This word appears literally hundreds of times in the Bible, but for many of us, the concept can feel abstract. Is it referring to honor? Renown? Praise? Beauty? Fame? And what about all the different ways that glory is used? Does it mean something different when we’re talking about the glory of God versus giving glory to God or glorifying God?

The truth is, the word glory can have slightly different meanings depending on its context, but it generally refers to the manifest presence of God. The glory of God is the fullest expression of His character, attributes, and ways. When we give glory to God, we are not simply giving credit to God, but we are directing everyone’s attention to God’s perfect goodness. This is one reason why the integrity of our faith and worship is so important. If we praise God with our lips but chase the world with our lives, then we are not actually glorifying God. His nature and His love are not made manifest by our mere words but by our lifestyles.

All of this background helps us to understand what Jesus prayed in John 17. In this chapter, Jesus was preparing for His death with rather strange language: “Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). These are not the words you would expect from someone about to be executed! But once we understand what glory means, then we can understand what Jesus is saying here:  “Make your presence manifest through me.”

This is the great irony at the heart of John’s Gospel: the moment of glorification coincides with the moment of crucifixion. Although we tend to equate glory with honor and fame, Jesus was saying the exact opposite. The clearest revelation of God’s character is not in the Son’s exaltation but in His humiliation. In other words, if we want to know what God is really like, then we need look no further than Jesus on the cross.

For the world, this notion of glory is utter nonsense. It doesn’t sound like glory at all. But for Christians, this is our call. If we desire for our lives to truly glorify the Father, just like the Son, then the weight of our worship does not come from our Sunday morning singing or the Christian bumper stickers on our cars. Instead, one of the clearest ways we glorify God is through our humble, sacrificial love. When we actively lay down our idols, our comforts, our priorities, and our preferences out of love for God and others, we embody the character and ways of Christ, who did the same out of love for us.

“I didn’t do anything!”
“I didn’t know!”
“I didn’t hear you!”
“But his face ran into my fist!”

Like generations of children before them—including myself!—my kids are gifted at playing the martyr. Rather than repent and ask forgiveness, they make excuses. And sometimes, they dig in their heels even deeper.

Here in this story of the very first murder, we see that blame-shifting has always been there. And it all started very innocently. Two competitive brothers—one a farmer, one a shepherd—brought offerings to God. Cain brought the fruits of his soil, and Abel brought fat portions from the firstborn of his flock (Genesis 4:3–4). At first glance, it would appear that each brother brought what he had, but God did not see it this way. God looked with favor on Abel’s offering, but he withheld favor from Cain.

Why?

In their commentary on this passage, Tremper Longman and Scot McKnight explain the difference in their gifts: “Cain offered the ordinary and Abel the best, and of course the quality of their offering reflects the condition of their hearts. Abel is enthusiastic about worship, while Cain is basically disinterested.”

Cain was caught doing the bare minimum, but rather than humble himself, admit his spiritual apathy, and ask how he can do better, Cain dug in. He became angry. He threw a pity party. He nursed his bitterness until it culminated in murder, and even after all that he continued to play the victim: “My punishment is too great to bear” (v.13).

In these early chapters of Genesis, we are learning about the ways of God, but we are also learning about the ways of sin. Here we observe a major hallmark. Sin so utterly twists the human heart that it will even deny its brokenness. It will run, hide, make excuses, and lash out before taking responsibility and repenting. But we need to know something important about ourselves. When accountability comes our way, even if it comes harshly or imperfectly, our response determines the course of our lives. How we respond to sin sets our feet on one of two paths: back to God or further away from Him.

But here is what else this story reminds us: sometimes we are the ones being confronted, and sometimes we are the ones doing the confronting. Sometimes, we bring truth to light, and then, just like God does in this story, we have to watch as a heart hardens more. This, we must remember, is not about human finiteness or our basic shortcomings or how we could have said something better. It’s about the sin that separates and what it does to the human heart.

Thankfully, we have something that Cain didn’t have: the Holy Spirit. Through the gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, we have a helper and an advocate who is ready to work when repentance feels too hard. That is how good God is—even as He asks us to be faithful, He helps us to do it.

