Matthew 5:13-16 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Introduction
Living for the Glory of God
1 Corinthians 10:31 whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
How do you do that? How do you drink a glass of milk in a way that brings glory to God? What does it look like on an hour to hour basis to live a life that glorifies God?
Review
Light is most useful in the dark
We have been studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and the past two weeks we have been in verses 14-16 of Matthew 5 where Jesus calls us to function as salt and light in the world. I spoke with a realtor last week who makes assessments of land values, and he was telling me about the property we are buying down on 88th and Huron. He said it is not worth much because it is in such a bad neighborhood. There was another church building that is for sale nearby that we also looked at. That pastor told the realtor that the reason they were moving is because they did not want to be in such a low-income neighborhood. They wanted to move to a wealthier part of town. Nobody wants to be in a bad neighborhood.
People have similar attitudes about where they work. If you get into a work environment where there is hostility against Christ, and there is pervasive, dominating ungodliness and darkness, it can seem overwhelming. You find yourself all alone without any Christian fellowship at school or at work, and it feels like God has stranded you in the darkness. But God does not strand His people – He situates them. It is a dark world, but as much as we hate the evil and despise the darkness, we are not surprised when God situates us in dark places because that is where lamps are most useful. If you take a flashlight outdoors at noon it is worthless. But in the middle of the night in a pitch dark area even a little pen light can be worth its weight in gold. A lamp is most useful where it is darkest, so do not be surprised if God situates you where you are most useful. If you go to work and find that people despise Christ and mock God’s way and are blind and foolish and steeped in sin and folly and the whole place is pitch black spiritually, do not be shocked that you are there. Where else would God place a lamp?
That goes for us as individuals and for us as a church. I do not know what is supposedly so bad about this neighborhood where the new church is, but the way I figure – if our reason for existence is to be a city on a hill then the darker the neighborhood the more useful we will be. We are the light of the world!
Infiltration
People sometimes ask me what kind of evangelism program we have at Agape. And there are various different things we do, but by far the most important is what I call our infiltration program. The goal is to get our members to go out into the world and infiltrate secular business and schools and neighborhoods, and then shine the light of Christ. That is the model Jesus gave us, and it is working great! We are just a small church, and yet we have already managed to infiltrate numerous large corporations, small businesses, stores – we have got people in school classrooms at every grade level, college classrooms, and we have infiltrated neighborhoods all along the Front Range. It has been a brilliant strategy, but we cannot take credit for it. It has been in use ever since New Testament times. Around 200 AD Tertullian taunted the great Roman Empire with these words: “We are but of yesterday, yet we fill your cities, islands, forts, towns, councils, even camps, tribes, delegations, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have left you only your [pagan] temples." We have successfully infiltrated every nook and cranny of your world – from the most remote island to the very palace of the Emperor himself. The only place you can go where you will not find us is the pagan temples.
Our Purpose: the Glory of God
That is our infiltration program. And we are not sneaking around in secret. We are out in the open shining the light of Christ. There are two different kinds of infiltrators. If you have a foreigner who takes up residence in your country, and he is there for the purposes of his home country, there are two different names for people like that. If they do it secretly we call them spies. If they do it openly we call them ambassadors. And we are infiltrating this dark world as citizens of heaven not as Christ’s spies but as His ambassadors, openly appealing to the world to be reconciled to God through Christ.
We left off last week right before we got to the discussion of our purpose as salt and light. Most of the time when there is a discussion of salt and light, the focus is on how to have the greatest impact on the world. And that is not a bad discussion. If God provided light to a dark world it is implied that the light is to have some kind of beneficial impact. But the benefit to the world is not the most important factor. Jesus turns our attention to a much more important purpose.
Matthew 5:16 let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
The purpose of our good works is to cause men to see them and respond by glorifying God.
