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216 How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?
God was the most beautiful reality in the universe to you and therefore
the most satisfying to your soul. Suppose you hungered and thirsted
for the presence of the greatness of God more than for anything in the
world. And suppose this God, in spite of all your sin, had made a way
for the glory of his holiness and righteousness to be maintained and
exalted, while still giving himself in friendship to you for your enjoyment
forever.
If that were true, then God’s unwavering commitment to uphold
and display his glory would not be a mark of selfish pride but a mark
of self-giving love. He would be upholding and communicating the
very thing for which your soul longs. This would not be the pattern
of an old woman wanting compliments, or an egomaniac, or a needy
tyrant, or an insecure, jealous lover. Rather, it would be the pattern of
the true and living and gracious God. You would see that there is no
other God like this and no other book like the Bible, which presents
him so faithfully. You would see a self-authenticating divine glory. No
other person, no other god, no other book bears these marks of holy,
divine self-exaltation echoing in the everlasting, God-centered joy of
his people.
He Is Glorious as Many Ways as the Diamond Has Facets
We have already made the turn, with those last two paragraphs, from
the truth that the Bible shows that God does all for his glory to the even
more remarkable truth that the Bible shows how God acts for this glory.
When we think about how the glory of God is glorious, or why one
particular way of revealing the glory of God is glorious, we need to acknowledge
that we are way over our heads. And that is a good thing. If
I could see, let alone describe, all the ways God makes his glory appear
glorious to different people and to different peoples or cultures, I would
indeed be God. Remember that one of my driving concerns is that God
intends that all people, no matter how educated or primitive, be able
to have a well-grounded confidence in the truth of God’s word, when
it is presented to them accurately and sufficiently. What this means is
that for millions of individuals and for thousands of cultures, God has
designed a way, in the inspired Scriptures, for the light of the glory of
Christ to be seen and known with profound certainty.