Paul uses a phrase to describe the Gospel - he refers to the Gospel as the Gospel of the Glory of Christ.
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. [2 Corinthians 4:4 NIV]
This word 'glory' is often used in the Bible and it is not easy for us to grasp. We refer to glory as what someone has achieved by some great achievement. It relates to how people think of them. They may have been a pop singer or politician or inventor and they have won fame and glory because of their success. But this is not what is meant here. In the Bible glory is associated with God and with his presence. Glory is what makes God so different from us and causes us to worship Him. Here is a verse from the Old Testament which speaks of God's glory.
and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. [Exodus 24:16-17 NIV]
This is a very powerful passage in the Book of Exodus and its primary purpose is to convey that Jehovah or Yahweh is holy - He is distinct and different from us humans in every way. Other nations made some object to represent their god and the object made them feel that their god was just like them but more powerful. Here the Israelites are reminded that their God is all-powerful and completely out of their reach. His glory was associated with consuming fire and this reminds us of Moses vision of God in the desert when God spoke to Moses from a bush which was on fire but the fire did not consume the bush. So fire provides us with a picture of God - His absolute holiness. His glory produces worship and praise from us. It produces fear and reverence.
Here in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he attributes this divine glory to Jesus Christ. He speaks about this glory as the central feature of the Gospel - the Gospel that displays the glory of Christ. When Jesus came down to this earth, his glory was hidden from view. Most people who saw him failed to appreciate that he was the Son of God. The Christmas carol reads like this -
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Lo the incarnate deity.
But there were some disciples (including John the writer of the fourth Gospel) who saw this glory.
In his prologue to his Gospel, John wrote
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:10, 14 NIV]
John acknowledges that most people did not realise that the Creator of the universe was living among them. But he says that the Word became flesh and we have seen his glory. This really means we 'beheld' his glory which means to contemplate or to gaze at meditatively. John spent long hours watching the Son of God and he saw his glory shining through the human flesh. He was also one of the favoured three disciples on the mount of transfiguration.
But Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and this was the last sighting of Jesus of Nazareth for most of his countrymen. This did not seem to be a glorious sight - there was not much that looked like heaven in the sight of a man hanging upon a cross. But the cross is central to the Gospel and the death of Jesus on the Cross brought glory to God. It is how Jesus brought glory to God.
Paul himself was probably not present at the cross but he was given a personal revelation of Jesus of Nazareth. When he was travelling towards the city of Damascus to continue his extermination of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, Paul had a vision of light from heaven and he saw Jesus in heaven - this was a vision of divine glory. This vision changed the bigoted zealous Jew into an ardent follower of Jesus Christ.
As Christians we must give Jesus Christ the glory and honour he deserves.
Anyone who preaches the Gospel or witnesses to non-Christians on a one-to-one basis needs to remember this description of the Gospel. We need to make sure that it is not about us - it is not about giving glory to us. It is about Jesus and we exalt him and give him the praise he deserves.
[Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash]
Good words Robert, although you know my view re John and John. John the son of Zebedee was on Mount Tabor but not John the author of the gospel, in which the Transfiguration is not mentioned. If author John had been present then no doubt he would have included it in his gospel, but its absence suggests that he was not present at Tabor and therefore not John the son of Zebedee