The Meaning of Glory: Worship
In this context the word “glorify” means to worship. Let your light shine among men so that they may see your good deeds and worship your Father in heaven. That is a puzzling statement, because that is not the typical response we observe from the world to our righteousness. Jesus just said that when they see our righteousness they will insult us and persecute us and falsely say all kinds of evil against us.
From Believers?
Could it be that Jesus is only talking here about the response of fellow Christians? That would make sense, because when people who love the Lord see you honoring the Lord they will glorify God. If your love for the Lord moves you to be generous, and so you help out a needy brother in Christ, that brother will praise God for your help. When the Corinthians were about to give a financial gift to the brothers in Jerusalem Paul said this:
2 Corinthians 9:13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will glorify God … for your generosity
So yes, fellow Christians will see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
From Unbelievers
But Jesus seems to be speaking of more than just fellow Christians here. The context is about our placement in the world. So how can Jesus tell us that they will persecute us for our righteousness, and then turn right around and tell us to let our light shine before them so they will glorify God? The answer to that is in 1 Peter 2. The people Peter is writing to were letting their light shine and were being persecuted as a result. Just as Jesus promised, the world was insulting them and falsely saying all kinds of evil against them because of their righteousness. And here is what Peter told them:
1 Peter 2:12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong (persecution), they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Right now they mock you, but on the day of visitation they will glorify God for your righteousness.
The Day of Visitation
What is the day of visitation? Visitation by God is often used in contexts of both blessing and judgment, and so some people have taken this to refer to the day when God visits that person to save him. So the day of visitation would be the day that person becomes a Christian.
And certainly that happens. Who knows how many people have become Christians because of the godly way in which the Christians they persecuted responded? They persecute a Christian; that Christian responds with love and humility and forgiveness and endures the suffering for Christ with joy, and that has such an impact on the one doing the persecuting that he ends up coming to Christ. And when that happens he looks back on the righteousness of those he persecuted and praises God for it, because that is what led to his salvation. So without question that does happen, however I do not think that is what Peter means here by the day of visitation.
There are six times in the Old Testament when it speaks of God’s visitation in connection with the word “day,” and all six refer to judgment – a day that is coming when God punishes. So in the New Testament context I think day of visitation most likely refers to the Second Coming, when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. They will glorify the Father by acknowledging who Jesus is, and while they are at it they will glorify the Father for all the good deeds that were done in His name.
So whether you take this to refer to a visitation to an individual in which that person becomes a Christian, or to the ultimate visitation on Judgment Day – either way the process is the same: God comes, opens the person’s eyes to what was really going on, and that makes the person appreciate how glorious God the Father really is. If someone cuts you off in traffic and then turns around and gives you some obscene gesture, and then a few minutes later he is stuck in a turn lane and you slow down and let him in when no one else will – that guy has no idea that you did that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He does not know that now, but someday he will. It might not happen until Judgment Day when God exposes everything that was hidden and all the motives of our hearts and He makes our righteousness shine like the dawn. But one way or another God is going to reveal what was really going on.
How many times have you done something good for someone and they had no idea? Or they misinterpreted it and thought you were doing something bad? Or they thought you had selfish motives when in reality you did it for Christ’s sake? Someday God will come and reveal what was really going on, and when that happens that person will see what it was you were really doing and glorify God for it. There is going to be a whole lot of glorifying going on that day!
Judgment Day
And whenever some of that glorifying is because of something you did, you will be rewarded. Just seeing the Father honored and glorified will be reward enough, and seeing that it is happening because of something you did would be double reward in itself; but on top of that God will give you even more reward. On the other hand, what a sad thing it will be when the truth about our good deeds is exposed and it comes out that they really were not good deeds, because our motives were wrong. So your life comes up on Judgment Day and as the truth about your deeds is exposed, nobody is glorifying God. One deed after another, after another, flashes across the screen, and everything is silent. Nobody is praising God. People are just saying, “Oops, oh – that’s no good. Oh boy. Ugh” – and then finally one thing you did that really showed God’s glory and some people praise God for that – but then it is two more hours of silence before the next thing comes up that actually brings Him some glory.