Growing up, my dad issued this statement every time he spoke about stewardship. I have no idea if he was actually right—I have never tallied up the passages myself—but Jesus was, without a doubt, concerned about our possessions. Between His parables and His one-on-one interactions, Jesus often addressed wealth, greed, investment, and stewardship. Whatever the precise frequency may have been, Jesus talked about money a lot.   

In 2 Corinthians 9, Paul seems to have picked up where Jesus left off. He was bold and unashamed in instructing the Corinthians to give. His tone was straightforward, and He seemed totally unembarrassed by the indelicate topic of money.

The combined witnesses of Jesus and Paul remind us of an oft overlooked truth: how we talk about money matters. God doesn’t simply want us to give; He wants us to do it for the right reasons and to think about our finances in a holy way. Along those lines, Jesus and Paul both steer us away from two common errors in our language about finances.

The first error is thinking of our finances as our own. When it comes to money, many of us have a hands-off approach; we don’t want to be told what to do with it because it belongs to us. Money is a touchy subject, and as a result, pastors can be skittish about discussing it. Some even apologize to their congregations on the rare occasion that they do address finances. Paul, on the other hand, is unapologetic. He does not mince words when he warns, “The person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly,” (2Corinthians 9:6). Based on passages like this one, it’s impossible to read Scripture and conclude that God is ambivalent about our wealth. Instead He lays claim to it, so we cannot balk when we are invited to be generous.

The second error in our thinking about money is that of the prosperity gospel. This error gives inordinate attention to wealth, and it worships a transactional god whose grace is something we earn. The prosperity gospel interprets Paul’s words in a materialistic way, promising that if you give your money away, you are guaranteed to make much more in return.

Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 9 seem especially vulnerable to the distortion of prosperity preaching, since he promises “the person who sows generously will also reap generously” (v.6). However, what distinguishes Paul’s message from the prosperity gospel is motivation. The prosperity gospel is motivated by material gain whereas the “cheerful giving” that honors Christ is motivated by gratitude. Put another way, we express our gratitude to God by being generous with others, just as He is generous with us.

What is interesting about these two errors is that they produce the opposite effect. One discourages us from talking about money while the other over-emphasizes it. But Scripture offers a third option. We can and should talk about money but in the right way and for the right purpose: to the glory of God, the love of others, and the good of the world.

In truth, our finances are really not our own. They are God’s resources, which we are called to steward well. “And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work” unto Him and for His glory (v.8).

When we read these words in Matthew 14:27, from the viewpoint of our modern context, it’s easy to miss their significance. It’s easy to dismiss them as a much needed encouragement, and little more. The disciples, after all, were frightened. They were stranded in a boat, far from shore, their vessel “battered by the waves.” Jesus went out to them, walking across the water, which only terrified them more (vv.24–25).

To calm their anxieties, Jesus said, “It is I,” clarifying who He is. And immediately, Peter recognized his teacher. The climax of the story would seem to come later, when Peter joined Jesus in the waves. But the truth is, this verse is a bombshell. Jesus is making a statement of cosmic proportions.

In a few short words, Jesus was not merely identifying Himself, not in the usual way. This statement is not like announcing yourself at your parents’ back door: “It’s me! Just popping by!” Jesus was not just identifying Himself as the man they know and love. Instead Jesus is making a monumental claim, one that Matthew’s Jewish listeners certainly would have noticed. He is identifying Himself as God.

“It is I”—translated from the Greek words ego eimi—is a reference to an Old Testament story. About 1,500 years earlier, God identified Himself to Moses in a similar way (Exodus 3:14). In other words, Jesus wasn’t simply identifying Himself in the midst of the storm; He was identifying His place in human history. Jesus is no ordinary “good person” who loves God and happens to know a lot about Scripture. Jesus is God Himself, the God who identified Himself to Moses and who has always been with His people. He is the God who is more than able to command the threatening waves below Him.
It’s an audacious claim, blasphemous even, had it not been true. And it’s a claim that continues to assert its power today, promising that Jesus is with us and reigns in authority over it all. Jesus is not just another prophet. He is not just another priest. He is not just another rescuer. He is not just another king.

