You Will be Breathtaking
Discovering all that we are and will be in Christ may be one key to escaping the cold cells of man-centeredness. Because anything glorious we discover about ourselves — and we will be glorious — is a mere reflection of him. We don’t receive any glory that does not whisper his glory and therefore glorify him all the more. We are “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9–11).
It might be hard to imagine that a phrase like soli Deo gloria could be misunderstood or misapplied. To God alone be the glory. What could be unclear or mistaken in those six simple words?
Fortunately, the main burden of the phrase is wonderfully and profoundly clear. Our generation (and, to be fair, every generation before us and after us) desperately needs to be confronted with such God-centered, God-entranced clarity. The clarion anthem of the Reformation has been the antidote to what ails sinners from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We fall short of the glory of God by preferring anything besides the glory of God above the glory of God. That’s what sin is.
We want the credit, the appreciation, the praise for any good we’ve done (and pity and understanding for whatever we’ve done wrong). We were made to make much of him, but we demand instead that he make much of us. That is, if we think much of God at all. John Piper has been waving the red flag for decades.
It is a cosmic outrage billions of times over that God is ignored, treated as negligible, questioned, criticized, treated as virtually nothing, and given less thought than the carpet in people’s houses. (“I Am Who I Am”)
God’s glory gets less attention than the fibers under our feet — and we wonder why life feels so confusing and hard. Five hundred years ago, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other reformers recovered the priceless medicine: soli Deo gloria. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Psalm 115:1).
To Us be the Glory
The Reformers were living in a spiritual pandemic of compromise and confusion. As they walked through the darkness and corruption, they stumbled into the holy pharmacies of Scripture. And what did they find in those vials? They found, above all else, the glory of God. And that startling light became the North Star of all their resistance. They would not settle for any religion that robbed God of what was his and his alone.
Justification — what makes us right before God — had been distorted and vandalized in ways that uplifted our work, our self-determination, our glory. God’s justifying act was no longer found by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but in significant measure, muddied by our efforts. And that emphasis on what we do in salvation siphoned off glory from the gospel. To us, O Lord, and to our name, be some of the glory.
The stubborn word of God would not surrender glory so easily, though. “I am the Lord,” the Reformers read; “that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols” (Isaiah 42:8). “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). Then four more times in just three short verses:
For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
that I may not cut you off. . . .
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:9–11)
The only God who saves is a God rightly, beautifully jealous for glory. He plans and works all things, especially salvation, “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). Our only hope in life and death is that God will do whatever most reveals the worth and character and beauty of God.
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Regeneration
Sometimes we think of our regeneration as the moment when we first put our faith in Christ, but as Jesus himself says in John chapter 6: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Regeneration, then, is something that must happen before we can put our trust in Christ. Before we can reach out for the life preserver, we must first be given life.
Regeneration is a word theologians use to describe how someone becomes a believer.
I became a believer in Oxford in 1992, during the spring semester. And as I look back at that time, it’s tempting to wonder, Why is it that I reached out for Christ, while it’s quite possible that the person sitting in the pew next to me did not?
Was it because I listened a bit more closely, or read the Bible more attentively? It’s embarrassing to talk like this, but was it because I was slightly more teachable, or slightly more humble? Maybe I was a bit braver or more selfless than the person sitting next to me?
I’m not talking about taking a huge amount of credit here. Some have said that a person becoming a Christian is like a drowning person reaching out for a life preserver. You wouldn’t exactly say that by doing that, the drowning person was rescuing themselves. But they do at least have to make some effort to reach out and grab it. Christ, the life preserver, is clearly doing the heavy lifting in this act of rescue, but nevertheless, you’ve got to take hold of Him in order to be saved.
Is that the biblical picture of salvation?
At the heart of the issue is the question, What does God actually do when a person comes to faith?
