To the Glory of God...

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

"To the Glory of God"

This phrase has reshaped my thinking and the way that I view myself and the world over the past few years. When I first heard that God’s primary concern is His Glory, I hesitated to believe it. My first thought was ‘aren’t we supposed to be selfless?’ Yes, that’s true. Humans are to be selfless, but the point is to glorify God. Even when Jesus showed the ultimate demonstration of selflessness by going to the cross, His purpose was to glorify His Father by doing His Father’s Will. The glory of God is the reason that we were created. Our purpose and God’s purpose are one-and-the-same: to bring Him Glory.

When I hear the phrase ‘to the Glory of God’, I think of two things, and I would challenge you to do the same: 1) praise and 2) transformation. The purpose for our existence is to praise God, but it does not end there; we are being transformed into His Glory. I don’t mean that we will become ‘gods’ (we will never share the same essence as God), but that we are to be reflecting Him more and more as followers of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus is the ‘radiance of His Glory and exact representation of His Nature’, so as we are transformed into the Image of Jesus (Christ-like or ‘Christian’), we are being transformed into the fullness of God. It is a transformation process that will last for the rest of eternity. We will spend forever increasingly reflecting the Glory of God. Praise God that He has aligned our purpose with His (to bring Him Glory) and that we have this opportunity to day-by-day be transformed by the Holy Spirit at work within us to reflect Jesus, who is the Glory of God, to a world desperately in need of a Savior.