He is the intimate presence and the almighty authority of God.

I find this to be a good description of what was happening to the Israelites in Judges. Every time the Israelites prospered, they didn’t simply forget God; they forgot what it meant to be God’s chosen people in the world. They forgot their own sin. They forgot the world’s brokenness. And they forgot how desperately they needed God. So they lived as if they didn’t. 

Their forgetfulness led to sin, and their sin led to death and destruction. It’s a pattern we’ll see repeated throughout the book. 

We should never be too quick to explain the stories of violence and suffering in Judges. Neat and tidy answers almost always do a disservice to these difficult passages. But I think it’s safe to say that the cycle of foreign invasions had an eye-opening effect on the Israelites because God tested “all those in Israel who had experienced none of the wars in Canaan” (Judges 3:1). I wonder if this was another way of saying, “The Israelites forgot who they were. They had forgotten their weakness. They had forgotten their vulnerability. They had forgotten that they needed God.”

Don’t we sometimes do the same? 

It was true then, and it is still true today: prosperity breeds amnesia. In times of comfort, we do not simply forget God, but we also forget the seriousness of sin, the reality of suffering, and our desperate need for salvation.

The book of Judges challenges us to remember. It is painful and difficult—and certainly not tidy—but in it we can almost hear the Spirit whisper, “This is why you need a Savior. This is why I came.”

Helplessness is a special kind of agony, especially when it comes to our loved ones. This is the agony Paul expresses in Romans 9 about the choices of Israel. Having had his eyes opened to the light of the gospel, Paul realizes with great anguish that many of his people—God’s people—have not awakened to the good news of Jesus Christ. Theologian N.T. Wright describes Paul’s reaction this way: “[Paul] was like someone driving in convoy who takes a particular turn in the road and then watches in horror as most of the other cars take the other fork.”

Paul’s sorrow is so great that he would rather take their place: “I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters” (v.3). This chapter, then, is not a cold, calculating explanation of Israel’s history and fate. Instead, Paul is wrestling with the mysterious ways of God, and he doesn’t arrive at many neat and tidy conclusions.

In Romans 9, Paul engages some complex theological questions, but if we zoom in a bit and look at his heart, we might recognize our own. Most of us have walked in Paul’s shoes—grieving the rebellion, blindness, or self-destruction of someone we love. From Paul’s own wrestling with heartache, we can discern two spiritual principles:

First, none of us can boast. None of us stands on moral high ground. God’s grace was not extended to us on the basis of human merit but divine mercy. That is the principle Paul points to throughout the history of Israel: Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. These men, these chosen ones who constituted the line of Abraham, were not selected because of their outstanding moral character, but because of the free compassion of God. As Paul explains, “it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy” (v.16). In other words, none of us can pat ourselves on the back for our good choices or our strong faith while silently judging others. It is all a gift, so none of us should boast.

Second, God is sovereign. The relationship between God’s power and our free will is a mysterious one, indeed. But when it comes to the decisions of a loved one, God’s sovereignty removes a great deal of weight from our shoulders. Namely, we cannot force someone to make the right choice. We cannot yell someone into wisdom. We cannot wrestle someone into agreeing with us. And we cannot compel transformation. There is only One who directs the streams of human hearts, and that is God alone.

The sovereignty of God does not permit us to become callous, nor does it permit complacency. Like Paul, we should mourn destruction whenever we encounter it. But it can relieve us of a burden we were never meant to bear. 

Only God knows the whole picture and the entire story. Our task is to share the good news to the best of our ability, in humility, and then prayerfully leave the rest to Him.

It’s your story.

If you’re like me, that might sound strange. Like many lifelong Christians, I was raised in the church, a rule-following “good girl” who never went outside the lines. My life looks nothing like Paul’s portrait of self-destruction. Yet he never specifies who this passage is about. Most scholars agree that this section of Scripture is condemning all people and not just one group. All human beings are prone to sin and stand guilty on that account. 

