TONGUES TO SPEAK WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING

Many twelve-steppers have a motto: that the alcoholic or addict has “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Alcoholics Anonymous).

That seems noble, but I know those in the program who see themselves as “God,” and that is a contradiction of the second step: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Addicted people are to admit that they are helpless when it comes to their addiction; that there is help with God. That is “religion” but not necessarily Christianity because so many people understand God differently. For many, He is nothing more than some Power greater than themselves; He is a God without a face.

Indeed, God is that Power — Almighty God — but few people understand the God in whom they are to trust.

Christians rattle off clichés about God: such as God is love, God is glorious, God is Almighty, God saves, God is this and God is that.

I asked a minister with a doctorate in divinity what “glorious” meant; he smiled and said, “Well, glorious.”

Another respected author and minister said, “Splendorous.” Not that splendorous is wrong but shows a lack of depth in the meaning of glorious.

What is “the Glory of God?” Let’s turn to scripture:

Moses told the Israelites, “The Lord talked with you Face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire” in the darkness of the mountain (Deut 5:4).

What had they seen? Action! The Lord God spoke with them. That is not very glorious, but the Lord went even further. Because the Israelites were afraid of the fire on the mountain, Moses stood between the fire and them, “to show you the Word of the Lord (Deut 5:5). They saw Jesus, according to the words of John (John 1:1-14).

They not only heard the Word of the Lord, and that is very good, but Moses showed them the Word of the Lord. According to the John, Moses showed them pre-incarnate Jesus. With that said, God revealed His Power, to wit: “I AM the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Deut 5:6).

The Lord God spoke, and the sea rose up; that is the Power of God. Do you believe that God did that or even whether it happened at all? Do you believe that God overcame the world on that occasion? If not, you would not believe that God created all things (John 1:3) let alone that Jesus was the Person of God who did those things (John 1, 14).

That is the Power of God which the addict should believe. If God has the Power to deliver the heaven and the earth for us (Gen 1:1), if you believe that, then the addict should believe that God has enough Power to deliver addicts from their addictions! Many say that, then fail!

Now consider everyone else:

The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Rom 3:22-25)

We all are as bad as addicts. Sin is addiction! Some are addicted to drugs while others are addicted to lasciviousness and such things. Some are addicted to many things, so to overcome one addiction, requires overcoming many addictions! Only God can do that, and I have seen Him do that in certain people.

Hence, because all have sinned, we all have come short of the glory of God. We no longer are the Image of God in which Adam (mankind) was made. We are “degenerates” because we are not glorious. Sin devolved mankind’s gloriousness into depravity. Just look at us, and you will understand what God is not!

Yet some still declare, “We are all God’s children.” That would make us the “sons” and “daughters” of God in a genetic sense. However, our “father” is the Devil (John 8:44) and our attributes are different from God, and genetically, we are more like Cain than Adam, the former who was of the Wicked One (1 John 3:12).

With that genetic disposition, even Christians promote high self-esteem without merit; We are not God, or even gods, but we believe that we are. Who is more important than you? Nobody, as you see it; you are the gods, and in a sense, all believe that they are gods of some sort and do whatever they want to do with impunity. That is inglorious yet we believe that we ourselves are walking, talking glory.

Moses, in effect, shielded the Israelites from the burning fire, so that they could see the Word that spoke to them Face to face (Deut 5:5).

With Moses standing before them, God issued the Ten Commandments, beginning with “You shall have none other gods before Me” (Deut 5:7). Literally, that they would not have any other gods with the face of God, in other words, Jesus.

However, they have broken that Commandment continually to this day. Moses became their god because he had the glory of God in himself: “The children of Israel (had seen) the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again…” (Exod 34:35).

Moses, at that time, had the glory of God within and it showed. The glory was great enough that he shielded the Israelites from his bright shing face so that they did not think that he was God. Therefore, the glory of God has something to do with a bright countenance.

The psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handywork” (Psalm 19:1). The heavens are the cosmos and the “dome” (firmament) that is above is full of firm things: stars, galaxies, planets, and such.

Paul validated that, when he wrote, “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world (cosmos) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal Power and Godhead…” (Rom 1:20).

The Glory of God is revealed in what is seen. The firmament — the picture of existence — reveals the Existence, or “Glory of God.” How is the Glory of God displayed? In the Creation. What does the Glory of God look like?

 

Figure 1: Space.com "Images from James Watt Space Telescope

 

That is one of many pictures, but wherever the space telescope peered, even greater Glory of God could be seen. The James Watt Space Telescope (JWST) was even equipped with infrared lighting, so that the unseen things (darkness) could be seen.

