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Glorifying God

"We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as though it is true." D.Willard, Renovation of the Heart

"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It “consents,” so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree….Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His love and His infinite art." T. Merton, Silence, Joy

"The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane. It is to see, in Helmut Thielicke’s words, that “the Christian stands, not under the dictatorship of a legalistic “you ought,” but in the magnetic field of Christian freedom, under the empowering of the “you may.”" D.Willard, The Great Omission

These quotes illustrate in various ways the truth that people are both made in the image of God—they are the image of God, and are called to be, to mature into the most complete likeness possible. It is in becoming and being most fully that image that we bring glory to God in the same way Merton’s tree does. 

In the Christian church, our desire is to encourage and help one another become and live into the image of God we already are. Granted we have a long way to go as we are transformed into the likeness of Jesus as his disciples, but nevertheless, this we believe is our calling.

The idea of being a disciple is reflected again in the Great Commission, “go...and make disciples.” What Jesus told the Apostles He wanted, was disciples. John, in 3.36 combines belief and “obeying” into one idea when he writes “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (ESV). The idea here is that to believe in Jesus is to become His disciple, living as Jesus would live if He were you. The word used here for “doesn't obey” is apeitheo and is found in Romans 2.8 and 10.21, and 1 Peter 3.20. John is telling us that just like Merton’s tree, we glorify God the most when we live as the image of God. As Dallas Willard says, we are invited into the empowering freedom of you may. As disciples mature in Christ, we leave behind the "you musts," and embody the freedom Jesus promises. If we believe in Jesus, we will be His disciples and the church will carry the presence of God into the world. 

Each of us then, and all of us together are to take on the character of Jesus and live as He lived with compassion, goodness, and self-giving love for one another and for the world. In this kind of life we most fully reflect our God as people and as a people - the people of God for the sake of the world. In being the image we are made to be, we most fully glorify God.


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