John 1:14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
To be alive is to have a deep longing for glory. For the transcendent. The beautiful. The weighty. The things that give life its meaning. We were created by God with glory and for glory. His glory. The glory of the Trinity. We were meant to experience God’s glory and declare God’s glory.
Because God made us for glory, and because glory drives everything, everything we do is an attempt to get more and more of it. Glory is why we get out of bed each day. It’s why we work and why we play. It’s why we watch movies and play video games. It’s why we post our “perfect life” and argue our opinions with strangers online. It’s why we remember the glory days and sing songs of Heaven. Glory is everything and everything is about gaining more glory.
But it is only the glory of God that can actually satisfy and sanctify us. Only his glory changes us into his likeness. Only God’s glory and grace, his goodness and love are enough to satisfy our deepest desires for meaning, significance, honor, and purpose. And, one day, it will be his majestic beauty alone that transforms us when we see his face.
Moses knew this, which is why in Exodus 33:18 he asked God for the one thing that could change his life and the life of the sinful people he was leading – “Lord, show me your glory.”
If you don’t remember the story you can go back and read about it from Day 34. Moses prayed to see the glory of God, but God would only allow Moses to see his “back” and not his “face.” No one can see my face and live, God said. No one can truly see God’s glory. It would kill us.
This is why God has had to veil his glory within lesser glories. The burning bush was the veiled glory of God. The pillar of smoke that guided Israel was the veiled glory of God. The tabernacle and temple displayed the glory of God. All creation declares the glory of God. And of course, more than anything else, we his image bearers reflect the glory of God.
The problem, of course, is that we settle for all the lesser glories, expecting them to fill in our “glory gap.” We make the lessers into greaters. The immediates into ultimates. The fading into the eternal. We demand that things that were never meant to fully satisfy us give us ultimate satisfaction. Things like status, power, attention, sex, affection, possessions, physical beauty, and “likes” on Facebook. But because these things are not holy and eternal like God they will disappoint us at best, and destroy us at worst.
So here is the great human problem: we must have glory, but God’s glory is beyond us and lesser glories will never satisfy us. So we are all glory junkies, desperately manufacturing our own glory or stealing glory from each other whenever we can.
But God has offered us the solution to our glory deficiency in our union with the life of his Son, Jesus Christ. Knowing that the source of our glory must be greater than us, knowing that we can never manufacture our glory, that it must be imputed to us from outside of us, and knowing that only he, the Trinitarian God, can offer a glory that will satisfy and sanctify the human heart, God has sent his glory to us to be seen by us and shared by us as we receive the life of Christ.
In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, we have seen God’s glory. The prayer of Moses has been answered. In “to live is Christ” we have not only seen the glory of God, but we have received the glory of God (John 1:12), his life of grace and truth, into our own lives. The search is over. In Jesus, we no longer have to settle for lesser glories, because the greatest glory, the glory of the love of the Trinity, is ours in him.
You: What lesser glories have you been settling for lately?
You in Christ: How does knowing that you share glory with Christ allow you to rest today?
Christ in you: How can the glory of Jesus be displayed in your life today?
To Live is Christ 