QUESTION No. 8 - SUNDAY JUNE 7, 2026
Q. Can anyone explain God’s glory?
The “Glory of God” is one of the most often repeated and least understood phrases in Christianity.
Do it for the glory of God. Give glory to God. Glorify the Lord.
Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
— Isaiah 6:3
Is it a noun? Verb? Do we give it? Receive it? Partake in it?
Yes. All of the above.
But how?
When I think of glory, I think radiant light, trumpets. flowing robes, long processions, adoring crowds, and throngs with hands raised in worship.
But glory as a concept is difficult to explain. We accept it tacitly without grasping it intellectually. We feel it more than we admit to know it. But if we were forced to provide an explanation or definition it would be…
It’s what God is.
Order, truth, goodness, beauty, wisdom, balance, harmony, power, completeness, infinite wholeness.
All of it. Everything all at once altogether now and without end. (Try and wrap your mind around THAT.)
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
- Romans 11:36
We attempt to give glory a name and assign it recognizable imagery because, like God, it is too big to grasp. Too much for the mind to put into words or capture in pictures.
The finite mind trying, without success, to comprehend the infinite.
A WORD ON THE WORD: The Hebrew word for glory is “KAVOD” meaning weight or heaviness. In the Septuagint, it was translated into Greek as “DOXA” which is more closely related to opinion or reputation – what others think of you, true or not. Then it was once again translated into Latin in the Vulgate as GLORIA – fame, renown, visible splendor.
God is not an object but a substance, a substance not known or even felt but distinctly present. A presence that fills all things at once, holds all things together, and exists as the origin of all things seen and unseen.
We seek a way to explain this presence, a presence not perceived but objectively known - like gravity.
Christian apologist RC Sproul summed it up best: “The whole earth is full of God’s glory — is an assertion that the universe is saturated with a presence so qualitatively different from the creature that encounter with it is always, at minimum, destabilizing.”
“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
- Hebrews 1:3
In Christian theology, Jesus is the perfect revelation of God’s glory. The divine presence made visible in human form to all of creation. An inexplicable encounter with the transcendent real. In Jesus: order, truth, goodness, beauty, wisdom, balance, harmony, power, completeness, infinite wholeness.
“Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”
- Philippians 1:11
So when we are told to give glory to God, or all the earth is filled with God’s glory. Rest easy. The creature cannot reach the Creator by effort or intellect. God’s glory can only be received. Like grace, we accept it willingly and openly without knowing exactly what it is.
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”
- Isaiah 60:1
BoBQ Vol. 4 pg. 65-66