And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.
To Him be the dominion for ever and ever.
I want to place over this time a fragment out of that verse. It is this: “His eternal glory.”
That indicates an all-governing object and end of God: glory.
Whenever and wherever there has existed a state which has answered to God’s mind, there has been glory. Glory is always present when things correspond to the mind of God, because glory is the mind of God.
Of course, sometimes we have instances in the Scriptures where the appearance of the glory has been unto judgment. But even so, it was a testimony against that which did not correspond to the mind of God.
You remember when the divinely appointed servant of God, Moses, was challenged by some as to his position. We are told the glory appeared in the door of the tabernacle, and judgment followed.
Then, at the commencement of the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, we have the Lord Jesus presented in glory, and it is again to judge things.
But it is always, whether it is in blessing or in judgment, a setting forth of God’s mind. God’s mind is a glorious mind; it is a mind of glory. And glory is timeless: it is His eternal glory.
Now, seeing that this is an all-governing object and end of God, a definition of glory is called for which would fit into every occasion when the word is used.
And of course, that is a very big job. You have only to look at a concordance, and you will find that you have on hand hundreds—more than four hundred—occasions in the Bible where this word “glory” is used.
And yet there is a definition that will fit into every instance. What I mean is this: when glory is mentioned, you ask the question, “What does that mean? What does glory mean?”
Then, if you define glory, you will see how the definition, or the word truly understood, fits into every situation.
The definition which we have given before, according, I think, to what the Scripture makes perfectly clear, is that glory is God’s nature. And the state of glory is a state which corresponds to God’s nature.
Glory, therefore, is the divine nature in expression.
If you have divine love in perfection, you have glory. If there is a state of love—divine love—amongst the Lord’s people, then it is glory. Not necessarily something like a blaze of light that you see, but something which you sense. You sense it.
When there is a state of divine life in fullness, where there is no death at all but it is all life, the river is flowing in fullness: that is a state of glory.
When faith is free from all questions and doubts and mistrust—perfect faith—that is a state of glory.
When holiness, divine holiness, is present without any jarring, contradictory element of sin, then it is glory.
We know what we mean by just thinking of the opposite to all these. We know that when there is strife and discord and unlove, hatred, malice, suspicion, and all those things which are just contrary to love, there is no glory. There is no glory. It is a wretched situation, and no one would call that glorious.
Or in any of the other cases where, for some reason or other, death—spiritual death—has been allowed to come in, and we touch the realm of death and dead things. We get onto some line of conversation where it is touching things that are dead. They do not live with God. There is no glory. We are sorry that ever we touched them, mentioned them, referred to them. Death has no glory about it.
When you and I get into a state of doubting and questioning—questioning the Lord—and begin to waver in our faith, the glory goes out, and it never comes back until we get back to settled confidence in the Lord.
And when sin is allowed to pass, evil is given a place. There is no glory.
So I think the definition is a sound one—an all-right one. Glory is just the divine nature in expression, and wherever that is, then it is glory. It is glory. The glory comes in.
Glory is initial. Whenever we get into line with the mind of God—take the experience of one who comes first to the Lord.
A newborn soul, a new convert, one who has really come into the meaning of salvation right at the beginning—that one thinks that they are ready for heaven at once. There is nothing more to be done. Indeed, if they have not gone to heaven, heaven has come to them.
This is glory. There is a touch of glory. That is true; it is initial.
It is also occasional. That is, whenever there is some experience by which we come into a fuller correspondence to the will of God, there is a new uprising of glory.
It may be through some tremendous spiritual battle, some controversy that the Lord has had with us, or we with Him; something upon which the Lord has put His finger, and we have not just been willing to let go, to yield.
Something like that, where everything all the time has been held up in our relationship with the Lord or in our spiritual life. And then, as we say, we get through. We get through on that. We get that thing settled and cleared up and out of the way. Immediately there is a new expression of glory. It fills our heart.
It is initial; it is occasional. We are going to have many times of glory in our Christian lives.
It is progressive—progressive in this sense, that it is an increasing matter.
The Christian, from time to time, is taken into a deeper, deeper experience: a trial, affliction, sorrow—something deeper and more difficult than anything before.
