The Glory Story of God in Christ
Jay Wegter
So many believers are living in harness—that is as if the „yoke of Christ‟ is heavy and burdensome (Matt 11:30; 1 Jn 5:3). If you think that the commandments of God are burdensome—it shows that you still love the world. As a consequence, they live by the tyranny of the urgent without a perspective of the glory of God. Since their lives are bound up in temporal concerns, the glory story is far from the horizons of their thought life—enemies of the cross of Christ are controlled by their carnal appetites and consequently set their minds on earthly temporal things (Phil 3:19).
True Christians are far different because God has made them new creations—they have been made complete in Christ—they have a whole new set of values (2 Cor 5:17). And, the Lord continues to apply the cross to what remains of their carnality, self-centeredness, and indwelling sin. God breaks into the believer‟s self-obsessed world with massive self disillusionment. But, what we often fail to see is that this disillusionment with self is critical to our progress in the faith. Let‟s consider the source of our disillusionment. It is our pride of life, fleshly mode (our default mode) of imagining that we are the sum total of our accomplishments. In our pride of life reasoning we falsely assume that by our performance, we are the architects of our own glory, security, and honor. Every lapse of faith is a return to this default mode of performance and pride of life thinking (1 Jn 2:15-17).
God breaks into our shrunken truncated world (perspective) by sending losses; crosses; mediocrity; and stagnation. He catches us in His „net‟—we feel as if our life is in freeze frame mode (Ps 66:11). Try as we may we can‟t seem to make things happen like we used to do. Our real problem is that we fail to discern that God is scraping us down to bedrock. But while in that freefall, it can feel like God is against us as He methodically kicks out each of our ego props—one at a time. In the midst of this we have little idea that this is for our good—and that we will land again on Christ our true foundation, our continent of rock (Heb 6:18).
The Lord has to do this strange work in our lives on a semi-regular basis because we so quickly depart from feeding upon Christ as He is exhibited in the glory story of the gospel. So God breaks into our world—our little hut made out of the sticks of manageable Christianity. He does this in love— applying the cross of Christ to us—for it has been far too long since we have seen His glory.
But having our ego supports kicked out is a dangerous time because we can turn so easily to false sources of comfort. Self-pity and sensuality may beckon us; or more ego vindicating activities may make overtures to us (offering to restore ego supports and prop up the afflicted self).
It is in these times when God has caught us in His net (Ps 66:11ff.) that He sends disillusionment for one great purpose: that we might ponder afresh the infinite difference between self and Christ. The flesh loves Gnostic Christianity (with the religious self at the center instead of Christ as He should be— Galatians 2:20, “not I but Christ”). In that spurious Gnostic form of religion the vastness of Christ is lost—the infinite difference between Christ and the religious self is obscured. Paul writes the book of Colossians to restore the supremacy of Christ in the minds of the Colossian believers who are tempted by an incipient form of Gnosticism (see the „Christ hymn‟ found in Colossians 1:15-21 designed to exalt Christ‟s supremacy).
So God allows us to descend into deep self-disillusionment in order to startle us with our weakness; sinfulness; and unfruitfulness. This disillusionment sends seismic waves through our manageable form of Christianity. And we are defining manageable Christianity as a Christianity that is blind to the glory of God—for in manageable Christianity the saint may go for months without experiencing any awe over the great things of God. God chooses disillusionment to blast us out of our self-focused narcissistic religious practices.
Those in Christian ministry are especially diligently disciplined by the Lord (Rev 3:19; Heb 12:1-12ff; 1 Pet 4:12-13; 5:10). God‟s servants must be frequently recalibrated by views of God‟s glory—for in our spiritual ambition we tend to reduce our Christianity down to our Christian service and our devotion to God—and we attempt to solicit His help for our Christian ministry agendas so that our „fruit production‟ will be uninterrupted.
Thus, the Lord may freeze our ministry fruitfulness until we are willing to say, “Lord, show me your glory!” When Moses wanted to quit, it was show me your glory that got him back on track amidst the greatest challenges imaginable (Ex 33:18ff.). When I am most obsessed with my ministry, my fruits and works, or lack thereof, I am actually in the poorest position to be fruitful. That is the great paradox— when most self-obsessed—even in being preoccupied with excellence and production, I may be worlds apart from true fruit-bearing. How different is God‟s way. His way is the glory way: we behold His glory; we are transformed by His glory; we then proclaim His excellencies (1 Pet 2:9-10). Only the gospel can take us off of self and out of debilitating self-consciousness. We cannot transcend self—self cannot cast out self. The glory story of the cross alone can change us.
