III

THE GLORY OF GOD

God the Creator rules His world for His own glory. “Unto him are all things” (Rom. 11:36); He Himself is the end of all His works. He does not exist for our sake, but we for His. It is the nature and prerogative of God to please Himself, and His revealed good pleasure is to make Himself great in our eyes. “Be still,” He says to us, “and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10). God’s overriding goal is to glorify Himself.

Its Reasonableness

Now this is a truth which at first we find hard to receive. Our immediate reaction to it is an uncomfortable feeling that such an idea is unworthy of God: that self-concern of any sort is really incompatible with moral perfection, and in particular with God’s nature as love. Sensitive and morally cultured people are sincerely shocked by the thought that God’s ultimate end is His own glory, and protest most heatedly against it. Why, they say, this is to depict God as essentially no different from a bad man, even from the devil himself! It is an immoral and outrageous doctrine, and if the Bible teaches it, so much the worse for the Bible! Indeed, they often draw this conclusion explicitly with regard to the Old Testament. A volume, it is said, which depicts God so persistently as a “jealous” Being, always concerned first and foremost about His “honour,” cannot be regarded as Divine truth, for God is not like that, and it is no less than blasphemy, real if unintentional, to think that He is. Since these convictions are widely and strongly held, it is worth while before we go further to pause and consider what validity they have.

We begin by asking: why are they asserted with so much heat? On other theological questions, men can disagree calmly enough; but it seems a universal experience that protests against the doctrine that God’s chief end is His glory are made with passion and rhetoric and even bluster. The reason is not far to seek, and it does credit to the moral earnestness of the speakers. Their outbursts of feeling spring, as passionate outbursts in conversation so often do, from a bad conscience. These persons are sensitive to the sinfulness of continual self-seeking. They know themselves well enough to see that a guilty craving to gratify self is at the root of all their moral weaknesses and shortcomings; they are, indeed, trying as best they can to face it and fight it. A condemning conscience continually reminds them that whenever they seek their own pleasure and aggrandizement, and use their fellow-beings as a means to this end, they do wrong. Hence, they conclude that for God to be self-centred would be equally wrong, and the vehemence with which they reject the idea that the holy God is supremely concerned to exalt Himself reflects their acute sense of the guiltiness of their own past acts of self-seeking.

But is their conclusion valid at all? On reflection, it appears to be a complete mistake. If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to aim at the same goal? If man can have no higher end and motive than God’s glory, how can God? And if it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, then it would be wrong for God too. The reason why it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if he were God, is simply the fact that he is not God; and the reason why it cannot be wrong for God to seek His own glory is simply the fact that He is God. Those who would not have God seek His glory in all things are really asking that He should cease to be God. And there is no greater blasphemy than to will God out of existence.

If the objectors’ line of reasoning is so clearly false, why are so many today convinced by it? The appearance of plausibility which this view derives from our inbred sinful habit of making God in our own image, and thinking of Him as if He and we stood, as it were, on the same level, so that His obligations to us and ours to Him correspond; as if He were bound to serve us and further our well-being with the same entire selflessness with which we are in duty bound to serve Him. This is, in effect, to think of God as if He were a man, albeit a great one. If this way of thinking were right, then for God to seek His own glory in everything would indeed make Him comparable to the worst of men and to Satan himself. But our Maker is not a man, not even an omnipotent superman, and this way of thinking of Him is not right. It is, in fact, gross idolatry. (You do not have to make a graven image picturing God as a man to be an idolater; a mental image of this sort is all that you need to break the second commandment.) We must not imagine that the obligations which bind us, as creatures, to Him bind Him, as Creator, equally to us. Dependence, of whatever form, is a one-way relation, and carries with it one-way obligations. Children, for instance, ought to obey their parents — not vice versa! And our dependence as creatures upon our Creator binds us to seek His glory without in the least committing Him to seek ours. For us to glorify Him is always a duty; for Him to bless us is never anything but grace. The only thing that, as God, He is bound to do is the thing that He has bound us to do — to glorify Himself.

