What is your own perception of God? Do you find Him glorious through and in the Lord Jesus? And isn’t that what we need for salvation and for all the walk of faith? For repentance. For humility with hope. For worship. For stability. For courage. For perseverance. For gentleness. For faith’s endeavor. For generosity. For compassion. For mercy and forgiveness. For purity. We must taste and sense His glory if we are to glorify Him.
The Apostle Paul’s description of God’s grace in his salvation, in 2 Corinthians 4, reveals a most significant truth about what our souls need. We need to see and know God’s glory through and in Christ.
Believing, hoping, and trusting in God have everything to do with perceiving in Him goodness, worth, majesty, excellence, capacity, holiness, beauty, mercy. And, of course, not all regard God or His Gospel as glorious. Pauls’ words in 2 Corinthians 4 are especially helpful, because he reflects first on those among his own kinsmen who were not perceiving the GOOD NEWS as good. In chapter 3, Paul affirmed that, yes, God had shown himself glorious at Mt. Sinai. God had delivered His LAW…
2 Corinthians 3:7 …with such, glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ f ace because of its glory…
But as Paul compared the function and impact of the LAW, which he called a “ministry of death” with the ministry of the Spirit and Gospel, a ministry of life, of conferred righteousness, of freedom and transformation, he held out before them a surpassing glory.
But some were not seeing it.
Even though the very word of God through Moses was being read always in their synagogues, Paul described them like this:
2 Corinthians 3:15 … a veil lies over their hearts.
The Apostle went on to say…
2 Corinthians 4:4 …the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
And here is where the wording touches what is so helpful. What was it that Satan sought to prevent them from seeing? Christ’s glory, which is good news. Christ’s glory was real and objective, seen or not. To hope in it required seeing it, tasting and perceiving Christ’s grace and worth and the goodness of His good message.