In glory-less, manageable Christianity we don‟t want to feel our utter dependency on the Lord. We want God to come along side our plans, and we forget that He saved us to communicate to us Himself through the glory story. In our glory-less state we forget that we need constant strengthening in the inner man in order to be able to ascertain; grasp; and comprehend God‟s love and glory in Christ (Eph 3:16-19). God busts us out of our manageable Christianity by showing us His glory—by drawing us into His glory plot again—instead of leaving us in our own attempts to draw Him into our life agendas.
Whole churches, whole movements, whole denominations are so dead set on their religious agendas they are for the most part blind to the glory of God in Christ as the ongoing nourishment of the soul. It makes us wonder aloud how it will go with them at the bema judgment; for works not founded upon Christ and His glory will be burned up (1 Cor 3:13-15). Like the church of Ephesus in Revelation chapter two, they were so busy for God; but they left their first love. They did not keep repenting over this departure from Christ; and, they eventually lost their lamp stand. They were more interested in production than in communing with Christ and beholding His glory—they were more focused on quantifying their works than in bearing fruit that came from abiding in Christ (Jn 15:1-5).
Temporal concerns always work to crowd out the sight of God‟s glory—even ministry temporal concerns. Human excellence becomes a substitute for the glory of God. Worship teams, hype, emotion, socializing, fanfare, and sentimentality become the dry husks of religion we are eating instead of feeding upon Christ and His glory. What is highly esteemed by man is detestable in the sight of God (Luke 16:15). It makes us wonder why we don‟t hear a cry in our churches, “No more husks! Show me Christ!”
Now what, where, and how, do we behold the glory of God? First of all, the glory of God is beheld in the face of Christ (2 Cor 3:18-4:6). God moves His glory out of the realm of abstraction and into our experience by showing it to us in Christ. Only there does His glory become perceivable, tangible, and salvific. Still we need strengthening to attain to—to comprehend—to behold that glory (Eph 1:17-18; 3:16).
As fallen men we are still drawn to operate as a human doing—drawing our value from all of our accomplishments. But through the grace of the cross applied—trial, loss, setback, weakness, even confusion and disillusionment become the tools in God‟s hands to startle us to see the infinite difference between self and Christ. Only then do we want God Himself as the solution instead of our beloved agendas—this is the cross applied to our flesh—opening us again to His glory.
Now the divine glory story concerns the covenant of redemption—that God chose a people and gave a bride to Christ; BUT, this bride in her natural state was corrupted, polluted, without the heavenly virtue of holiness—but even more, she was a rebel, dead in sins—and intent on killing Christ, her future husband. Therefore at the heart of the glory story is this plan so immense in glory as to fill eternity—that in order for Christ to win, raise, claim, be espoused to, and take His bride—He must assume her liabilities, her moral failure, her pollution and alienation from God. He must gladly take upon Himself the very things that kept her from Him. He must take on her moral alienation; her wrath; her punishment; her death; and her agony. Only then could He be her righteousness; her glory; her virtue; her life; her light; blessedness; love; security; and destiny.
He so radically identified with her condition that He closed the infinite gap between dead wicked rebel and self-existent holy God. Our meditation upon glory therefore involves thinking upon this gap that Christ closed in His incarnation and redeeming work—a gap so great that the distance between her tomb and her throne could only be spanned by the willingness of the God-man. Christ, by the immensity of His Person fills the gap between the innate poverty of His bride and the riches of eternal glory (2 Cor 8:9). He closes the gap between her just deserts and her new destiny. The glory story of God in Christ gives us the glory of God—for the glory of God revealed in the face of Christ is HOW we have come to know God through Christ‟s redemptive work. God has shown us His glory and Himself in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:4-6).
But the cost is remarkable (Mk 10:45). Christ had to become a human cadaver carried by sinful men to a stone tomb so that we could be with Him forever in glory. Let this distance that He spanned stagger you. This distance from polluted dust to flawless glory—from alienation to perfect access and belonging in the presence of God—this distance spanned by Christ is so amazing that it is teaching tool to instruct angels in the wisdom of God (Eph 3:9-11). It is the glory of God put on display in our salvation. It is the gloriousness of Christ‟s Person in assuming the condition of His bride in order to give her His status—His relationship—His right-relatedness to the triune Godhead. This means that HOW God saves in Christ (by His taking on of all of our liabilities) has become the primary revealer of the eternal glory of the Godhead.
