Using the word “glorious”
Have you ever been in a situation that you don’t have words for? That is larger and bigger than you, that folds you into it and not the other way around?
People talk about experiences that overwhelm them in terms of the sublime. When someone experiences something larger than life, something overwhelming, they may use words like “surreal” or “unbelievable” or “stunning”.
But sometimes, if they are really serious, they will use the word “glorious.”
Glory is the word that you use when you don’t quite have a word that fully describes what you’re experiencing. But it’s beyond description. It is glorious.
Glory assumes there is something larger than ourselves that we get accepted and folded into. If something is to be glorious, then it is larger than us. To experience any form of glory is to be folded into it, not to direct it.
When we talk about a church glorifying in God, we are a community of people entering into God’s world. To give God glory is to enter into something much larger than we are and participate with who He is. We enter into His means and His forms.
Entering into God’s activity and work
To Glory in God is to enter into His activity and work. To honor Him for who He is.
It is a verb. It describes our work. When we give God glory, it means that we say He is the One responsible for our security and safety.
But God’s glory is also a noun. We glory in God, but God has His own glory. It is His nature. So when we talk about God’s glory, it is a noun; it is who He is. So God’s glory is His presence. It is His own nature.
To glory in God is to enter into that presence. To participate with Him.
there is a great case study in the Gospel of John that helps us to see the way in which glory is presented in the experience of the human event.
To Glory in God is to participate in His activity
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:1 — 5, ESV)
To begin let’s look at the presenting issue: the man’s blindness. In the ancient Near East, when someone had a disability, it was assumed that there was a form of sin somewhere, that the individual deserved it either from his family or because of himself. The disciples are asking a question everyone would have had. Whose fault is this? Was it his or someone else’s? There are asking more than simply whose fault was this but more so, why did this happen?
Everything was an issue of merit. If you or your family did something wrong, then you would pay for it later on. We always want to know why.
When everything is a matter of merit or fault, we will never find redemption or healing. We can’t behave out of our own problems or our generational sin. We just live in a cycle where we just point fingers at everyone else.
When we blame, we never get the very thing we are hoping for: purpose.
But the question that they ask, the question on everyone’s mind, isn’t the way Jesus answers. Jesus answers and when He does, He goes above blame. He gives purpose. He states that God will show up in power. Jesus is not saying that this man’s blindness is simply a platform for the power of God. He is removing a sense of who cause and blame.
Jesus is saying that it didn’t come from sin, but that God would make meaning from it. That God’s power would be displayed. His activity and work would be known.
What Jesus is saying that this man’s perceived weakness is actually the very vessel in which God’s power will be displayed?
The disciples would have passed right over that being an opportunity for God’s glory.
We often pass right by opportunities for God’s glory.
The very thing that you think has no meaning because it is weak or it is painful is the very thing that God can display His glory through. Glory is that which is unmistakably God. So when we give glory to God, we participate with Him. Giving Glory to God means that we can only make sense of our story in Christ.
Trying to make sense of what happens
The narrative in John 9 progresses. The man is healed from His blindness. Jesus offers meaning from a perceived weakness. Christ displays God’s glory in and through this man's blindness.
This causes all sorts of issues. There are people who are angered by this healing. They approach the man and demand answers.
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (John 9:24 — 25, ESV)
No one in this man’s community can make sense of what has happened. He was blind and now he could see. They ask about Jesus. They want to know what kind of person he is. He is trouble. He is a sinner. That much they know. And the reply from the previously blind man is excellent. “I’m not really sure who he is. I only know that I was blind. I met this man, Jesus. Now I can see.” That is the working out of God’s glory in a life.
Living an otherworldly kind of life
Your story, if you are following Christ, is a story of the glory of God in a life.
If you are a Christ follower, there is a real sense in which our stories don’t fully make sense unless our stories are found in Christ.
We experience peace when we shouldn’t.
We love when others have given up.
We have experienced mercy.
We can persevere because we know who our heavenly Father is and where we are going.
We long for a heavenly home but can rest in Christ now.
Because we live otherworldly lives, we practice alien things like rest and peace.
This is God’s glory coming through.
And the only reason it’s true is because of Christ. He alone is the One who makes it true.
Because Christ only is the One who gives our own story, any real sense of glory means that to give God glory is maybe more about unconditional pointing than skilled perfection. Glory is not about us, it is about the God who offers life itself to us.
It means that we are confessingly imperfect. We are practitioners of imperfection but also of unconditional pointing. Meaning that no matter what happens, even in our own weakness, we point to Christ and His glory. We participate with Him.
The end of our story in John 9 states,
Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. (John 9:35–39, ESV)
It is the work and glory of Christ that brings this once-blind man into belief. He experiences all these things that are larger than Him: healing, kindness, redemption. And in so doing, what other choice does he have? Belief is the most reasonable conclusion.
When we experience His glory, we participate with God. We receive from God, but then we partner miraculously with Him. We become a part of what He is doing. Our story fuses with God’s story.
That is who we want to be as a church. That our story as a church would only make sense in understanding who God is.
If you have ever wanted to live into something larger than yourself, living for the glory of God satisfies that.
Define what part of your story only makes sense in light of the work of Christ. All the sense He offers, all the work and His death and resurrection, His character and His work are all His. And we miraculously get to participate with Him in that.
