The Gospel According to Paul # 28

In His Letters to Timothy

The Good Tidings of the Glory of God

What is this glory of God which becomes that gospel, that good news? It is the glory of God in the revelation of Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. The revelation of Himself. In the Old Testament the glory of God has symbolic form, as we know. For instance, in the most Holy Place of the tabernacle, between the cherubim on the mercy seat, the glory was found. The glory covered the mercy seat. It was a light streaming down upon the mercy seat, upon the ark of the covenant; streaming down and focusing there. It was heavenly radiance. It was but a symbol. That which it symbolized is here - the light of God streaming down upon, and through, His Son Jesus Christ. That is the glory of God. Paul in writing to the Corinthians puts it in this way: "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). It is that which is in the Lord Jesus of God's perfectly restful, calm, tranquil, abiding satisfaction.

The Glory of God in a Man

Now, here is a very remarkable thing. You hear about the glory of God. Much is said about it, and you are told that that is what you will find in the Bible; that, if you go to the Bible, there you will find much about the glory of God. When you take up the Bible looking for the glory of God, what do you find? A Man! You find that you are confronted with a Man. You cannot get away from that Man: the Old Testament is always pointing, by numerous means and methods and ways, to a Man; the New Testament, from beginning to end, has one Man in view, a Man always in view. So that you have to say: "This is the answer to my quest. I am in quest of the knowledge of the glory of God, and God's answer to the quest is a Man." That is but an exposition of this little phrase, "the gospel of the glory of the blessed God," which is the revelation of God in His Son, Jesus Christ.

God is here represented as being in a state of perfect tranquility, restfulness, calm, abiding assurance and  satisfaction and joy, and everything that can be summed up in the word "blessedness." God is represented as being. God is stated to be, in that condition. What is the basis of that state of God? It is just that God has found a perfect, a complete, expression of Himself in a Man. Yes, we know what that Man was. I am not overlooking or setting aside His Deity, His own Godhead, but I am not thinking about that just now. You see, God created man with very, very high purposes. Indeed, man was created man in order to answer to and satisfy the heart of God: and when we say that, we are saying tremendous things. To satisfy the heart of God! There are some people who take a lot of satisfying. Indeed, they never do seem satisfied. Things are always falling short of their standard and their ideal. But you can go a long way, you can go as far as it is possible to go with any human conception of satisfaction, and you still fall far, far short, infinitely short, of God's idea. God is so much greater, so much more wonderful!

We have in the fallen creation but a faint reflection of how wonderful and great God is. Yet even when we view this very creation as it is, with all its faults and weaknesses and variations and so on, we have to stand in awe and worship. We can see just a faint indication of what a wonderful God He is, and of how much it must take to satisfy Him. Yet here He is in a state of absolute satisfaction calm, tranquil, restful, happy, because all those thoughts of His, all those desires of His, all those intentions of His, and all those first undertakings of His, have now been consummated and perfected - not in the creation generally, but in a Man. That Man answers to God to the very last requirement of that infinite Mind. How great Christ is! God finds, therefore, His happiness, His blessedness, His satisfaction, His tranquility, in that.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 29 - "A Representative Man")