… we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory… (1 Corinthians 2:7–8)

The glory of God cannot be understood apart from supernatural revelation. True, there are some things about God that we can know from the natural creation (Rom 1:20), but the specifics are not humanly discerned. We may see echoes of His glory in the actions of others, since we humans were created in His image, but that image is clouded by our earthiness, by our sin. The “fine print” of Scripture is where God’s glory comes into focus. Only with God’s help can we understand it. Why is that? Because His glory is that large, that extensive, that other-worldly. Yet when understood, God’s glory superimposes over all this world.

In the Upper Room the night before He died, the first thoughts in His prayer to the Father show what was preeminently on Jesus’ mind:

“Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You … Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” (John 17:1, 5)

He had temporarily set aside His glory, or as Paul says, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:7). He was assigned to be “a little while lower than the angels” (Heb 2:9), but now no longer. We can’t physically see Him now, but in order to seek God, we focus our attention on Jesus. While some may explain this is exercising our imagination, we insist that our imagination is guided by scriptural teaching. Hebrews 12:1 teaches us to “consider,” “fix our thoughts on” Jesus, “fixing our eyes on,” “looking to” Jesus. Why Jesus and not God the Father? Because Scripture says Jesus, the Son of God, is “the radiance of [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Heb 1:3). The Word of God teaches that if we want to really know God in His glory, we need to look to Jesus.

How exactly do we do this? By spending time reading what God says about Him in the Bible, meditating on what we learn, contemplating Christ’s glory on the cross, looking for Him working in our lives and talking with others about how great He is. Then will we begin to understand what Paul wrote:

But we all … beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18).

Lord, until I see You in heaven I will look for Your glory now in Christ Jesus.