Chapter 9

Glory to Glory

Meanwhile, until the day of glory, the anointing is clearly understood as the fiat gift of God upon his children, flowing from outside and above, down and into them according to the law of faith. There is no place for boasting.[1] An unfolding plan is apparent as Paul shares his prayer burden with the Philippians in eloquently progressive terms, “And this I pray that love may abound still more and more…until the day of Christ”.[2] The alphabet of love expands inexhaustibly to the size of the Divine Author. There is no omega point at which the believer completes his letters. The poetic way He speaks to His creation will yield endless verse and the song God sings will always resound with another refrain.

At first glance Paul seems cynical, almost hopeless regarding man’s ability to please God.  Whether under the law, as the Jews, or outside the law, as Gentiles, he emphatically affirms that only the doers of the law will be justified, knowing the impossibility of keeping the law perfectly.[3] His self-reflection resulted in the confession of an extremely austere commitment to living under the Mosaic Law with impeccable observance of the Pharisaical traditions, only to be patently disapproved at his first encounter with Christ. This experience formed the backdrop for the abrupt and radical change Paul would announce to the Jews first and then to the non-Jewish world; a change that would scandalize the Jews and mystify the Greeks.[4] The scholars have had a difficult task of making sense of a message Paul himself described as scandal and foolishness, scandal to the Jews, foolishness to the pagans. What of the sage, the intellectual, the scholar? Omniscience does not pander to the musings of limited intellects.[5] The most difficult aspect of Paul is his unwillingness to press his apologetic out of measure in order to satisfy man’s need to quantify, qualify, rationalize, categorize and academically institutionalize God. His letters are not intended to be systematic. Paul’s subject matter is not easily grasped, nor can it be fully represented by the metaphors, symbols or languages of man. He tells his story as one chosen to embody the revelations of God. He lives, experiences, learns, and teaches. Although he moves beyond questions to answers, he always seasons his conclusions with wonder. With Paul, there is always an open end. He lives in wonder, confesses wonder at his God who is ultimately inscrutable — loving, but inscrutable.[6] How to reconcile the love of God in light of His wrath is a question that fires the spirit of Paul who knows a God of mercy, a God who intends to correct the problem of sin and death in His universe. The tone of Paul is sober and triumphant concerning sin; sober in that God inflicts His wrath on the disobedient, triumphant in knowing the extension of mercy reaches to the lowest depths, even to a blaspheming persecutor as he. There is no injustice with God, of this Paul is certain.[7] In the end there shall be supreme satisfaction which settles over the creation, all having approached the judgment bar of God in need of mediation, finding no grounds for confidence in the flesh, and all confessing the Lordship of the Crucified One.[8]

Paul’s vision is panoramic. God is showing him things that the prophets, even the angels have longed to see.[9]  Epoch after epoch unfolds, each revealing another aspect of the Divine and His creation until the consummation when God is all in all.[10] Men and angels only perceive what is in their immediate view.  Interpretations of reality are based on limited data, yielding only partial understanding. What we perceive is what we are able to perceive; perceptions are just that and nothing more. Christ’s training of Paul, the former Pharisee, was not in accord with the typical process of religious indoctrination and social consensus. His assumptions about himself  and the world he lived in were to change radically from a perceived world of bias, stereotype and prejudice to a grasp of the true reality of God and His world that would require a thorough deprogramming of old ideas and the development of a completely new paradigm for interpreting the meaning of virtually all things.[11] This “new creation” would be expressed in a new language that would frequently press Paul’s vocabulary out of measure, aptly called, “Paul’s vocabulary of Grace”.[12] Paul’s doxologies alone constitute a heavenly hymnal of praise expressing the glory of God in Christ and his followers far beyond the wildest imagination of any prophet or psalmist before him. Certainly, Paul’s themes build on their foundations, yet he stands as it were on their shoulders peering into the resplendent reality of God’s kingdom of righteousness that stretches out through immeasurable time and space. Paul extols: “Consider that our suffering is nothing compared to our future glory with Christ; the glory to be revealed in us who receive mercy, both Jews and Gentiles who have been prepared for glory. It is the wisdom of God which he ordained before the ages for our glory, but it is hidden for now.  Had Christ’s glory not been hidden, He would not have been crucified. The glorious destiny of those who love God is unimaginable. We die in dishonor but we are raised in glory. Meanwhile, there is reflected in us a mirrored image transforming us from this glory, to increasingly greater glory until the image is no longer a reflection, but the actual likeness of Christ.  It is amazing that a moment of light affliction results in future glory of such splendor our minds and hearts cannot conceive; only the unfolding ages can reveal. But we can know and are assured the riches of the glory of God will be fully manifest in due time among the Gentiles since Christ is in you — this is the foretaste and hope of glory.” [13] Such is Paul’s vision of glory in digest.