In other words, this passage is about us. 

Paul speaks of the “godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth”—the people who struggle with “envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice” (vv.18,29). And those people he’s describing? Well, they’re us—all of us. Paul isn’t singling out a particular group of people; he’s diagnosing the human condition. 

Left to our own devices, sin distorts our souls like water-warped wood. For every human ever born, Romans 1:18–32 is our story. At least, it would have been our story had God not intervened, had He not planned our rescue. Without God’s grace, we were all “by nature deserving of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). To understand exactly what these words mean, we must be careful not to confuse God’s wrath with human forms of anger. Theologian John Stott describes human anger as an “irrational and uncontrollable emotion, containing much vanity, animosity, malice, and the desire for revenge.” God’s wrath, on the other hand, “is absolutely free of all such poisonous ingredients.” 

By comparison, God’s wrath is His “holy hostility to evil.” This hostility is not arbitrary. God does not pick rules out of a hat and smite those who fail to conform. No, God directs His hostility squarely at the destructive effects of sin. Sin steals, kills, and destroys everything it touches, including the crown jewel of His creation: humankind. It degrades and dismantles us, and God’s response to this cosmic terrorism is total opposition. God opposes sin because He is good, righteous, and just. 

He also opposes it because of His love. God’s wrath is an expression of His love. It is hostility towards that which devours His children whole.

On this side of eternity, we may never understand the mysterious balance between God’s active condemnation and the natural consequences of human sin. But together, these two elements constitute God’s righteous wrath against all human sin. That is our story—every one of us. Apart from the grace of God, we would only choose what leads to death. 

Whenever we read these words, we must ask the Spirit to reveal ourselves within them because we cannot have the good news without the bad news. We cannot call it “salvation” if we are not being saved from something—namely, what we would choose on our own, eternity separated from God. Self-ruin is the only place our sin will ever take us. But, thanks be to God; it doesn’t have to. 

This is a popular saying among Christians that, like most popular sayings, is both true and not true. It’s true in the sense that God has a generous track record of calling unlikely, untrained individuals. Shepherds, prostitutes, and unlearned fishermen have all occupied significant roles in the story of God. 

However, God also has a track record of calling very equipped people. Moses was raised in a palace under the leadership influence of Pharaoh. The prophet Elisha was discipled by the great prophet Elijah. The apostle Paul was an expert in the Law, having studied and trained in it since childhood. And Bezalel, Oholiab, and the other builders of the tabernacle were “skilled,” possessing all the “wisdom and understanding to know how to do all the work” (Exodus 36:1).

These different stories capture the paradox of calling, which consists of two seemingly conflicting truths:

On the one hand, God always provides what we need for the task. Whether it’s talent, training, or a handful of loaves and fish, God’s provision is sufficient for His purposes. We can trust this to be true, and it should instill us with confidence and peace. 

On the other hand, we are not sufficient on our own. Moses was trained to be a leader, but he could not summon down plagues. Paul knew the Law, but he relied on the Holy Spirit to deliver understanding. And although the artisans possessed both the talent and the instructions to build the tabernacle, there was nevertheless a lot they didn’t know. They didn’t know what the cherubim should look like. They didn’t know the precise designs of the curtains. They were given a rough sketch, a partial vision, and then expected to construct the rest in faith.

That is the tension of calling. God provides us with more than enough (v.7), but not so much as to free us from dependence on Him. The secret to managing this tension is guarding the focus of our call, which is Christ alone. When we make our calling about us, we swing between insecurity and pride; between fears about our insufficiency, and a greedy clamoring for fame. But when we remember our calling is about Christ, both our inabilities and abilities are granted an appropriate amount of weight.

We see this balance in the building of the tabernacle: skilled workers, equipped with enough, relying on God for the rest of the vision, and doing it all for the glory of God. They had what they needed, but they never stopped needing God. Our own callings should look the same. We can step into God’s purpose, radiating confidence, while humbly pointing others to the source of it: our all-sufficient Savior.

These misinterpretations still plague us today, so the question remains: How should we understand the law?

