IS GOD CONCEITED?

Assumption: God is the possessor of every known virtue to the infinite degree. There is no one greater or equal to Him. There is no one or nothing of greater or equal value to Him. This is no brag, just fact.

For Him to place greater value on something other than Himself would be inconsistent with truth. To attribute greater value to anything other Himself would be to make that thing God. So when God values His glory above everything else, He is not being conceited, He is being consistent. It would be the epitome of conceit if any creature tried to do the same.

The Hebrew word for “glory” is kabod, which literally means “heavy”. So when the seraphim in Isaiah 6 say, “…the whole earth is full of His glory…” They are saying that creation is heavy with God. All of the things that we admire most in creation—beauty, wisdom, justice, mercy, strength, truth, love, etc.—are reflections of the One who created it. The way that I get a grasp of this is to think about a chocolate brownie. I really like chocolate brownies. And when I pick up a heavy brownie, I really get excited because I am expecting that thing to be particularly rich and chocolaty. If you pick up a precious metal, the value is gauged by its purity and weightiness. This is the Old Testament idea of God’s glory.

Through Creation and also through Redemption, God is sharing the intense pleasure that He gets from being God and acting like God. Creating us in His image, God programmed us to enjoy Him, the way that He enjoys Himself. Now, I know this sort of rubs our sensibilities the wrong way. And it should, if we are talking about a mere creature. However, there is nothing wrong with God wanting to be treated as the center of the universe. HE IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE! But when you or I live our lives as though we are the center of the universe, it is obnoxious at best and blasphemous at worst.

God does not do anything out of a desire to meet His own need. He has no needs. By definition, He is self-sufficient. Creation is not God’s attempt fill some kind of void in His being. It is really quite the opposite. God’s love compelled Him to share that which is of supreme value, His glory (the substance of all that He is) with something other than Himself. So he created angels and ants, constellations and cockroaches, and He said, “It’s all good.” Then He did something very special. He took some dirt and breathed into it some parts of His being that He did not put into any other of His creatures. And he called them humans. Then He said, “It is all very good.

He designed humans to enjoy the experience of being like God and acting like God and to live their life in awe and gratitude toward the One who would so graciously allow them this privilege and responsibility.

The serpent tempted Adam and Eve by offering them a way to enjoy the experience of being like God and acting like God without having to be dependent upon God or obedient to God. He offered them a way to actually become God. He convinced them to distrust God and disobey God. As a result, they not only lost their ability to enjoy being like God and acting like God, but they lived under the delusion that they had the right to decide who was God and who was not.

Living for the glory of God is all about restoration. Through Jesus, God restored our ability to enjoy the experience of being like God and acting like God. To put it another way, He restored our ability to reflect God. Jesus is the perfect example of what humans were meant to be—a flawless reflection of all that God is. Total trust and obedience allowed Jesus to experience maximum enjoyment of being like and acting like God. (And yes, Jesus is totally God and equal to God, but what He accomplished in restoration was done as one who was totally human. The divine powers that He demonstrated while on earth were by means of the Holy Spirit energized by trust and obedience.) When we look at Jesus, we see why God is so thrilled with Himself and wants to share that with others. We see demonstrations of the power that put the earth and seas in their places and we see demonstrations of compassion and pity that make us wonder why God would give such attention to insignificant creatures like us.

The most precious human relationships are those where people open up and share themselves with one another. That’s what God’s glory is all about. God has opened up and shared Himself with us, knowing that if we will receive what He is sharing, our joy will be full. Glorifying God is not about making Him look good by my good deeds. Glorifying God is about showing how attractive He really is by seeking my satisfaction totally in Him. Trust and obedience is the means by which I enjoy that satisfaction.