Now imagine something else. Suppose it is Judgment Day and God opens people’s eyes to the truth about everything that happened in your life and there are roars of praise and worship to the Lord because of thousands and thousands of things you did that showed His glory. And the roar of praise going up is deafening. You cannot even imagine that you ever even had contact with that many people in your lifetime. People you never even met – but who saw you and were affected indirectly by things you did. Don’t you want your life to be the occasion for a deafening roar of praise to the Lord on that Day?
But is that a realistic goal? How often do you get a chance to do a really good thing – something so noble that people will shout praises to God for it? In the movies the heroes are doing great, noble exploits on a routine basis. They are constantly risking their lives to save a friend or making some huge sacrifice (I know of one show where the main character saves countless lives and even saves the whole world numerous times in a single twenty-four hour period) – but in the real world, how often do you get an opportunity to do something truly great? How many times a year, do you get a chance to do something that will someday cause people to actually shout praises to the Father? What if you found a way that you could do a heroic deed like that every single week – so if you lived as a Christian for forty years there would be over two thousand times when the shouts of praise would go up to the glory of God on Judgment Day when your life is being exposed? What if you could do something that exposed the glory of God every hour? What if you found a way for every single thing you do to glorify God? What if you found a way to obey 1 Corinthians 10:31?
1 Corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
Is that far-fetched? Is it really possible that on Judgment Day there will be a roar of praise that goes up because of the way you ate a handful of potato chips the evening of February 14, 2010? In Galatians 1:24 Paul spoke of the people in Judea who had never met him and said they glorified God because of me. In Romans 2:24 there are some hypocrites who have a very different testimony:
Romans 2:24 God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
How do you live your life for the glory of God – so that people glorify God because of you rather than blaspheme God because of you? What could be more important than this?
I think, when you and I are actually there, on Judgment Day, and it is really happening – each day of our lives that is exposed without any shouts of praise going up to God – we will regard that day as a wasted day. Our idea of a wasted day then will be a lot different than it is now. Now we think a day was worthwhile if we got a lot done. You catch up on your work, make a lot of money, get a bunch of things accomplished, and you go to bed thinking, “This was a good day.” But at the judgment, if that day produced nothing that pointed to God’s glory, if that day is reviewed and no one praises God – it is just silence, you will think, Oh what a sickening waste that day was – even if you got a lot done that day. Some people will get to the judgment and look back on the day they saved the world from nuclear war and find that it was a wasted day, because they did not save the world in a way that brought glory to God – and so it was worthless.
What is your definition of a bad day or good day? What makes it good or bad? If you have a flat tire and get yelled at by your boss and lose your wallet and catch the flu – that is not necessarily a bad day. It is just a hard day. A bad day is a day in which nothing was produced in your life that will bring glory to God. So let’s see what Jesus teaches us about how to live for God’s glory.
The Motive of Glory: Glorifying God vs. Self-Glory
When Jesus commands us to let our light shine before men so that they may see our good works, at first glance that seems like a contradiction with what comes a little later in the sermon.
Matthew 6:1 Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them.
The terms in the Greek are identical. So which is it? Are we supposed to do our good works out there in the open for men to see or not?
Jesus’ teaching style
This is another example of how important it is to understand Jesus’ teaching style in the Sermon on the Mount. I mentioned before that Jesus often gives a general principle that has exceptions but does not mention the exceptions. Or to put it another way, He will give a principle that has application in one area but not another area, but He does not spell that out in explicit terms. Kind of like if a father finds his kids arguing and fighting and screaming at each other, and he steps in and says, “OK, from now on – no yelling.” What does that mean? That is stated in an absolute way, but is it really absolute? If there is a fire in the middle of the night do you want your kids to get up and go around the house whispering, “fire”? If they are being kidnapped, and you are around the corner, do you want them to use their inside voice? “By the way Dad, I’m currently being abducted” No – the “no yelling” rule is not intended to apply in situations like that. But if the father sat there and gave every exception he could think of, and talked for fine minutes about the specific contexts – the statement would lose its force. The father wants his children to focus on the rule, not the exceptions. And so he just says, “No yelling,” and expects them to know what context he is talking about.