So, what is the “Glory of God”? Paul revealed the Light that was in Moses from the Glory of God:

That God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. (1 John 1:5-6) 

Darkness is looking at the grandeur of the heavens and denying that is God’s Glory is displayed in the Creation. Look at the photo (figure #1) again. You come short of doing that… far short. The truth is that God did what JWST revealed. Science has just begun to credit God with His glorious works, yet so many Christians still believe that what you see just happened without a cause.

Gloriousness goes further than that. The Israelites heard the Word and saw God “Face-to-face.” God has a Face, yet Muslims and Jews deny the Face of God — the man Jesus. Jesus was the Glory of God. God revealed His Glory in the form of a man.

Millennia later, God revealed His Person when “the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon (Jesus), and a Voice came from heaven, which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

The Glory of God came upon Jesus just as it did with Moses. Moses, in a sense, was a proxy for Jesus but not God. The Glory of God entered Jesus and “IT” took on the shape of the Man. The Glory of God was the Spirit of God in the shape of the Man, Jesus.

Many rattle-off that Jesus is the “Son of God.” If Jesus is God, and He IS, how then was He the “Son of God”?  When anyone saw Jesus, they were looking at God. The very Image of God was within Jesus just as with Adam. Therefore, Jesus was the “Last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45) in that the Image of God was in both the man, Adam, and the Man, Jesus.

We are getting closer now to gloriousness. It is the both the Image of God and the Image of God in a person. Yahweh was not the biological father or Jesus anymore than David was, as Jesus was called the “son of David.” The word, “son” in both cases refer to the genome of David and the Genome of God.

The genetics of God was the “waters” (figuratively “semen”) from God that grew the cosmos — the “Cloud” if by day and the “Fire” if by night. When the Israelites saw the Fire by night that was the Spirit of God they saw His Glory.

God stopped for a moment in time and revealed His Power by a glorious, and dynamic image.

When Jesus was baptized, John did not do anything spectacular or even glorious. God did it! The Glory of God came unto the Person, Jesus, and with the Genome of God within the Man, those who saw Him, were seeing the Glory of God.

Jesus revealed the Glory of God on occasion whenever virtue was gone from Him. That “virtue” is the Power of God that was in Jesus. In the Greek, that “virtue” was “dynamis” — the Action and Power of God.

Jesus revealed the Glory of God in Himself when He made some “whole again” in the sense that they were engendered from above by God. Jesus called that action, “born again” (John 3:7). Rebirth is the beginning of glorification. It is the seed that God sows within just like with Adam that was when planted, grew: 

The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom he had formed. (Gen 2:7-8) 

Jesus did that; He was the “quickening Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45) that breathed life unto Adam and made him a “living soul.” Adam has the Spirit of Jesus in him that made him alive. So it goes, for Christians who God begins a good work in you, beginning with the quickening Spirit — the Glory of God — that He puts into the person that is “born again” of God’s Image placed in the Christian.

Adam could either grow or not grow in the Garden. As it turns out, Adam did not grow, so he was cast out into, ostensibly, into the world (Gen 3:24).

Glorification is when the seed that God plants, grows. It grew in Jesus and the proof of that was at the transfiguration when Jesus was revealed as the Glory of God. His death glorified Jesus because He had been planted in the Earth, and the crucifixion finished the glorification.

“It is finished,” Jesus said (John 19:30). What was finished? He was not finished; He was glorified (John 7:39). It started when God breathed life unto Jesus at His baptism and glorification was finished when He died. The proof of that was that Jesus, by then, had the flesh of glorious Adam; He could walk through walls and even escape death. His flesh was glorified at the Resurrection when He was “raised from the dead” (assembled again) with the Glory of God back with Him again.

We come short of the Glory of God because we have not taken up our crosses and followed Him (mat 16:24). Glorification is when the Christian becomes like Christ — when the corruptible flesh is replaced with the incorruptible (1 Cor 15:52).

Indeed, God has begun a good work in Christians, but death in Christ finishes the glorification, just as Paul suggested, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21).

What happens at death? First things first. The soul is saved and at the general resurrection, the flesh is made incorruptible.

Glorification is resurrection when Christians are regenerated like Adam in the Image of God. Until that time, we are inglorious sinners preserved by grace until salvation occurs with glorification.

Those things that we rattle-off as if we understand them have deep meaning. However, the Word reveals the meaning as Paul wrote to Timothy.

How could we possibly understand such in depth meaning without studying the Word?