphasis added)

This passage tells us two truths about Christ: 1) He is the radiance of God’s glory. Like we see the brilliance of the sun and the stars, Jesus is the luminosity of God. When the apostle Philip asked Jesus, “Show us the Father,” Jesus responded, “He who has seen Me, has seen the Father” (John 14:8-9). Jesus perfectly reflects the “radiance” of God. The apostle John, as another eye-witness of the life and ministry of Christ, summed up the incarnation this way:

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

In Christ, God shows His character as being centered on grace and truth.

So how do we keep this from being an esoteric meditation divorced from everyday life? What motivates us to glorify God in the first place? This can only come from knowing God. We can only know God when we see Him for who He is. And we can only see Him for who He is by moving past the sunsets, the starry night sky, and His power in hurricanes and earthquakes. We need to look further than His reflection of the good things our fellow human beings do. We must look to God’s perfect representation on earth, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ. And since we cannot physically see Christ and walk with Him on a human level as the apostles did, then how do we get to know Him? To know Christ, we study Him in the Bible, God’s Word.

The more we learn about Him, the more we will instinctively want to glorify Him, to praise and worship Him. And we will want to help others see how great He is, our goal increasing to enhance God’s reputation in our world.

Lord, I want to see Jesus so that my heart is drawn to Him and that through my life and testimony, others will also be drawn to Him in praise and worship for how great He is!