Glorifying the Lord - A Privilege

"Oh, magnify the LORD with me,And let us exalt His name together." Psalms 34:3

A very prominent theme in scripture is the glory of the Lord. Many verses speak of God's glory proclaimed in nature (Psalm 19:1, Psalm 97:6). The Bible declares God's glory to be in His righteousness and holiness. And these attributes cause His name to be glorified above all things. In fact, the Bible speaks of God's glory being so powerful, pure, and awesome, that the mere sight of it would cause sinful men to be killed and cast into eternal punishment. In Exodus 34, the Bible describes Moses's face - a mere dimmed reflection of the glory of God - as so bright and overwhelming that the Children of Israel could not look upon him (Moses).

When Isaiah, in a vision, saw God seated on His throne and His glory, he cried out, "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts" (Isaiah 6:5).

Many passages throughout Scripture extol and exalt the glory of the Lord. God is able to display His glory to His creation in any manner He chooses. He could shine forth His glory Himself to men, which he did many times, or choose not to use any means to accomplish the displaying of His glory, but he doesn't. He gives us the privilege of glorifying Him. We who have been declared righteous in His sight by Christ's death on the cross, receive the the great honor of lifting up our Savior for His glory.

When Christ redeems us from the curse of the law, we are no longer slaves to the law and unable to glorify the Lord; He establishes us as children of the Lord and co-heirs with Christ. Christ proclaimed many times in Scripture that He sought to glorify the Father. As co-heirs with Christ our striving passion should be to glorify God in everything that we do. This is not in any way a burden, but is an incredible gift from God, that he allows us to accomplish, as well as take great joy in fulfilling.

In my next post, I will discuss how the glory of God is shown in our life, and how it is an utter privilege from the Lord to glorify Him.

The Glory of The Lord

Normally in the middle of the week, we post another hermeneutics post, however, the research that I have been doing for my weekly post (and my schoolwork) forces me to delay that, so instead I will post my weekly post.

In our world today, the number one attribute of God that is discussed is His love. In fact, modern “Christians” seem to focus on God’s love to the exclusivity of any other attribute. The modern church in its infatuation with nothing but love, have forgotten one of God’s most striking, awe inspiring, and majestic attributes: His glory.

The Bible discusses God’s glory quite often and seems to lift it up as the most important aspect of our God. 1 Corinthians 2:8 refers to Jesus as the Lord of glory. In several verses Jesus makes it clear that He will return with power and glory. In fact the glory of the Lord is said to be our highest goal and what we should strive for above everything.

In the next few articles, I’m going to be exploring the glory of the Lord and how we as Christians are responsible to give as much glory to God as possible in everything that we do.

Fellowship in the Gospel

Philippians 1:3-5:

³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, ⁵ for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

For my weekly column, I am going to discuss something that the Lord has laid on my heart recently. The fellowship of the saints.

We as Christians often discuss fellowship.

"We are going to get together with some believers and have some fellowship."

"How about coming over to my house for fellowship?"

"We're going to have a fellowship meeting tonight."

Often we will loosely toss the word fellowship around as if the only requirement for fellowship is that believers are going to be together. We will discuss "the game" from last week, or what we did last Saturday, or even what things we did with the church, or the like.

But is this really what the Bible describes as fellowship?

In this passage in Philippians, Paul makes the statement that we have "fellowship in the gospel." Yet too often, we as Christians will come together and discuss anything but the gospel, the Bible, or anything related to spiritual growth... even our savior. But we are still willing to call the gathering fellowship.

Paul makes it clear in this verse - and throughout Philippians - that we as Christians have fellowship in the gospel. When we become believers, we have fellowship with other believers in the many areas - common goals - of glorifying Christ, serving the Lord, and growing in sanctification. We also share in the joy, the blessings, and the promises of the Lord. But we would not share in these if it were not for the gospel, the centerpiece of the Christian's life. Therefore, when Paul talks about fellowship, he makes it clear that our fellowship with believers should be in the gospel.

By stating this, I am not in any way stating that we only talk about the gospel, although it is the most important part of Christianity. We should also discuss other doctrines, and portions of the Bible, but the crucial and most important aspect of fellowship is the gospel.

Neither should we only discuss biblical topics, but the Bible in no way describes these as fellowship.

In conclusion, I think when we as Christians are together we should focus on true biblical fellowship and the centerpiece of our fellowship should be the gospel. And we should not gather for "fellowship" and discuss nothing that is biblical.