Skip to main content

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.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

He Remembers We Are But Flesh

In Job, often considered the first book written in the Bible, we are introduced to the accuser. In the introduction to the book, it is the accuser who accuses Job of being righteous and faithful to God only because of the blessings that God has given Job. We find the accuser again in Zechariah 3. The High Priest Joshua is standing in front of the Lord in filthy clothes, and the accuser is making accusations. The Lord rebukes the accuser and then says that he will cleanse Joshua.  Then in the New Testament, we see the appearance of the Advocate. The Spirit, we are told, is sent to walk beside us, to be a witness, to be an advocate for us. The accuser challenges us, questions our faithfulness, and questions our integrity as people who are supposed to follow God as His people, His disciples. This is an entre for being blamed and shamed. But God comes alongside us and advocates for us. We are told too that Jesus is our mediator with God. Jesus defends us and explains us to God so that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elders redux

A reader (I am always amazed that people actually read this blog) submitted a rather long comment on the original post on Elders. It is apparent that the reader did some good homework as the comment has several, well, more than several, reference citations. It is clear that they both read the original post and did some Bible study before posting their comment. Because the comment was so long, I thought it appropriate to post another entry rather than bury the response in the comment log. In the following discussion, I have included the text of the comment without the Scripture references. If you want to read the comment in its entirety, scroll to the Elders post and click on the comment. --------------------------------------------------------- [Comment~~~~The church is expected to be a people in exactly this sense. We are the people of God who are charged with continuing and preserving the values, culture, hopes, and the identity of God’s people in our time.~~~~ Does this include th...
7 comments
Read more

Remember You Were Slaves

In his essay "Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness*," Jonathan Sacks makes the argument that tribalism can, and usually does, give rise to acceptance, compassion, and social bonding but also to fear, hate, and demeaning others. Those in our group give and receive the former from us, those outside our group receive and often give the latter. We humans have the capacity of empathy toward those like us but we also, being finite beings, suffer from fear and that fear too often translates to hate of those not like us.  Sacks then reminds us that Israel was told not to hate the outsider, the one who isn't in our group. He quotes two passages from Exodus: "You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (22.21) "You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (23.9) Sacks then...
Post a Comment
Read more