THE GLORY OF GOD
AS REVEALED IN JESUS CHRIST
Mormons wrongly maintain that God's glory is His intelligence. But
God has a different value system to that of fallen man. His
yardstick for glory is not intelligence, knowledge, worldly success
or popularity; but goodness, righteousness, selflessness and
holiness. When Moses asked Him to reveal His glory, God showed him
His goodness (Exodus 33:18-19). And Jesus explained that His
disciples would glorify God through bearing much fruit of
righteousness (John 15:8). Conversely, God told His prophet Ezekiel
that He was going to display His glory amongst the heathen by
punishing Israel for their sinfulness (Ezekiel 39:21-23).
Sin besmirches a holy God's name because it always brings in its wake suffering, sorrow, pain and despair. Turning a blind eye on sin or even merely tolerating it couldn't possibly glorify God. How can a God who is good permit the atrocities of sin to go unpunished or allow behaviour that hurts and destroys others to continue? He cannot, and He will not. The Bible says that the day is coming when He will judge sin by confining every trace of both its presence and its influence, in hell.
Most of us don't think of ourselves as sinners. Surrounded on every side by hypocrisy, corruption, immorality and godlessness, we probably look quite good to ourselves. But, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:12, "When people compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding." It's only when we're confronted with the glory of a holy and righteous God that we begin to get some idea of the terrible depths of our own sinfulness.
This happened to Isaiah one day when he was praying in the temple. The Lord appeared before Him, and His glory filled the temple. The longer Isaiah stood there in the presence of God's glory, the more conscious he became of his own impurity. Waves of fear welled up inside him. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he blurted out:
Later on, in John 17:5, the Lord Jesus prayed that His Father would glorify Him. And God sent Him to Calvary, to display the glory of utter selflessness and sacrificial mercy, the likes of which the world had never seen before, nor will it ever see again.
Christ wasn't a helpless victim of His circumstances. He could have walked away from the cross at any time. When He was about to be arrested, He remarked, "Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:53). Nor was He an unwilling scapegoat, because He said, "No one has taken My life from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative." (John 10:18).
In spite of knowing the indescribable suffering that lay ahead of Him, the Lord Jesus went to Calvary. He gave His all for you and for me, so that we could be set free from the stranglehold of sin that ruins our lives, separates us from God, and condemns us to an eternity in hell.
What happened after they had arrested Him was a travesty of justice. Although He was found innocent, the mob demanded that He be crucified. Crucifixion was the cruellest form of execution. It involved a slow, agonizing death with the maximum amount of suffering, and was generally reserved for traitors and the basest of criminals. Nevertheless, fearing an uprising, Pilate gave in to their demands and granted permission for Jesus to be crucified.
Before crucifying Him they tied the Lord Jesus to a post and scourged Him with a whip that had been knotted with small pieces of lead and sharp fragments of bone. As it lashed mercilessly again and again over His bared body, the fragments of bone tore into His flesh, leaving trails of blood flowing in their wake. The lead pieces inflicted deep and severe bruising as they pulverized His torn flesh to a pulp. Because it was so severe, scourging sometimes resulted in the death of the victim.
When this brutal punishment had at last come to an end, they handed over the Lord Jesus to a group of soldiers for their amusement. Covering His torn, bruised and bleeding body with a scarlet robe depicting royalty, they pushed a crown of thorns down into His scalp. Then they blindfolded Him and took turns at slapping Him across the face. Mockingly, they challenged Him to identify the one who had hit Him.
After that they viciously beat Him over the head with a reed. And all the while they kept spitting in His face. Finally, giving full vent to their cruelty, they pulled out fistfuls of His beard by the roots. By the time they'd finished with Him, His face was so badly swollen and mutilated that His features were barely recognizable.
Weak, battered, bruised, bleeding and fainting, they led Him to Calvary. There they stripped off His clothing and nailed him on to a crude cross fashioned from parts of a tree. Then they lifted this upright, so that He hung suspended upon it, naked, for all to see His shame. The Lord Jesus was to suffer and die as a public spectacle.
Exposed to the blistering heat of the merciless Israeli sun, He endured the torment of insatiable thirst. The nails they'd hammered through His wrists and ankles had pierced through major nerves, which gave rise to ongoing, violent spasms of excruciating pain. His body was a mass of open cuts, welts and bruises. Swarms of insects settled on Him at will, their bites and stings adding to His misery. Great drops of blood oozed from the thorns pressing into His brow. Trickling slowly down his face, they mingled with the spit from the mob.
As they watched His terrible agony, the crowd cursed Him, ridiculed Him and jeered at Him. Yet Jesus prayed, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
That sight of the Savior suffering on the cross to pay the consequences of my sins and yours was a graphic picture of unfathomable love, utter selflessness, wondrous compassion and undeserved mercy. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2:8, "they crucified the Lord of Glory."
So we bow in reverence, our hearts overflowing with gratitude, as we honour Christ our Lord and Saviour for having borne our punishment, our suffering and our shame for us, in our place, that day on the cross at Calvary.
Copyright 2007 by Mormonism and Biblical Truth. All rights reserved.
Sin besmirches a holy God's name because it always brings in its wake suffering, sorrow, pain and despair. Turning a blind eye on sin or even merely tolerating it couldn't possibly glorify God. How can a God who is good permit the atrocities of sin to go unpunished or allow behaviour that hurts and destroys others to continue? He cannot, and He will not. The Bible says that the day is coming when He will judge sin by confining every trace of both its presence and its influence, in hell.
