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To the praise of his glory

To most of our ears, this is a redundancy.

Actually it is a redundancy of two unknowns. We don’t really know what glory is; it is just a term for most of us.

And praise is something we do on Sunday mornings when, frankly, we feel like it. (Shall we go to the Arby’s for lunch after “worship?” They have the 5 sandwiches for 5 dollars deal ...). This is the level of praise for most of us.

But Paul uses the term “praise of his glory” three times in one of the most out-of-this-world chapters in the New Testament: Ephesians 1.

The man saw something. He saw a vision in that prison cell, even though he didn’t write about his vision directly. He just wrote about what he saw in the vision. He saw the cosmic Christ.

And he saw the implications, which amount to this:

If Christ is the anchor of the entire creation – the theologian Hans Boersma calls it the “Christological anchor”; I love the term – if Christ is indeed the anchor of all of creation, that glorious condition must be EXPRESSED.

The expression is the praise.

This is not too complicated. When we smile because of the assurance of God’s love, it is glory expressed. It is the praise of his glory. This doesn’t have to go on in a church building.

In fact, if it is not going on outside of a church building, the church part is just the prelude to Arbys. It ain’t much.

When we live, resigned to the fact that He is God and we are not, and we sense the relaxation which that brings, it is to the praise of his glory. Sense. Sense is of this world, this (still) wonderful world. Sense is what can be seen, what can be touched, what can be handled.

Doesn’t that RING A BELL?? "That which we have heard, which have have seen, which our hands have touched … of the word of life…" Doesn't it say that somewhere...?

The aesthetics of this life, the actions, the expressions, the ART of it, the SENSED beauty of it all … this is (or can be, it can be, say that it can be) to the praise of his glory.

We don’t see glory itself much in our present condition.

But we sure can make everything around us the praise of it.



Logos2Go

Ephesians 1.4-6 ... even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1.12 ... so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1.13-15 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints,

1 John 1.1-2 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us

Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).

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