The Glory of God
All of His Goodness
Credit: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lRJNbG
This is part 2 of the previous post, ‘Glory’. In Exodus 33, Moses asked God to show him His Glory. After the grievous sin committed by the Israelites, he wondered if God would still be with them. Moses wanted reassurance, one that goes deep. He knew that beholding God in his very essence, was the only thing that could strengthen him again. Friends, that is also true for us. Let’s always pray: ‘Lord, show me your Glory’.
So, what is the Glory of God? According to God himself, it is all of His goodness. All of it, all at once and all of the time:
“And he [The Lord] said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name . [...]
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation [of those who hate me]’ ”
The Simplicity of God
‘The perfections of God are not like a pie’, says Matthew Barrett in his essay on Divine Simplicity, ‘as if we sliced up the pie into different pieces, love being ten percent, holiness fifteen percent, omnipotence seven percent, and so on’. The simplicity of God is a biblical doctrine that helps us think and talk about God’s attributes rightly. Simplicity does not mean that God is simple or simple to understand. It means that ‘God is not made up of parts; he is not composite or a compounded being. He is simple; all that is in God is God’.
God is all of who He is — fully and completely, at all times. In other words, God does not stop being Holy when he is being merciful. He does not set aside his lovingkindness when he executes judgment. God is all merciful and all gracious and all forgiving and all loving and all just and all holy — all at once — all of the time. This is hard and frankly impossible for us to fully grasp. We can nonetheless grow in understanding it with the help of God’s Spirit.
All of His Goodness
God is all Good and Good all of the time. He has eternally been so. This is what makes him the 'weightiest', most valuable, most beautiful, most admirable, and most worthy of all. This is his Glory. In his very essence, God is:
Merciful and gracious
Slow to anger
Abounding in Steadfast Love and Faithfulness
Holy and Just
God is deeply and by nature compassionate. As a father has compassion for his children so the Lord has compassion over us. He knows our frailties and weaknesses. He does not desire that any of us should perish. He is slow to anger and quick to forgive. He keeps his promises and is faithful to us even when we are faithless. He forgives all our sins. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. At the same time, He will by no means clear the guilty. This may seem contradictory but it is not. It is because God is all-good, with no tint of evil, that he hates evil. It is because God is all-Good that he is just and executes judgment on sin. The guilty, who is not cleared, is the one who hates God and refuses his forgiveness.
God is and has been from eternity past merciful and gracious, slow to anger, rich in love and faithfulness, holy and just. Everything God does and says perfectly reflects all of these things all at once, all of the time. This is his Name and His reputation in the earthly and heavenly realms. Humans, angels, and demons all witness His glory. In Christ Jesus, we behold the Glory of God with unveiled faces. Jesus is the ‘key’ that makes sense of all of it. This is the good news for sinners who place their faith in Christ: God can both judge sin AND be merciful to the sinner because Jesus Christ took upon himself our punishment. He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God. The one who remains guilty, who is not forgiven, is the one who refuses the forgiveness freely offered by God through Christ.
Back To The Rock
Let’s go back to the story of Moses. We left him in the cleft of the rock. He has just witnessed a mere glimpse of God’s mercifulness, graciousness, slowness to anger, abundance of love and faithfulness, holiness and justice. It was not just a visual experience. No, no. Moses’ whole being experienced the Goodness of God as he passed by Him. God covered Moses with His hand so as to not obliterate him with the weight of the wonder of his goodness. What a glorious God! What is Moses’ reaction after such an experience? He bowed and worshiped (b). His faith and strength were renewed.
I hope this helps us better understand ‘the Glory of God’. As believers, our aim is to show the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Through our lives, we want the entire creation, those in the earthy and heavenly realms, to see all of the Goodness of God.
NOTE & SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
(a) Deuteronomy 5:9-10 (ESV): ‘…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments’.
(b) Exodus 34:8-9 (ESV): And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.