Most of us don't think of ourselves as sinners. Surrounded on every side by hypocrisy, corruption, immorality and godlessness, we probably look quite good to ourselves. But, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:12, "When people compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding." It's only when we're confronted with the glory of a holy and righteous God that we begin to get some idea of the terrible depths of our own sinfulness.
This happened to Isaiah one day when he was praying in the temple. The Lord appeared before Him, and His glory filled the temple. The longer Isaiah stood there in the presence of God's glory, the more conscious he became of his own impurity. Waves of fear welled up inside him. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he blurted out:
Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:5, KJV)Hebrews 1:3 tells us that the Lord Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. Peter could testify to that. One day He performed a miracle that filled Peter with an overwhelming awareness of His glory. Trembling with fear and oblivious to those around him, this rough fisherman knelt at Christ's feet and cried out, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8). At that moment Peter too had realized his absolute unworthiness.
Later on, in John 17:5, the Lord Jesus prayed that His Father would glorify Him. And God sent Him to Calvary, to display the glory of utter selflessness and sacrificial mercy, the likes of which the world had never seen before, nor will it ever see again.
Christ wasn't a helpless victim of His circumstances. He could have walked away from the cross at any time. When He was about to be arrested, He remarked, "Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:53). Nor was He an unwilling scapegoat, because He said, "No one has taken My life from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative." (John 10:18).
In spite of knowing the indescribable suffering that lay ahead of Him, the Lord Jesus went to Calvary. He gave His all for you and for me, so that we could be set free from the stranglehold of sin that ruins our lives, separates us from God, and condemns us to an eternity in hell.
What happened after they had arrested Him was a travesty of justice. Although He was found innocent, the mob demanded that He be crucified. Crucifixion was the cruellest form of execution. It involved a slow, agonizing death with the maximum amount of suffering, and was generally reserved for traitors and the basest of criminals. Nevertheless, fearing an uprising, Pilate gave in to their demands and granted permission for Jesus to be crucified.
Before crucifying Him they tied the Lord Jesus to a post and scourged Him with a whip that had been knotted with small pieces of lead and sharp fragments of bone. As it lashed mercilessly again and again over His bared body, the fragments of bone tore into His flesh, leaving trails of blood flowing in their wake. The lead pieces inflicted deep and severe bruising as they pulverized His torn flesh to a pulp. Because it was so severe, scourging sometimes resulted in the death of the victim.
When this brutal punishment had at last come to an end, they handed over the Lord Jesus to a group of soldiers for their amusement. Covering His torn, bruised and bleeding body with a scarlet robe depicting royalty, they pushed a crown of thorns down into His scalp. Then they blindfolded Him and took turns at slapping Him across the face. Mockingly, they challenged Him to identify the one who had hit Him.
After that they viciously beat Him over the head with a reed. And all the while they kept spitting in His face. Finally, giving full vent to their cruelty, they pulled out fistfuls of His beard by the roots. By the time they'd finished with Him, His face was so badly swollen and mutilated that His features were barely recognizable.
Weak, battered, bruised, bleeding and fainting, they led Him to Calvary. There they stripped off His clothing and nailed him on to a crude cross fashioned from parts of a tree. Then they lifted this upright, so that He hung suspended upon it, naked, for all to see His shame. The Lord Jesus was to suffer and die as a public spectacle.
Exposed to the blistering heat of the merciless Israeli sun, He endured the torment of insatiable thirst. The nails they'd hammered through His wrists and ankles had pierced through major nerves, which gave rise to ongoing, violent spasms of excruciating pain. His body was a mass of open cuts, welts and bruises. Swarms of insects settled on Him at will, their bites and stings adding to His misery. Great drops of blood oozed from the thorns pressing into His brow. Trickling slowly down his face, they mingled with the spit from the mob.
As they watched His terrible agony, the crowd cursed Him, ridiculed Him and jeered at Him. Yet Jesus prayed, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
That sight of the Savior suffering on the cross to pay the consequences of my sins and yours was a graphic picture of unfathomable love, utter selflessness, wondrous compassion and undeserved mercy. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2:8, "they crucified the Lord of Glory."
Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25, KJV).However, the prophet and founder of the LDS church, Joseph Smith, boasted that he was a far better man than the Lord Jesus Christ. He said:
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree ..... (1 Peter 2:24, KJV).
"I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter nor Jesus ever did. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I.The followers of Jesus ran away from Him, but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet." (The History of the Church Volume 6, pages 408-409). (Italics inserted by author.)What sort of man would make such a statement? If Joseph Smith's followers had been faced with scourging followed by crucifixion and all it entailed, they would also have fled. Joseph Smith was everything that Christ was not; arrogant, boastful, proud, and egotistical.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:15-16, KJV).In stark contrast with Joseph Smith's arrogance is the attitude of those who have been set free from the penalty of sin by faith in Christ's atoning, sacrificial death. All too aware that it was our sins, faults and failures that were the cause of the brutal lashes on His back, the blood that flowed from His wounds, the crown of thorns that was pushed deep into His scalp, the spit on His face, the public humiliation, and the terrible suffering and pain; we can only join in saying with the song writer Ira Stanphill, "Unworthy am I of the price that He paid."
So we bow in reverence, our hearts overflowing with gratitude, as we honour Christ our Lord and Saviour for having borne our punishment, our suffering and our shame for us, in our place, that day on the cross at Calvary.
May it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Galations 6:14, NASB)
Copyright 2007 by Mormonism and Biblical Truth. All rights reserved.