Self glorification
That is the way Jesus speaks very often. And if we understand that then it is not hard at all to understand what He is saying here. The difference is very clear – it is in the motive.
Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
6:1-2 Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. … 2 to be honored by men.
Literally it is to be glorified by men. If you are making your righteousness visible to men so you will be glorified, that is bad. If you are doing it so the Father will be glorified, that is good.
Sometimes people read chapter 6 and think all their righteousness has to be top secret. No one can ever know how much money you give, or that you are fasting, or whatever. That is not what Jesus was saying. He was saying it is wrong to advertise those things for the purpose of impressing everyone with how godly you are. But it is a wonderful thing to let people see your righteousness if it is done in a way that brings glory to God rather than to you.
So the beginning point in this question of how to live for the glory of God has to do with motive. The goal in your heart must be to impress people with God, not for people to be impressed with you. Bruner: “Good works are to be transparent, revealing less their agent than their source.” We are the agent of our good deeds; God is the source. The goodness comes from Him, through us.
Someone once said the way we function as the light of this world is by being windows that let the light of God’s glory into the dark room of this world. Funny thing about windows, the better the window the less you see it. If you try to look out the window to see the sky outside and all you can see is the window, that is a dirty window. It is the window that lets in the light, but the attention should not be on the glass. So in chapter 6 when He says, “Don’t do your acts of righteousness to be seen by men” He is saying “Don’t be a stained glass window.” Stained glass windows do not let much light in – they are designed to be stared at and admired themselves.
So it all starts with our motive. Whose glory are we seeking? Do we want people to be impressed with us, or with God?
The Method of Glory: Showing God’s Attributes
Having the right motive is the starting point – but it is not all there is to glorifying God. When Paul told the Corinthians to eat and drink for the glory of God he was not just telling them to change their motives. There are actions that bring glory to God and actions that do not. We need to think through what God’s glory actually is.
God’s glory is just simply that which is fantastic about each of His attributes. God is faithful – and when you can start to see what is so great about His faithfulness, you are starting to see His glory. When you can start to see what is so amazing about His power or wisdom or love or holiness – the more you can see what is so terrific about those things, the more you are seeing the glory of God.
Showing God’s Attributes
So living in a way that glorifies God means living in a way that exposes what is so great about His attributes.
Example 1
Suppose a friend of yours invented some new alloy that is ten times stronger than any other kind of metal. And he uses it to build a bridge across a one thousand foot deep canyon. If you want to glorify the strength of that alloy, how do you do it? Do you do it by working hard at gathering a bunch of 2x4’s and propping up the bridge? No – that would insult the strength of the metal. If you want to do something that puts on display how strong this metal is – the way to glorify its strength – is to pile your kids in the van and drive across that bridge without the slightest hint of anxiety or fear. You do that and people will be impressed with how strong and trustworthy it is.
Example 2
Suppose you want to put on display how amazing a new headache medicine is. Do you do that by bragging about how you are so tough that you can live with headache pain? No – that would just impress people with your toughness. If you want to impress people with how good this medicine is you do that by taking it. You do it by getting the world’s worst migraine and not being bothered by it in the least because you are about to take this amazing medicine.
Example 3
How do you glorify a chef? If I come to your house for dinner and I want to impress everyone with how good a cook you are, how do I do it? Do I do it by going into your kitchen and adding spices to everything and doing what I can to help the meal out? No – that would be an insult to the cook. If I want to glorify the cook I do that by eating the food and then saying things like, “mmmmm.”
You glorify strength by trusting it.
