What is the glory of God according to the Bible?

But what is meant by His glory? The glory of God is the revelation of what He is. When we speak of glorifying Him we do not mean that we can add anything to Him or make Him more glorious than He is, but that having received the revelation of Himself by faith we respond to it and give Him that place in our thoughts and lives that the revelation claims. If we speak of the glory of a man, it is his achievements that we have in mind, but no man can achieve anything beyond what he is, and when we think of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in manhood, we think of what He achieved in His life of sufferings, but His achievements are the revelation of what He is, the Spirit of God delights to bring His achievements before our souls, and in this way glorify Him, and as the Spirit glorifies Him to us we begin to count earthly glory all loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Him.

The glory of God displays what He is in His attributes and nature, and is seen pre-eminently in the Person of the Son, who is the "effulgence of His glory." In the coming kingdom of the Son of Man the divine glory will be displayed before an admiring universe in the Person of the Son, but not only in Him, also in those whom God has called to share what Christ has secured through His death upon the cross. There is also the divine glory of the Son that He had with the Father before the world was, and this will be displayed before those who share the Son's place in the bliss of the Father's House (John 17:5, 24).

There is a glorified Man in heaven. The Holy Ghost is on earth in consequence of that! It was God's purpose that glory should be connected with man. In Ex. 40:33-34, the glory filled the tabernacle and in 1 Kings 8:10-11 the glory filled the temple. In Isa. 6:15 the glory is disturbed because of the refractory state of the people. In Ezekiel 1:26-27 there is the vision of the glory retiring from the earth, but the prophet sees in the brightest spot the likeness of a man, i.e., an intimation that God would yet have a Man in the glory. In Luke 2:9, the glory returns to announce the birth of the Saviour and God's good pleasure in man. In Luke 3:21-22, at the end of 30 years of private life when everything therein was beautiful and according to God; on taking His place publicly with the remnant, heaven was opened to Him and God's good pleasure in Him was expressed. In Luke 9:28, 32, after three years of public service the glory invited Him. He could have gone free; He not only kept the law, but He was the expression of divine righteousness. He would not go free. His exodus was accomplished at Jerusalem. In John 12:24, the corn of wheat must die and bring forth fruit after its own order. "Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one." In John 13:31, He glorified God at man's farthest point of distance in death; God was indebted to Man for glory and man was glorified in God. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. In Acts 7:55, Stephen saw the glory of God and Jesus. He testified that the Son of Man is at the right hand of God. They stopped their ears and murdered the witness! In Acts 9:3, the glory looked down on a man at the greatest distance from God. In 2 Cor. 4:46 we have the Gospel of the glory of Christ, the image of God; the glory is not veiled, it shines in his face! In 2 Cor. 3:18, we behold the Lord's glory, as we look we are metamorphosed; there is moral correspondence. Glory is every attribute of God in manifestation and perfectly balanced. This is manifested in Jesus. J. B. STONEY.

The effect of His coming here is given in the words, "And I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." This certifies us, as indeed may be learned from other Scriptures, that the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem; and Ezekiel even gives its divine plan and measurements. It is this house which will yet be rebuilt, identified in the thoughts of God with that built by the remnant from Babylon, that will be filled with glory. God has always filled HIS house with glory. He did the tabernacle erected in the wilderness (Ex. 40), the temple in the kingdom (2 Chr. 5:14), the church at Pentecost (Acts 2); and the last house to be raised on earth will be no exception. But what constitutes the "glory"? It is the Lord's own presence — the sign of which was the cloud, both in the. tabernacle and Solomon's temple; but in the temple of the returned captives, as in the assembly of the saints gathered to the name of Christ, this presence, this glory, is only to be apprehended by faith. For the glory of the Lord is the display, whether outwardly or to the vision of faith, of what He is, of the sum and excellency of all His attributes; and He thus fills His house with the manifestation of all the perfections of His own spiritual being. Ezekiel actually beheld in prophetic vision the return of the Lord to the house of which Haggai speaks, and which he himself describes. He says, "And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and his voice was like a noise of many waters; and the earth shined with His glory And the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east … And, behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house." (Ezekiel 43:2-5.) Thus the Lord will take possession of the house, and dwell in it, in a more surpassingly excellent way than He did either in the tabernacle or the temple. Taking up, therefore, the comparatively mean building His poor people were at that time engaged upon, He comforts their hearts by unveiling before their eyes the transcendent glory and blessing that would be yet associated with it through the Lord coming suddenly to His temple.

When we speak of God seeking His own glory, or glorifying Himself, what do we mean by it? If a man seeks his own glory, it is pride or selfishness that acts in him; and do not the thoughts even of God's people sometimes almost confound man's thought in this with God's, however much they would abhor the inference? But as God is the opposite of fallen man in all things, so it is here. Man in seeking his own glory claims and craves, but God in seeking His but loves and gives; for His glory is Himself displayed, is the blessing of His creatures: His glory is His goodness; what the angels' words unite is pledged by the Babe born in Bethlehem never to be sundered — "Glory to God in the highest," and "on earth peace, good pleasure in men."

