EXPERIENCING THE GLORY OF GOD (3)

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV).

The glory of God is the revelation of His love. To Know God’s love is to know His glory. Paul prayed that believers should “know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19 NKJV). Knowing the love of Christ results in being filled with the fullness of God, which implies His glory. The primary motive of the coming and the suffering of Christ is to enable believers to experience glory. The Bible testifies to this saying, “God is the One who made all things, and all things are for his glory. He wanted to have many children share his glory, so he made the One who leads people to salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10 NCV). God’s love for the world should result in bringing people of the world to share in His glory. When Moses prayed God to show him His glory, God answered by revealing His nature of love to him.  “The LORD passed in front of Moses, calling out, “Yahweh! The LORD!  The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin...” (Exodus 34:6-7 NLT). Wherever you see the compassion and mercy of God, there you find His glory.  The forgiveness and the unsurpassing patience of God towards people, as well as His unfailing faithfulness are some of the ways He demonstrates His love to us and thus reveal His glory.

The clearest revelation of God’s glory was in the person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Bible describes Jesus as “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person” (Hebrews 1:3 NKJV). In the “Incarnate Word,” we beheld the glory of God –“full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). To know Jesus is to know the glory of the Father. Human beings have no other means of encountering and experiencing the glory of God apart from receiving His gift of love in the person of Christ. Those who receive God’s love gift, which is Jesus Christ, are guaranteed two fold blessings namely.

·         Deliverance from eternal damnation – should not perish. 

·         Participation in God’s eternal glory –but have everlasting life.

Man, outside of Christ, is dead in sin and cannot do anything that would earn him God’s love and salvation.  Sin makes man guilty before God and therefore unfit for glory. God’s way of dealing with sin was love. Our text declared that He “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” His uncaused love moved Him to make the greatest sacrifice to meet man’s greatest need. The indescribable love unleashed its eternal power to deal with an indescribable evil called sin. Hence, the Scripture declared, “...But Christ came only once and for all time at just the right time to take away all sin by sacrificing himself” (Hebrews 9:26 NCV). Notice that the sacrifice of Christ is a once-and-for-all solution for the problem of sin. By sacrificing Himself, He effectively and for all times, took away all sins! By this singular sacrifice, Christ solved the greatest problem human beings face and will ever face. Sin no longer has power or consequence as far as God is concerned for all those who have received His gift of love in Christ.  They should not perish having become exempted from eternal damnation because of their faith in Christ and His finished work at Calvary.

Those who are thus exempted from eternal damnation because they have received God’s gift of love in Christ, are brought into the experience of the ever-increasing glory of God through the process of sanctification.  Experiencing God’s love is like a ride on an endless ocean of eternal bliss. Paul prayed, “you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19 Message). The more of God’s love you discover and experience, the more of it you long after and the more the Holy Spirit transforms you into the image of Christ  from glory to glory. Having this transforming power of God’s love at work in our lives is the way God has chosen to prepare us for glory –“everlasting life.”  May His grace abound for us for a tireless pursuit of His glory as the Holy Spirit takes us deeper and deeper into the experience of the love of Jesus.