One writer puts the question like this: “When the Holy Spirit regenerates a sinner, does He contribute only some power, such that the sinner must add some of his own energy or power to bring about the desired effect [that’s the life preserver view of salvation], or is regeneration a unilateral work of God?
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What Is the Meaning of “His Number Is 666”? — Revelation 13:16–18
The number 666 symbolizes man exalting himself as God. It is idolatrous humanism. It is what Adam reached for in the garden of Eden, and it is what lies of the heart of all idolatry. Truly, the hearts of humans are idol factories because sinful man desires to be like God. The number 666 perfectly matches the agenda of the beast and the false prophet to worship that which is created instead of the Creator. And chief of all things created is man.
In Revelation 13:16-18 we read the following about “the number of the beast”:
Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. (Rev. 13:16-18)
What is the meaning of “his number is 666” in this passage?
The Number Six Is Related to Man’s Creation on the Sixth Day, and It Has the Biblical Symbolic Value of Imperfection Due to Man’s Fall
The mark that the false prophet places on people is a sign of ownership and loyalty, indicating that the Antichrist beast is their lord and master. Their thoughts and actions are given to the service of the beast. The number six is related to man’s creation on the sixth day. It has the biblical symbolic value of imperfection due to man’s fall, while the number seven symbolizes divine perfection.
Six is repeated three times in Revelation 13:18 because repeating something three times represents the divine superlative (e.g., “‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’” (Rev. 4:8: see also Isa. 6:3).
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The Work of Demons
When I was baptized in the Lutheran church, the minister asked my parents, “Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?”
The devil and demonic activity are significant realities of life in this world, so it is not inappropriate that the Lutheran baptismal rite (and others) include an explicit rejection of the devil. But do we rightly understand the work of demons in this world?
In my experience we tend to give the devil either too much credit or too little attention.
When we yield to temptation, it’s far too easy to proffer a slightly more refined version of the child’s excuse (“the devil made me do it!”). Do you ever find yourself responding to sinful choices by asserting, “I’m under severe demonic attack!” when the reality is you simply haven’t been partaking deeply in the means of grace for some time? Or perhaps I am the only one who has experienced that?
We know Satan and his interns (i.e. demons) don’t often have to work very hard to get us to yield to temptation:
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (Jas. 1:14–15)
More likely, it wasn’t the devil who made you do anything; it was your own wicked desire. It’s not as though any of us are like Eve or Adam with wholly pure desires.
Three Goals of Demonic Activity
I do not at all mean to suggest the devil is not active in the world now that sin has entered into our race and corrupted our desires. The Belgic Confession (Article 12) summarizes ongoing demonic activity in this way:
The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good. They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves, with all their power, to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions.
I will not be giving a thorough treatise on the origin and activity of Satan and his minions in this world. Nonetheless, as I see it there are three primary categories of satanic activity in Scripture.
A. Discredit the Church
The Scripture gives numerous instances in which Satan (whose name simply means adversary or accuser) brings charges against the Church of the Living God. For example Satan insists Job loves His Creator for mercenary reasons:
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9–11)
Much later Satan returns to accuse the Church – represented by the High Priest in filthy garments – but God refuses to allow Satan even to make his accusations:
And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” (Zechariah 3:2–4)
In that instance, Satan had many scandalous and glaring charges to bring against the Church; he wouldn’t even have to make anything up. But God refuses even to give Satan a hearing.
It’s not that God doesn’t want to hear how bad His people are (the prophets brought ample indictments throughout the history of the Kingdom of God), but rather God will not tolerate anyone to speak ill of His bride:
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31–35)
B. Destroy the Church
Time and again the agents of the devil attempt to wipe out God’s people in order to scuttle God’s promise: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Pharaoh and Israel, Herod and Jesus.
At one point in the history of the Church, the line of promise seemed to rest entirely upon one little baby hidden in a linen closet as the wicked scion of Jezebel and Ahab, Queen Athaliah, conspired to murder all the line of David (cf. 2 Kings 11).
