Glorifying God In All That You Do
Meditating on 1 Corinthians 10:31
1 Corinthians 10:31 says “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
This is not some idealistic saying from Paul, but instead it is an imperative; this is Paul giving an authoritative command for Christians to live a life that glorifies God and not themselves.
“Ones whole life must be to the glory of God, not merely the part which is involved in the acknowledgement of God’s prior ownership of all things through thanksgiving… Certainly Paul intends this “rule” dictate the appropriateness of behavior as well. What is not, or cannot be, for the glory of the one and only God probably should be excluded from ‘whatever you do.’” — ESV Study Bible
So our entire lives need to be lived in a way that glorifies God; not only with our worship on Sunday, but also in how we work, how our marriage is defined, how we parent our children, and how we eat and drink. We should, as Spurgeon has said, be able to “smoke a cigar to the glory of God.”
But how exactly does a Christian glorify God in everything? This verse sounds great, but is it possible to do everything to the glory of God? The short answer is yes, we can do all things as Christians to the glory of God. However, we are sinners — so we are going to fail — but we do have the potential to honor and glorify God in all things.
To begin living out this verse in all areas of life a Christian needs to understand what Paul means when he says “God”, what worldview is dictating our living, and what worldview should be dictating our lives.
God
This may seem obvious, but Paul is not talking about some deistic entity when he refers to God. Paul is talking about the holy triune God of the Bible. The only true God; the one who has spoken to His creation and has showed us how to live. This God is one God, but made up of three persons; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible and controls all things. Nothing is above Him.
“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6–7 ESV)
Why go over the obvious? If we do not have an understanding of who God is then I think that hinders our desire to live to His glory; and we do not always have a correct understanding of God. We should desire to know how God has revealed Himself in Scripture so that we know what He has done for us, and who He is. This will give us the correct posture to the holy God of the universe and fill our hearts with thanksgiving and a desire to do all things to His glory.
A good place to start is Psalm 97, Colossians, and reading about the attributes of God and the salvation that He has given us.
Books: The Cross of Christ, Knowing God
Our Worldview
A worldview is a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world. In other words, when we process the world around us, what do we filter the world through? By what standard are we concluding the world around us? Where do we get our definitions to define what is happening? When we define man/woman, husband/wife, father/mother, work, government — what pool of ideas are we going to? There is nothing that is truly neutral, we are either operating in a secular or Biblical worldview. This idea of worldview is vital when coming up against 1 Corinthians 10:31, because our worldview will hinder how we live.
What worldview is reigning in our lives? How do we perceive the world? If it is through the lens of what the public education system has taught us, that is secular — don’t fall for the lie of neutrality. You may be surprised by how engrained a secular worldview is in you — though it’s not your intention — when you start thinking about your standard of truth.
Biblical Worldview
If we desire to live out 1 Corinthians 10:31, then a shift has to take place in our worldview. We need to think from a Biblical worldview and use the Scriptures as our standard of truth.
Therefore, glorifying God as a man and woman means walking in the way which God has set forth in His word. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40 ESV) When you walk and live like that, you are being like God intended his creation to be and thus are glorifying Him by living that way. You are showing the world how God has designed us to live by submitting to His way, which in return glorifies Him.
Getting a solid grasp on how God has created man and woman and then beginning to live that out is where we should start; once we understand that, then we can move on to defining husband/wife, father/mother, work, and government. This is not an exhaustive list, but just some areas I think are good to define biblically and begin living out to the glory of God.
Here are some good starting points to help have a Biblical worldview on those listed categories.
- Glorifying God as a husband / wife— Start with the book of Colossians and meditate on Colossians 3:18-19, understand how the Bible defines submission and harshness, not how the world defines those terms. “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” (Colossians 3:18–19)
- Glorifying God as a father / mother — Start with Deuteronomy 6:7, “You shall teach [God’s commandments] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Do our children know that Christ is King by the way we live our lives and teach them?
- Running a business that glorifies God or working for a company and glorifying God in your work — Read through the book of Proverbs and put into practice that wisdom. When reading through Proverbs we get a sense of what true righteous living is, especially when dealing with people and putting our hands to work.
- Politics / Government — Read Romans 13: 1–7, taking note of: what the true and final authority is (God), the standard of which making righteous and just judgements is based upon (Scripture, not man’s ideology), and where the authority of government begins and ends. A good book that expands on government that glorifies God is “God and Government” by Gary DeMar. That book has been the most influential book I have read this year.
Some books that deal with a Biblical worldview that have helped me out the most are “The Mission of God” by Joseph Boot and “How Now Shall We Live?” by Chuck Colson. Both books showed me just how engrained secularism was in me, and how numb I was to it.
A Biblical worldview is a must if we are wanting to do all things to the glory of God. Read and submit to Scripture on how God defines reality, not how man defines it.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7 ESV)
[P.S. “Mission of God” is a pretty big book; there is a more condensed version of the book that may be better to start with called “Ruler of Kings”.]
“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also,…” Acts 17:6