Part II – God’s Glory
To understand what being made for glory is, we must understand God’s glory. God loves__________, what would you put in that blank? Probably the most common word we would put in there is us, or believers. This is true, God loves believers, but there is a better word to put in the blank, namely, God. So, God loves God – Wait a minute, that’s vanity, you might say. But lets think about it, since God is the creator of the universe and has complete control over it and being the greatest being in the universe, it would be idolatry (placing something minor in the place of something great) for God to love anything more than Himself.
The word for glory in the Greek is δόξα or doxa and it has the idea of majesty, praise, and the verb δοξάζω or doxazo has the idea to magnify. So, God loves God and therefore glorifies/magnifies God because God is worthy of glory/majesty.
Isaiah 48:11 where God says He will not share His glory, in the context God has just finished saying that the reason He did all the things for Israel was for His name sake. Psalm 106:6-8 gets more detailed in the things that God did for Israel, splitting the Red Sea and leading them through the desert were acts by God to the glory of God (the text uses the phrase “so that He[God] might make known His mighty power).
Quickly I’m going to talk about God’s love in relation to His glory. The common thought of love in this day is to make much of someone. But probably a better way to define love is to want the best for someone. Now if God gave you the best computer, the fanciest car, the biggest TV, the best He wouldn’t love you because He isn’t giving you the absolute best thing, namely Himself. So therefore it is more loving for God to give Himself than for Him to give you a higher rank or a better view of yourself.
This is basically from the view point of God the Father; I will take a look what Christ has to do with this theology in later parts.
Next, Part III – “What Man Did to Deserve Eternal Destruction and Hell”
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