We conclude, then, that it is the very reverse of blasphemy to speak of God as self-centred; it would, indeed, be irreligious not to. It is the glory of God to have made all things for Himself and to use them as means for His own exaltation. The clear-headed Christian will insist on this. And he will insist too that it is the glory of man that he is privileged to function as a means to this end. There can be no greater glory for man than to be a means of glorifying God. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God” — and it is in so doing that man finds his true dignity as God’s creature. The modern humanist, who thinks that man is at his noblest and most god-like when he has thrown off the shackles of religion, imagines that by asserting that man is no more than a means to God’s glory we rob human life of all real worth. The truth, however, is the opposite. Human life without God has no real worth; it is a mere monstrosity. But when we say that man is no more than a means to God’s glory, we are also saying that man is no less than that — and thus showing how human life can have meaning and value. The only man in this world who enjoys a complete contentment is the man who knows for certain that there is no more worthwhile and satisfying life, no nobler or more significant life, than the life that he is living already; and the only man who knows this is the man who has learned that the way to be truly human is to be truly godly, and whose heart desires nothing more — and nothing less — than to be a means, however humble, to God’s chief end — His own glory and praise.

Its Meaning

But what does it mean to say that God’s chief end is His glory? To many of us, perhaps, the phrase “the glory of God” is rather empty. With what meaning does the Bible fill it?

The word translated “glory” in the Old Testament originally expressed the idea of weight. From this it came to be applied to that about a person which makes him “weighty” in others’ eyes, and prompts them to honour and respect him. Thus, for instance, Jacob’s gains and Joseph’s wealth are called “glory” (Gen. 31:1; 45:13). Then the word was extended to mean honour and respect itself. Accordingly, the Bible uses it with reference to God in a double connection, speaking, on the one hand, of the glory that belongs to God — the Divine splendour and majesty attaching to all God’s revelations of Himself — and, on the other hand, of glory that is given to God — the “honour” and “blessing,” praise and worship, which God has a right to receive, and which is the only fit response to the revelation of His holy presence. [“The glory of the God of Israel came . . . and I fell on my face . . .” (Ezek. 43:2f.).] The term “glory” thus connects the thoughts of God’s praiseworthiness and of His praise — of the majesty of the revelation of His power and presence from which religion springs, and of the worship which is the right response when we realise that God stands before us, and we before Him.

Take these two thoughts separately for a moment.

(a) In revelation, God shows us His Glory. “Glory” means Deity in manifestation. Creation reveals Him [“the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1); “the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3)]. In Bible times, He disclosed His presence by means of theophanies, which were termed His “glory” (the shining cloud in the tabernacle and temple, Exod. 40:34, 1 Kings 8:10 f.; Ezekiel’s vision of the throne and the wheels, Ezek. 1:28; etc.). Believers now behold His glory fully and finally displayed “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Wherever we see God in action, there we see His glory — He presents Himself before us as holy and adorable, summoning us to bow down and worship.

(b) In religion, we give God glory. We do this by every act of response to His revelation of grace: by worship and praise [“whoso offereth praise glorifieth me” (Ps. 50:23); “give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name” (Ps. 96:8); “ . . . glorify God for his mercy” (Rom. 15:9)]; by believing His Word; by trusting His promises (that was how Abraham gave glory to God, Rom. 4:20); by confessing Christ as Lord, “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11); by obeying God’s law [“the fruits of righteousness” are to “the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:11)]; by bowing to His just condemnation of our sins (so Achan gave God glory, Josh. 7:19f.); and, generally, by seeking in all ways to make Him great (which means making self small) in our daily lives.

Now we are in a position to see what is meant by the statement that God’s chief end is His glory. It means that His unchanging purpose is so to display to His rational creatures the glory of His wisdom, power, truth, justice and love that they come to know Him and, knowing Him, to give Him glory for all eternity by love and loyalty, worship and praise, trust and obedience. The kind of fellowship that He intends to create between us and Him is a relationship in which He gives of His fullest riches, and we give of our heartiest thanks, and both to the highest degree. When He declares Himself to be a “jealous” God, and proclaims: “my glory will I not give to another” (Isa. 4:8; 48:11), His concern is to safeguard the purity and richness of this relationship. Such is the goal of God.

And all God’s works are means to this end. The only answer that the Bible ever gives to the class of questions that begin: “why did God . . .?” is: for His own glory. It was for this that God decreed to create, and for this that He willed to permit sin. He could have kept man from transgression; He could have barred Satan out of the garden, or have confirmed Adam so that he became incapable of sinning (as He will do to the redeemed in heaven); but He did not. Why? For His own glory. It is often said, most truly, that nothing in God is so glorious as His redeeming love — the mercy which wins back transgressors through the blood-shedding of God’s own Son. But there would have been no revelation of redeeming love had sin not been first permitted.