The sovereignty of grace did appear. Their transgression and sin was God's opportunity (if such a word may be reverently said of God) to manifest His grace in a way not known before. Moses said, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." But God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee." Not His glory, but His goodness! Yet His goodness is His highest glory, the glory He delights in. The glory of judgment is His strange work. (Ex. 33:18-19; Ex. 34:6-7.) Moses takes courage from the revelation of goodness, and pleads the stiff-neckedness of the people as a reason why Jehovah should go with them. It was according to the mind of God. This boldness of faith God waited for, and immediately He responds in grace to the extraordinary plea.

The place where I see the glory is not Moses' face - not in one who says, "I will go up unto the Lord, peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin" with God, who says, No, every man shall bear his own sin - "whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book." That is not the case now. The glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ? who does not say "Peradventure," etc., but who makes the atonement before He goes up; and the glory seen in the face of Jesus Christ is proof that the atonement has been accepted. I am at home in the presence of the glory, happy there. That which condemned me before is now peace. Beholding it, I am changed into the same image. Every ray of it is joy and peace to my soul, an evidence that there is no question of sin now. It is "the gospel of the glory of Christ." His was not a mere visit to man in his sorrows and sins to put him to the test. He did come seeking for fruit; but besides that, He did much more; and now, as the apostle says, light shines. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Again, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." It is there the glory of God is seen, it is in Christ - "the face of Jesus Christ." It is the declaration of the full revelation of all that God is in His holiness, and glory, and love, consequent upon the atonement made by Christ, and the glorification of Christ. Thus all questioning is ended. When we see it, we can look steadily and peacefully at it, and we are transformed into the same image. There is no darkness there at all (1 John 1:5); and, beloved, if there is no darkness at all, all sin is condemned. "God is light": yes, but He is "love," and I see it in the putting away of my sins. God was alone with Christ when the work was going on. He has hid me in the cleft of the rock; and He has taken off His hand, and I can trace, in the work that has been done, the perfectness of the love that has left no sin to be atoned for. God gives the privilege of not intruding the remembrance even of sin to defile the place of His holiness.

We come now to something different from simple creatorial majesty in Christ, different from the relations in which He stands with created things. For He is the shining forth of glory. All that can be called glory in God shines out in Him. Our Lord wears human form now, and His humanity has served to bring out in the most illuminating way, in the very midst, too, of human circumstances, all the attributes of God, which, when viewed together, compose glory. Light is the outshining of what is in the sun. But precious as the light is, and pleasant as it is to behold the sun, we might have great difficulty in describing light. So, what is glory? Above all, what are the elements in God's glory, its constituent parts, so to say? We take a prism, and we allow the light to fall upon it. Instantly that which is diffused so sweetly as light becomes broken up into its component parts, and we discover the beauty of the several rays which, when blended, form light. Even so, with reverent hearts may we study Christ in whom the varied rays of God's glory are severally discerned. His character and ways bring before us the exact delineation of God's holiness, righteousness, truth; they utter to us, in an intelligible way, His grace, goodness, longsuffering mercy; they set forth those divine perfections of obedience, dependence, humility, meekness, lowliness, which could be discerned only in circumstances of humiliation. Moreover, in the cross and death of Jesus, we find every ray converging; the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. Never was all that God is so seen as in that wonderful moment. All the outgoings of His holy nature against sin were present in infinite degree; and yet every consideration of pity and compassion for the sinner was combined with them. Nor is this all. Raised from the dead, triumphant over death and sin and Satan's power, Jesus has become in heaven the complete expression, the effulgence, of all that God is. What would be to us otherwise unknowable or inexplicable is resolved, and in the face of Jesus — unveiled and glorious — we behold the glory of God. That face speaks to us; it is language that our ransomed hearts can understand. It makes our own will appear loathsome, it makes the world appear a poor selfish system without God, it attracts our affections and expands our minds, and stirs our energies for God and souls and heaven, as nothing else could. It makes the presence of God our home, and the glory of God our goal in the hope of which we boast.

Creation should, indeed, speak, and its voice be heard. What is invisible in the Creator should be and is seen, and seen clearly, being understood by the things that are made—even His eternal power and Godhead—not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left thus without excuse. (See Romans 1:20.) Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself—His nature—but to any, except those wilfully blind, it is evidence sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!

In the above collection of passages from the Scripture one sees how one thought, one term - energeia, inworking - runs like the keynote in music, the thread in a woven garment, the vein of precious ore, the essence of a fluid, through the whole. It is not only that the will of God is the cause of all things, but that that same will is also ever in operation to bring out the designed result, the glory of His Christ. He is the glory of God. In Him God is glorified. In Him God is seen as He is. That is what "glory" is - God manifested. That is what Christ was - God manifested in flesh. This glory the assembly has been called to share. We have now "Christ in us, the hope of glory." When He presently shall be manifested, then shall we also be manifested with Him in glory, His glory.