And there is a time when there does not seem to be very much flowing. Glory seems to be veiled. There is nothing necessarily wrong about that, dear friends. I will come to that again in a minute.
That has become an experience, and that is recognized as being true to Christian experience.
But you see, God is the God of glory. We are called unto His eternal glory. And what the Lord means by this is more glory. The deeper the trial, the greater the suffering, the greater the glory presently.
It is only to bring about the glory in fuller measure. It is progressive like that. And so there seems to be no end to these going-down experiences, but equally there is no end to the coming-up experiences.
There seems to be no end. Through the dark experiences, be assured that there is no end to the light ones.
Sometimes I have been in the lift—or elevator—trying to make contact with the operator, and I have said something like this: “Well, you know a great deal about the ups and downs in life, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” with a grumble.
And I say, “Make sure that the last one is up and not down, won’t you?” And the questioning look comes onto the face: “What do you mean by that?”
Well, you see, that is just what we mean. With the Lord’s people, the last one is going to be up, not down, simply because this is an all-governing object and end of the Lord.
Do you believe it? That the end is not going to be down; it is going to be up. He is intending glory, Who has called you unto His eternal glory.
And so, what is initial, occasional, and progressive is final. The Bible reveals that this is so for the people of God. That is a statement, a general truth—a truth in general.
Now, if you look in your New Testament, you will find that glory is a central and governing factor in the foundation of this particular dispensation in a particular way.
This dispensation, as you know, in a special way is built upon, as the Word says, the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.
The faith of believers for this dispensation is thereby declared to rest upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Of course, they are the New Testament apostles and prophets, Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone. That is the full foundation.
Now, when you look to the foundation of the apostles and prophets, upon which all faith in this dispensation rests, you find this: the foundation of glory.
John, who was one of them—and not one of the least of them—said, “We beheld His glory.”
And you look at his Gospel, and you find that word “glory” has a very large place in the Gospel by John. It is glory, glory.
And so John, long years after, sums up his apprehension of Christ—what Christ had meant to them. And it is in the plural: “We,” the apostles, “we beheld His glory.” And everything rests upon that.
Peter, who again was not one of the least of the apostles, in looking back upon what Christ had come to be to them, and referring to what evidently had made the greatest impression upon him, said, “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty, when there came from the excellent glory this voice.”
Now, that is rather remarkable in this way: Peter, who was on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Lord, as he put it afterward, years afterward, “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty, when there came from the excellent glory this voice.”
It was not very long—only a little while—after that that Peter is found in complete darkness, doubting who the Lord was, doubting almost everything that the Lord had said, raising questions about the cross.
Because the cross, to him, seemed to be the greatest disaster that could happen. Doubting the very resurrection, and because he had not laid hold of the significance of this, really denying his Lord with vehemence.
This, as it were, came right up from the dead. This all came back—this Mount of Transfiguration experience. It all came right back in this mighty way. And years afterward he was saying, “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”
You see, Peter’s life and ministry subsequently rested upon the glory of Christ—upon glory. It came out of glory.
I believe that the subsequent recollection, remembrance, and recovery of what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration was the inspiration and strength of Peter’s life and ministry.
For us—for us in this whole dispensation—these men were saved by glory. That is the point. These men were confirmed and established by glory. These men had their life and their ministry from the glory that they had seen in Christ.
And Paul, by no means the least of the apostles, beheld the glory of Christ on his way to Damascus. He beheld the glory. Christ appeared to him in glory.
And we have good reason to believe that that was not only the conversion of Paul, but everything that we know about Paul dates to that and sprang out of it.
The wonderful thing about it is that the glory was attached to Jesus of Nazareth. “Who art Thou, Lord?” “I am Jesus of Nazareth.”
The significance of that is tremendous, because that is the title of Christ in humiliation—Christ as Man. And the glory, the eternal glory of God, had been attached to the Man, Jesus of Nazareth.
It had been attached to Man. And that became the very foundation of Paul’s life and ministry.
You see, dear friends, glory was the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and this whole dispensation for Christians rests upon that glory. These men knew something about the glory, and that glory made them what they were and gave them to us what we owe to them—what we owe to those men.
Now, just for a minute or two, let us look at another aspect of this: the four relationships of glory in the New Testament.
In Acts 7:2, Stephen opens his address to the Jewish rulers and elders with these words: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Ur of the Chaldees.”