Again: why did God choose to redeem? He need not have done so; He was not bound to take action to save us. His love for sinners, His resolve to give His Son for them, was a free choice which He need never have made. Why did it please Him to love and redeem the unlovely? The Bible tells us why. “To the praise of the glory of his grace . . . to the praise of his glory . . .” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14).

We see the same purpose determining point after point in the plan of salvation. Some He elects to life, others He leaves under merited judgment, “willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known . . . and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy . . .” (Rom. 9:22f). He chooses to make up the bulk of His Church from the riff-raff of the world — persons who are “foolish . . . weak . . . base . . . despised.” Why? “That no flesh should glory in his presence . . . that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:26-31). Why does not God root indwelling sin out of His saints in the first moment of their Christian life, as He will do the moment they die? Why, instead, does He carry on their sanctification with a slowness that is painful to them, so that all their lives they are troubled by besetting sins and never reach the perfection they desire? And why is it His custom to give them a hard passage through this world? The answer is, again, that He does all this for His own glory: to expose to us our own weakness and impotence, so that we may learn how utterly we depend upon His grace, and how limitless are the resources of His saving power. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” wrote Paul, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Cor. 4:7). We might pursue this line of thought much further, did space permit. Once for all, let us rid our minds of the idea that things are as they are because God cannot help it. God “worketh all things after the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11), and all things are as they are because God has chosen that they should be; and the reason for His choice in every case is that it makes for His glory for things to be so.

The Godly Man

In conclusion, let us define what godliness is. We can say straight away that it is not simply a matter of externals, but of the heart; that it is not a natural growth, but a supernatural gift; that it is found only in those who have seen their sin, who have sought and found Christ, who have been born again, who have repented. But this is only to circumscribe and locate godliness; our present question is, what essentially is it? The answer follows from what has already been said. Godliness is the quality of life which exists in those who seek to glorify God.

The godly man does not object to the thought that his highest vocation is to be a means to God’s glory; rather, he finds it a source of great satisfaction and contentment. His ambition is to follow out the great formulae in which Paul summed up the practice of Christianity — “glorify God in your body”; “whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 6:20; 10:31). His dearest wish is to exalt God with all that he is in all that he does. He follows in the footsteps of Him who could say at the end of His life here: “I have glorified thee on the earth” (John 17:4), and who told the Jews: “I honour my Father . . . I seek not mine own glory . . .” (John 8:49f.). He thinks of himself in the manner of George Whitefield who said: “Let the name of Whitefield perish, so long as God is glorified.” Like God Himself, the godly man is supremely jealous that God, and God only, should be honoured. Indeed this jealousy is a part of the image of God in which he has been renewed. There is now a doxology written on his heart, and he is never so truly himself as when he is praising God for the glorious things that He has done already and pleading with Him to glorify Himself yet further. We may say that it is by his prayers that he is known — to God, if not to men. “What a man is alone on his knees before God,” said Murray McCheyne, “that he is, and no more.” In this case, however, we must say no less. For prayer in secret is the veritable mainspring of the godly man’s life. And when we speak of prayer, we are not referring to the prim, proper, stereotyped, self-regarding formalities which sometimes pass for the real thing. The godly man does not play at prayer, for his heart is in it. Prayer to him is his chief work. And the burden of his prayer is always the same, the expression of his strongest and most constant desire — “Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength.” “Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens.” “Father, glorify thy name.” “Hallowed be thy name.” (Ps. 21:13; 57:5; John 12:28; Matt. 6:9). By this God knows His saints, and by this we may know ourselves.

Author

J. I. Packer has had a long-standing passion for the Puritans. Their understanding of God and His ways with man has largely formed his own spirituality and theological outlook.

Educated at Oxford University, Dr. James I. Packer has served as assistant minister at St. John's Church of England, Harborne, Birmingham and Senior Tutor and Principal at Tyndale Hall (an Anglican seminary in Bristol). He preaches and lectures widely in Great Britain and America and contributes frequently to theological periodicals. His writings include Fundamentalism and the Word of God, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and Knowing God. Currently Dr. Packer is Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.