But it gets even better, for God is allowing us—even commanding us to handle this treasure—to fix our minds upon it (Col 3:1-4). In fact we must handle this treasure if we are to pass through this life without becoming idolaters. Handling this treasure is manna for our souls, food for our hope. We must feed upon Christ and His glory OR by default we will not be unscathed by the world. Without this glory we will attempt to feed our eternal souls on the bogus bread of this world.
The glory story is how God has dispelled the ancient lie of Eden from our souls. The darkness in every unbeliever‟s soul is composed of the remnants of Satan‟s original lie—that lie consisting of the proposal that our good and God‟s glory are at odds. The lie drives a wedge there in the soul and we collectively as a race (by acting upon the lie) forfeited our sight of His glory and our desire for His glory (Rom 3:23; 1:22-24ff). Knowing God is our glory, because our glory is a derived, reflected glory. This is why our boast is to be in our knowledge of the glorious One (Jer 9:23-24). Those who reject God‟s glory, and who consequently worship created things and human wisdom, will lose all their glory the moment they die (1 Cor 1:19; 2:6-8ff.).
So, in review, the ancient lie of Eden suggested that God‟s glory and our good were hostile to one another. The lie asserted that God‟s glory was opposed to human potential—thus God‟s glory should be abandoned in the interest of self-directed self-fulfillment (nothing has really changed!).
Only by the cross of Christ are God‟s glory and our good rejoined in our thinking and loving (that is in our affections and desires). Only by the diet of the cross will God‟s glory and our good stay joined and fused. We cannot function successfully in the world as worshipping children of God without the cross. The world, the flesh, and the devil all conspire to reassert the lie that God‟s glory and our good are at odds—the lie always pushes for the possibility that there is a higher good than God‟s glory (His glory including God‟s moral majesty and laws). The lie always proposes that abandoning oneself to God‟s glory is risky and not in one‟s highest interest.
The church is suffering from cultural Christianity because the sight of God‟s glory is obscured through a „rationing‟ of the gospel of Christ (we sometimes refer to this ailment as the gospel gap). Where gospel preaching is in short supply—a gap grows. The Apostle Paul dealt with a similar problem in the Corinthian church. Paul gives the God-ordained solution to the Corinthian catastrophe—it is as simple as it is potent: the cross is the diet of the mature believer—anything less, and we will find ourselves attracted to the impotent wisdom of man (1 Cor 1:18-25).
God saved us by granting us a sight of His glory in Christ. The moment, when by faith, we beheld the Son of God dying in our place—pumping out His heart‟s blood onto the dusty Judean soil for the likes of us—we came to know God through a sight of His reflected glory in our Savior. We no longer regarded His glory and our good to be at odds (Jn 3:14-18). Christ in our nature and in our place as suffering substitute removed the darkness placed there by the original lie. When God showed us His glory in the face of Christ, our hearts were flooded with light—the enmity there was cleaned out and replaced with the saving knowledge of God—we became reconciled to the God of the universe (Col 1:21-22). Now God‟s cause, which is His glory, has become our cause. By the mercies of God we are rationally abandoned to this cause of doing all for His glory (Rom 12:1-2; 1 Cor 10:31).
The church only thrives when the glory of God is displayed to her in the face of Christ. The church will languish without this steady sight of the glory of Christ.
How do we behold His glory—what is the content of this glory beholding?
We contemplate His saving work toward us—for in that redemptive work, His glory is revealed (note the alphabet of God glorifying His grace in all the benefits catalogued in Ephesians chapters one through three). We study His redemptive work so that we may be able to proclaim His excellencies (how and why He has called us to be His unique people (1 Pet 2). We dwell upon our relationship with the Father as it is perfectly and wonderfully settled in Christ. That becomes the divinely ordained vantage point from which we behold His glory. We do not study God from a vantage point of theory; but from the perspective that His glory has constructed a perfect refuge for us. So that the wonderful excellencies and perfections of God are spelled out most gloriously and understandably in the endlessly wonderful theme of: who is God toward me in Christ? All of these are access points; windows; portholes from which and through which we gaze upon His glory as our blessed vocation—begun now; but continuing eternally in heaven.