God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

What does Paul mean when he says we will get glory? He prays “that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him” (2 Thessalonians 1:12). In what sense will we be glorified in Jesus?

Don Carson provides an insightful explanation in A Call to Spiritual Reformation.

First, a challenge related to what Paul does not mean:

The Christian’s whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.... Lying at the heart of all sin is the desire to be the center, to be like God. So if we take on Christian service, and think of such service as the vehicle that will make us central, we have paganized Christian service; we have domesticated Christian living and set it to servitude in a pagan cause. (57–58)

So then, what does it mean for us to be glorified in Christ?

Paul is well aware of God’s urgent insistence, ‘I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another’ (Isa. 42:8). But there is another shading to glory that makes it entirely appropriate to talk of the Christian’s glorification.... [O]ur glorification itself becomes the most spectacular means of bringing him glory.... Christ is glorified, he receives the praise that is his due, as we are glorified, as we are conformed to his likeness. On the last day, Jesus Christ will be glorified in us on account of what we have become by his grace, and we will be glorified in him on account of what he has done for us. (58–59)

Our glory will not be one that competes with Christ's. There is “another shading to glory”—a shade of glory in us that serves to magnify the glory of Christ and what he has accomplished for us.