The Glory of God

“My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all the day.” – Psalm 71:8

What is the glory of God? We bandy the phrase about all the time, but what is it, really? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s hard to define. My favorite explanation at the moment is that God’s glory is not a single attribute that he has, but the sum of all of his attributes put together, and the excellence of each attribute—not just his wisdom, but the perfection and greatness of that wisdom; not just his beauty, but the perfection and greatness of that beauty. 

I recently came across a piece by Jonathan Edwards called “The End For Which God Created The World,” in which he does a great word study on how “glory” is used throughout the Bible. He expounds more on the idea of what God’s glory means in terms of each of his attributes by saying that God’s glory is the way God inwardly possesses them, the way he outwardly displays them, and then also the way our own knowledge and experience of them results in His praise and honor. He writes:

“The emanation or communication of the divine fullness, consisting in the knowledge of God, love to him, and joy in him, has relation indeed both to God and the creature: but it has relation to God as its fountain, as the thing communicated is something of its internal fullness. The water in the stream is something of the fountain; and the beams of the sun are something of the sun. And again, they have relation to God as their object: for the knowledge communicated is the knowledge of God; and the love communicated, is the love of God; and the happiness communicated, is joy in God. In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged, his fullness is received and returned. Here is both an emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and he is the beginning, and the middle, and the end.”

His explanation gets better at the relationship we have with God’s glory. Yes, God’s glory is the sum of all of God’s attributes and the nature and excellence of each—but it is experienced by us. That is by definition part of what it is. In fact, his glory is in every single experience we have, if we look for it, if we receive it. And we cannot receive it without returning it, reflecting it back to God and out to others. This is what it means to live for God’s glory: to see and experience that “the whole is of God, and in God, and to God.” That is how the Psalmist can write, “my mouth is filled… with your glory all the day.” All the day—every single moment, his mouth can speak of the glory of God.