Lack His Glory?

There is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift,

                                                                                                                        Romans 3:22b-24a ESV

The Bible’s depth is a continual source of amazement to me. The central statement in the passage above is an example. One night recently I was awake and thought of Romans 3:23, a verse that I memorized now more than sixty years ago. Suddenly I was caught up short: “fall short of God’s glory?” That is the result of sin? What is that about? Surely the result of sin is damnation, or better, alienation from God. Then I remembered that one of my teachers once pointed out that the verb in the verse not only connotes “failure to attain,” but also simply “to lack.” As a result of sin, we lack the glory of God?

God’s glory, as I have pointed out in other places in these thoughts, is not something that although it is beautiful, is also thin, ephemeral, and passing, as the English term typically connotes. No, the idea of glory in the Bible is that which is significant, important, and lasting. A person with glory is a person of importance and significance. So, God’s glory is seen in his works (Ps 96:3), his strength (96:7), his righteousness (97:6), and ultimately, in his name, or reputation (102:15). So what is it that sin does to us? It deprives us of that reality, that significance, that value, that we had in God. (Think here of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.)

So what did Jesus come to do? To save us from condemnation? Yes. To restore us to fellowship with our Creator? Yes. But look at John 17:22 “I have given them the glory that you gave me.”

Jesus has made it possible for us to become real again, to share the same reality that he shares with his Father. No longer must we live behind a façade of self-importance. No longer need we pretend to be something we are not. No longer do we need to construct a fabric of lies to make people believe we have significance. Now we can be true, now we can be our real selves whatever others think of us. And the best is yet to be. Paul tells us that there is a weight of glory laid up for us (2 Cor 4:17). Think of that! Glory!