The God of glory.
Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians 1:17, uses this phrase: “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.”
The Father of glory.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 2:8, he speaks like this: “They crucified the Lord of glory.”
The Lord of glory.
And then Peter, in his first letter, 1 Peter 4:14: “The Spirit of glory resteth upon you.”
Four relationships of glory: the God of glory, the Father of glory, the Lord of glory, the Spirit of glory. The triune God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—all designated by the word glory.
Let us look at each one of these briefly.
Whenever the word or idea “God” comes into view or into mind, there is only one thing that is the right meaning of that. If it is God, then the idea is worship, is it not? It is worship.
The God of glory. Then the end of all God’s ways will be worship. The glory will be in terms of worship.
You see, this is Abraham: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Ur of the Chaldees.”
And you remember, in our last conference, we pointed out that in Ur of the Chaldees worship was given to two thousand different forms of deities. And God said, “This is not good enough. Two thousand things getting worshipped! Only one God Who ought to have the worship. Come out of that, Abraham—out of that.”
And you notice that the whole history of God’s dealings with Abraham—indeed, His choosing of Abraham—was to constitute a people who gave all worship to one God.
Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.
A people who give God His sole place and rights, unreservedly, undividedly—all the worship to Him alone. That was the meaning of the calling of Abraham: out from all other worship, to worship the one, the only true and living God; a people seen in whom God got His rights, and got them thoroughly, without any reservation. That was the object.
And God says, when that happens, when I have My place—My sole place—and there is no dividedness about this matter of who has the worship and who gets the rights, then there will be a state of glory.
We can look right through, cannot we, to the end? The end will be that there will be no other gods, no other objects of worship, no dividing of allegiance with God. He will be God alone.
Paul touches on that when he says that even the Son Himself shall be subject, that God may be all in all. And that is where there will be glory. It is glory in terms of worship.
If you and I—and this is saying a very elementary thing—if you and I believe in God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, as our God, claim Him to be our God, believe Him to be our God, see what it means.
It is something which would lead to glory, but it is a challenge all along as to whether He is, after all, God—our only God, altogether God.
Enough on that: the God of glory.
So each title has its own significance: the Father of glory.
Well, fatherhood means that there must be children, or it does not have any meaning at all. And true fatherhood means that the children take the character of the parent.
This is the letter to the Ephesians, as you see: “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” Father in Whom every family is named. You see, the idea is a family now.
God’s family, taking the character of God, deriving the very life and nature of God, and expressing it.
I need not dwell upon that in the natural realm. So often it is so easy to see the family likeness, as we say—the family likeness—and to say, “Ah, son, well, we know whose son you are.” Not always, but often.
Then in this case there is no question about it, or there ought to be no question about it, whose children we are. It ought to be possible for it to be said, “We know to Whom you belong,” meaning, “We know who your Father is.” There is the family likeness.
Now, if there is a real partaking of the divine nature, if there is here the expression of His fatherhood, in the measure in which that is true, it will be glory. He is the Father of glory.
That is, the children partake of His nature, and the nature of God in expression is glory.
Well, that is capable of being submitted and subjected to test, is it not? Again, in the way in which I said just now: if there is something not like the Father about us, something ugly, something that is a contradiction to the likeness of our heavenly Father, well, there is no glory.
But get that cleared up—some bit of unlove, something about us that is really not the Lord. Get it cleared up and out of the way, and what happens? Well, the only word is: it is glory.
Sensed inwardly, enjoyed inwardly, and enjoyed with others, glory comes in. Take it between two Christians: get that ugly thing dealt with and removed, and what glory comes between them!
So simple, but that is the Father of glory: the divine nature displayed in children.
Then, coming to 1 Corinthians 2, the Lord of glory. I think this has a double meaning.
First of all, it clearly indicates Christ’s place—Christ’s rightful place: the Lord of glory. It is a title given to Him, that He is the Lord of glory.
Meaning, in this sense, the Lord from glory; the Lord Whose place is in glory; the Lord Whose rightful inheritance is glory. He is the Lord of glory in the utter and absolute sense.
And again, it is only when Jesus is really Lord that we know the glory.
Oh, this long-drawn-out battle of His lordship—what a…