You glorify medicine by taking it.
You glorify good food by enjoying it.
You glorify beauty by looking at it.
You glorify wisdom by following it.
You glorify a refuge by running into it.
You glorify wrath by fearing it.
You glorify forgiveness by rejoicing in it.
The motive has to be to impress people with how great God is not how great you are. The method of glorifying God is to show how great each one of His attributes is by enjoying it. How do you eat and drink and sleep and work and play and do everything else in a way that glorifies God? By doing those things in a way that becomes a delightful experience of some attribute of God.
So Judgment Day comes and God exposes the truth about February 14, 2010, and it comes to light that you ate a piece of toast this morning in a way that pointed to God as satisfier of the soul because you have learned that whenever you enjoy a bite of food it reminds you to think about how that is a picture of how satisfying the presence of God is to the soul – that shows God to be satisfying. It uncovers that part of His glory. And it will cause a roar of praise to go up on that day that every knee will bow.
Suppose someone else in this church also had a piece of toast. And when you went to make your toast you noticed there were only two pieces of bread left, and one was a heel. And so you take the heel so your wife can get the good piece. And you do that because you love this woman that God loves so much, and you love being the tool God uses to bring happiness to her. That shows God to be worthy of love, which shows His glory.
And you are not worried about missing out on the good piece of bread because you are fully confident that the Lord can supply you with all the satisfaction and enjoyment you need, and so you are free to give up the good piece to your wife. You trust in God’s goodness and generosity so much that you are free to pass up this little bit of pleasure. That exposes and glorifies God as the great provider of pleasure.
So the first guy glorified God by exposing God as the satisfier of the soul. The second guy glorified God by exposing Him as the great provider of pleasure.
Suppose someone else has a piece of toast and it reminds him about the fact that just as this food is giving energy and strength to his body, so the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ supplies energy and strength spiritually. And someone else has toast and thinks about the Lord’s faithfulness in His promises to supply all our needs. And someone else gets just the right amount of jam on it, and it just hits the spot, and he realizes only God enables enjoyment, and gratitude rises up from his heart.
Some of you are kind of bored with your devotions lately – or you do not know where to go next in your study of Scripture – what if you tried this: What if you spent the next few months thinking through how you could do each of the activities of your daily routine in ways the expose some aspect of the glory of God? We just covered eating toast, but what about doing laundry? “I do laundry to serve my family.” That might bring glory to God and it might bring glory to you. For that matter, I could preach a sermon in a way that brings glory to me or glory to God – how do I do it in a way that, once the truth about everything is brought to light on Judgment Day, brings glory to God and not me? In 1 Peter 4:11 Peter answers the question about preaching and doing laundry all in one verse.
1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
The way to serve your family – do the dishes or earn an income or clean the garage or shovel the walk or vacuum the living room in a way that brings glory to God is to serve in a way that draws the strength you need from God. And you can tell whether you are depending on yourself or on God by the way you pray. If you are confident in your own strength, your prayers for God’s help will be perfunctory – if they happen at all. But if you are truly relying on God’s strengthening and enablement then anyone could listen to your prayers for help and say, “Wow – he really believes that unless God answers yes to this prayer for strength, the task will utterly fail.” People who trust in their own ability think the success or failure is in their hands. Some are optimists – they are sure they will succeed because they have a high view of their own abilities. Others are pessimists – they have a low view of their own strength, so they figure it will fail. But either way they see success or failure as depending on their own strength. And so neither one of them brings glory to God.