In Exodus 19, God provides Moses with the cornerstone of the law, the Ten Commandments, and He does so with these words: “Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). Too often, we read these words as a threat, or a form of conditional love: I will only take care of you if you do what I say. 

However, there is another way to read these words, and the commandments that follow.

As a mom, I frequently warn my boys to obey me for their own good: 

If you don’t listen to me, you’re going to get hurt. 
If you don’t stop jumping on the bed, you’re going to fall. 
If you don’t slow down, you’re going to trip. 

These warnings are not threats. They are not signs of conditional love. I am not manipulating them into submitting to me. Instead, I am beckoning them toward safety, wholeness, and health. I am showing them the path to life, and warning them away from a path that leads to pain.

This, in many ways, captures the heart of the law. And this heart becomes all the more clear in the verse that precedes God’s warning: 

“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (vv.4). 

With this verse, God testifies to His own character, reminding the Israelites of His steadfast love, provision, and care. On that basis, God asked His people to trust and obey Him—not because the law was an arbitrary list of rules from a cruel and exacting God, but because the 

law was the path to life.

Too often, we miss this truth, that the law is beautiful, good, and a picture of humanity at its best. The first four commandments are, in essence, the pinnacle of “loving God.” The following six commandments are the fullness of “loving neighbor.” They instruct us on how to live, but more importantly, they clarify who we were created to be.

And yet, the law fell short. It showed us the destination without providing the ability to reach it (Romans 8:3). We can know the good, but find ourselves wholly unable to attain it. That is why the law condemns: the law is God’s blueprint for human flourishing, without the tools to achieve it. 

Enter Jesus. He did what no human was ever able to do. He was the perfect expression of the law. His life and words were the embodiment of God’s design for us. That is the point of the Ten Commandments, and the whole of God’s law: to point us toward God’s good plan for us, while revealing our inadequacy to accomplish it. The law points us to Jesus.

In this chapter, Paul continues his counsel to Timothy by warning against false teaching, and exhorting him to preserve the integrity of his ministry. In doing so, Paul prepares Timothy for the reality that some “will depart from the faith,” having been taken in by “the teachings of demons” (1Timothy 4:1), and deceived by the “hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared” (v.2). It’s serious language! Which immediately leads us to wonder what sort of false teachers was Paul referring to in this chapter. Power-hungry preachers? Money-swindling hucksters? Immoral Christians who excused their sin under the banner of cheap grace? 

As it turns out, none of the above. In this chapter, Paul is not warning against ethical corruption or sexual lawlessness, but quite the opposite. In verse 3 we discover he is warning against asceticism, an extreme form of self-denial that forbids certain foods and sex. 

Historians have all sorts of guesses about where this false teaching originated. It might have been an extreme overreaction to their previously pagan lifestyles, or it might have been an early form of gnosticism, a common philosophy that elevated the spiritual over the material. The truth is, we cannot know for sure, but Paul makes it clear that this false teaching has infiltrated the church and distorted their theology.  

What makes this form of false teaching so surprising, is that it is rather different from the other forms of false teaching Paul has warned about elsewhere. In 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul rebukes the Christians’ rampant debauchery, and in Galatians he confronts Peter’s religious duplicity, which means “false teaching” and “hypocrisy” can take many, many forms. It can look like sexual immorality or the abuse of power, or it can look like the religious piety of these extreme ascetics, which is why he urges Timothy to be discerning.

We face the same varied forms of false teaching today, and so Paul’s advice to Timothy remains as relevant as ever. Rather than get bogged down in the controversies or “silly myths” of our day, and rather than give all our time and energy to reacting to the latest hot button issue, our task as faithful Christians is a rather simple one: “train yourself in godliness” (v.7). Be a good example “in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity” (v.12). And “persevere in these things” (v.16). 

That is not to say we should be silent in the face of false teaching—Paul himself was not—but it means our primary work of resistance is modest, and often hidden. In a loud world of competing opinions and warring convictions, this quiet, humble work might seem pointless and ineffective, but in reality, it will save our witness.