I don’t see glory quite that way. In the OT, chabod signifies “weight” or “heaviness.” I see that as God’s desire, for our own good, that we have a sense of the import of taking Him seriously. As a father and a mother have a responsibility to see (if they can) that their children give them healthy respect – and this for the good of each child as well as for the relationships of the children with one another and with the parents – so our heavenly Father will have it that we honor Him and give Him the appropriate “weight of glory” due to our Father.
I was struggling with this concept, and with the idea of “fearing God,” and one day my mom and I went to a restaurant with a western theme. They had a mural of a wagon train, featuring the trail boss’ face as the focal point. For anyone who doesn’t know, people who wanted to move into the American west during the settlement years would either put together or join a wagon train and hire a “trail boss” to lead the expedition. This would be an experienced frontiersman who would, hopefully, be familiar with the conditions and dangers and challenges they would meet on their way. This particular trail boss has a rugged, determined, and very stern expression on his face. He sits a paint horse as though he was born there, and is scanning the horizon (presumably for danger) as he rides up over a ridge toward the observer. It’s not a legendary work of art, but the painter did quite a good job on his/her central figure. (Caveat: Please take this in the limited sense I mean it. I realize that native Americans were shamefully treated in these years, and I’m not glorifying the westward expansion – certainly not in the way it was carried out.)
Contemplating this guy as I waited for my mom to fill up her plate, it occurred to me that THIS is perhaps at least part of what God means by insisting we take HIM seriously. I wouldn’t want to cross this trail boss if I were in the wagon train – but not because I dreaded him. I think I would fear to disobey his orders though, and I would want to avoid his censure. This wouldn’t be because I thought he meant me any harm or even because I feared his opinion of me, but rather because he was a stern man determined to get me and my companions safely to our destination, and would take it seriously if any of us did anything that would endanger ourselves or one another. Fearing God, giving Him glory – in this way – is, I think, appropriate today, but especially for the OT times, in the childhood of the human race, when perhaps fear may have been the thing we best understood. I don’t think that God means for us to give Him glory in the way we might glorify some terrifyingly powerful despot who would torture and perhaps destroy us if we failed to kowtow quickly enough. I don’t think He has in His thoughts a picture of the adoring masses worshiping some movie star or the latest politician superstar running for office or a pretty boy rock musician. I think it runs much deeper than that, and that it’s not something to stroke our Father’s ego but rather something necessary to US, that we understand who He is and that we need to take Him seriously and trust and obey Him.
In the New Testament, the word used for glory is doxa. It carries the typical meanings we moderns conceive of for glory, but there’s another deeper meaning that interests me. Glory meant the truth about a person – his or her story, whether good or bad. In the Old Testament, God wants us to fear Him. In the New, He wants us to KNOW Him. Giving God glory means to reveal Him to one another for all to see. Our Father wants to be known by all His children. THIS is the sort of glory that I see Jesus obtaining for the Father (and for Himself and for the Spirit) to whit: that we may KNOW Him. And by knowing Him, we might have “the God kind of life” or as most translations have it, “eternal life.”
I wince when someone promotes the idea of God as some kind of despot who WILL have His due of glory and homage. Clearly this is NOT the image displayed of the Father in the life of Jesus. Jesus was the one who stayed up all night praying and communing with the Father and then ministered to the poor and the lost and the bedraggled all day. He is the one who had nowhere to lay His head, who walked everywhere He went, who called out James and John for suggesting they might call down fire from heaven to destroy a village that had refused Him passage. This is the God who touched lepers and praised a woman with an issue of blood for sneaking up to touch the tassels of His garment without His consent, who defended the woman caught in shameful adultery. He doesn’t seem too concerned about His “glory” if by “glory” you mean the acclaim of men.
Jesus said to Philip, “Have I been so long with you and yet you do not know Me? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” Our God, our Lord, wants to be KNOWN because if we can only see Him, we will be LIKE Him. He is not keen on men taking the credit for what HE has done because this would cause us to trust in a source that is no source at all. It would allow heedless and loveless men to lord it over one another and take advantage of one another. Glorifying men is dangerous, but to introduce and demonstrate God to our fellow men is a wonderful and beneficial thing.
Glory (in the sense of worshipful adoration) is not primarily and most importantly a thing that God deserves (though He does deserve it), but rather a thing that we need to see in Him, and that God alone can embody without being perverted and destroyed by it. Yes we need to give Him the glory because He and He alone deserves the glory. But NOT because He is a “glory hog.” It’s because this kind of glory is safe with no other. We need to honor and venerate our Father. He, strictly speaking, does not NEED to be honored and venerated by us. What’s more, He does not demand such honor and veneration for His sake or because of His worthiness. He demands it because WE need to respect our Father.
I realize this is somewhat rambling, and I don’t have time to go over it to pull it all together – but I hope it makes at least a credible effort at explaining what I believe about it.
Love, Cindy