And you can tell, very often, by how much joy they have. People who depend on their own strength are weighed down and burdened. People who depend on God’s strength are full of joy and hope. Self-confident people wake up every morning and see this giant lead weight that says, “My responsibilities for today.” And attached to that weight is a harness that they strap onto their back, and heave the weight up, and stagger through the day. But those who trust in God wake up every day, and they too see a harness with some straps. And they gladly put the harness on, and when it’s all buckled tight they give the strap a little tug. The strap goes up into heaven. And when they give it a tug God lifts on the other end, and they walk through the day being lifted and supported and strengthened and enabled by God. That’s the easy yoke
So serving in a way that shows total dependence on God’s enablement is one way to bring glory to God. But what about other ways? How about talking on the phone? You can talk just to talk or you can talk in a way that shows you love that person on the other end because God loves that person. How about going on vacation? How do you go on a vacation in a way that shows your confidence in all kinds of great things about God? How about reading the paper? How about taking a shower or watching TV or driving to work or doing your homework or cleaning up your room or brushing your teeth? What if you just picked one activity each morning to study (or each week – however long it takes you to figure out how to do that thing in ways that expose what is so great about one of God’s attributes)?
And then when you get done with that, and you are ready for a change of pace, how about this: What if you then started picking one attribute of God each day, and trying to figure out ways you can live a life that glorifies that attribute? What can I do, God, that would show Your strength to be really, really, really strong and trustworthy? What kinds of things can I do that would put on display how desirable Your wisdom is? What could I do that would show Your kindness and holiness and beauty and nearess, and comfort and eternality and forgiveness and justice? What could I do that would put You on display as the giver of rest? Or the giver of honor? How could I show Your guidance to be worthwhile?
The answer to most of those questions has to do at least in part with how you feel. For example, when are you afraid and when are you not afraid? Some people are afraid of people and circumstances, afraid of the future, afraid of the economy, afraid of the government. But they are not afraid at all of displeasing God or breaking His laws. Other people are scared to death of God’s displeasure, but not one bit afraid of anything on earth when God is pleased with them. And if that is you then your fear accomplishes a great thing. It shows God to be much more worthy to be feared than the world. And God’s worthiness to be feared is one of His attributes – it is part of His glory.
Sometimes you are bold and sometimes you are timid. But when are you bold, and when are you timid? If you are especially bold when you are relying on your considerable skills and wisdom and experience, but you are timid when all you have to rely on is one of God’s promises – that minimizes God’s glory and glorifies your abilities. But if you are timid when all you have to rely on is your resources, and bold as a lion when you are counting on some promise of God – that glorifies God’s faithfulness.
When are you happy and when are you sad? When are you motivated and when are you unmotivated? When are you interested and when are you bored? When are you pessimistic and when are you optimistic? When are you angry? When are you looking forward to tomorrow? The answers to those questions will glorify something – either something in this world or God.
Faith
You might be thinking, that all sounds very interesting. And it is great that I now have my devotions mapped out for the next ten years. But what about in the meantime? I look forward to getting all that figured out and answering all those questions, but what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Is there anything I could do this afternoon that would bring glory to God?
All those questions I brought up before are in some ways difficult. Figuring out how to read the newspaper in a way that glorifies some attribute of God might require a lot of thought and study. But in another sense, figuring out how to live in a way that brings glory to God is simple. In fact, it can be boiled down to a single word: faith. Anything you do will bring glory to God if you do that thing by faith in Jesus Christ. How do you obey 1 Corinthians 10:31, so that everything you do, whether you eat or drink – it all brings glory to God?
Romans 14:23 the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
The way to not bring glory to God in the mundane details of life is by doing them apart from faith. But if you do them in faith, they glorify God because they show Him to be trustworthy.
The guy who piles his family in the van and drives across the bridge without the slightest anxiety – what is he doing? He is trusting that bridge to be strong. The guy who goes to his favorite restaurant and glorifies the chef by how excited he is to go eat there – what is he doing? He is trusting the chef to make some great food. The guy who glorifies the effectiveness of the headache medicine by taking it – what is he doing? He is trusting the medicine to cure the illness.
You bring glory to God when you enjoy His attributes, and all of His attributes are enjoyed only through faith. You have to trust that they are good before you will seek to experience them. It requires a lot of effort to seek them and experience them, and so if you do not fully trust them to be satisfying you will not go to the trouble.
Sonship
So it is all by faith. And you might say, “I don’t see the word ‘faith’ anywhere in verse 16.” Oh, it’s there. The actual word is not there, but the concept certainly is. Instead of using the word “faith” He paints us a picture of faith. The word can be an abstraction, and so Jesus gives us a picture of exactly what faith looks like. Notice the way He refers to God. Instead of saying, “they will glorify God,” or “they will glorify the Lord,” He says they will see your good deeds and glorify your Father. Instead of going on for pages and pages on the definition of faith Jesus just gives us a concrete picture that everyone can understand – the relationship between an ideal father and his son.
We glorify God when all our good deeds flow out of our sonship. That is what faith looks like. We trust Him to take care of us like a child trusts his daddy. We obey Him with loving devotion – not the way you obey a law or a policeman; but the way you obey a father you deeply love and whose approval you crave. We fear Him – not the way we fear an enemy or a threat, but the way we fear a father we deeply respect and love. We seek to please Him – not the way a politician seeks to please the public or the way an insecure person tries to please everyone – but the way an eager son is so desirous to please the father he loves. We glorify God by enjoying His attributes, and we enjoy His attributes from the position of sonship – which is a life of trust.
Our shining is intrinsic
So Jesus referring to God as our Father here points to the relationship – and it also points to something else. The difference between a servant and a son is genetic. A son shares his father’s nature. They will see our good deeds and glorify the One we resemble.
Everything God created reflects His glory and points to His glory in one way or another. But nothing in creation is capable of glorifying God at the level His sons and daughters can. There is a sense in which everything else in creation just reflects God’s light. But Jesus did not say, “You are reflectors” – He said you are the light of the world. We actually emanate light. Righteousness is actually being generated in us.
“Whoa – wait a minute. Are you suggesting that we have our own, intrinsic righteousness? I thought our righteousness came from God, not ourselves.” It does. Of course it comes from God. If it did not come from God, how would it bring Him any glory? We are not the source of our own righteousness – God is. However – still, amazingly, astonishingly, paradoxically – Jesus still refers to these good works as…your good works!!! It is God working through you, but not like a puppet. He works in you to will and to act, so it is God working but it really is you willing and acting – so much so that they can actually be called your good works.
This is a paradox. In our puny little brains we have a hard time reconciling how our works could actually be our works and yet at the same time be from God. And so to make it more understandable we tend to just focus on one or the other. Some people say, “See, they come from God – therefore they don’t come from your free will.” Others say, “See, Jesus says they are our works – therefore they don’t come from God, but from us.” Both are correct in what they affirm and incorrect in what they deny. Yes they are from God and yes they are genuinely our works.
John 15:8 This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
It really is us bearing the fruit.
This sets us apart from the rest of creation. We do more than just contain good fruit like a basket – we produce good fruit like a tree. We do more than just reflect His light like a mirror; we emanate it like a lamp. The heavens declare the glory of God; but we do not just reflect the light; we actually have light coming out of us. That makes you more glorious and more important in showing the glory of God than the heavens themselves. We are His children and we share His very nature – which is light – the light of righteousness.
Conclusion
What is the meaning of glory? Worship. The very people who persecute us now will someday worship God when all things are exposed and they see that we did those deeds because we were enjoying some fantastic thing about God. What is the motive of glory? Showing God to be great rather than trying to get people to be impressed with us. What is the method of glory? Our method is faith – trusting our Daddy in heaven. Counting on all His attributes to really be truly wonderful, so that every last thing we do all throughout the day we do for the purpose of experiencing those attributes.
Benediction Isaiah 43:1 But now, this is what the Lord says-- he who created you … 3 I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; …. 4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, …6 I will say to the north, … Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth-- 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made."
Appendix
To “glorify” can mean to make glorious, to show to be glorious, to honor, or to praise and worship.
