The Glory of God in His Glorious Church

There is a double strand running through John MacArthur’s teaching on the glory of the church, especially in his sermons and commentary on Ephesians. One strand is to insist that the church exists to glorify God. The glory of the church is to show that God is supremely glorious above all created glory. The other strand is to insist that the church is being made glorious with the very glory of God. So, there’s this twofold way of talking about the glory of the church. Her glory is that she is glorious. And her glory is that her gloriousness exists for the glory of another: her Maker, her Redeemer.

When the book of Romans reaches its great climax in Romans 11:36 with God as the end of all things, it says, “From him and through him and to him are all things.” And that all things includes the glory of the church. The glory of the church — every aspect of it — is from God and through God and to God, so that when Paul soars into his final exultation, “To him be glory forever,” it includes “To him be glory through the glory of the church forever.” One glory is ultimate: the glory of God. One glory is penultimate: the glory of the church. The church is glorious for the sake of the glory of God.

And since we are this church, this people, we cannot speak dispassionately about the glory of the church. This is our glory. God has chosen to put his glory on display by bringing into being a glorious people. That’s you. It’s your people back home. But even that scarcely touches the heart of the matter. It would be better to say this: God has chosen to put the apex of his glory — the glory of his grace — on display by gathering out of his hell-deserving enemies a people for himself, and making us beautiful, splendid, glorious, at the cost of the death of his only Son, who died for us so that he could present us to himself in splendor (Ephesians 5:27), with no defect at all, and bring us as his everlasting wife to God, where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

One of the great challenges for pastors is to speak of these two strands so that, in the minds and in the hearts and in the actions of our people, they would be woven together biblically. How are your people to understand that they are glorious, and yet they live totally for the glory of another, for God? How is your church to understand that she is glorious when she looks anything but glorious, and when the Bible itself says that this Christian life will be fraught with tribulation, and distress, and persecution, and famine, and nakedness, and danger, and sword (Romans 8:35), and that we will be hated, not glorified, in the world (Matthew 10:22), and that we will deal with the inglorious ugliness of indwelling sin to the end of our lives (Romans 7:20), and that the best among us may be regarded as “the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13)? And when we die, we will die ingloriously — sown in dishonor (1 Corinthians 15:43).

So, let’s trace out these two strands in the Bible and see if we can clarify what they are, and how they relate to each other, and how that may affect our ministry.

The Church for God’s Glory

The first strand is that the glory of the church is her existence and her mission to glorify God. The glory of the church is to show that God is supremely glorious above all created glory. Let’s start at the beginning. The pinnacle of God’s creation was people, not animals — not galaxies or mountains, but persons.

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Genesis 1:27–28)

The purpose of putting beautiful images of yourself on display as the pinnacle of your creation is to call attention to your glory. That’s what images are for. Images image forth the one they are images of. God is both the artist who made the statue and the one the statue is commemorating. Therefore, he is doubly the focus of every statue, every image of himself. He is the main point of every human being. If God erects eight billion images of himself in the world, the purpose is unmistakable: Think about me, know me, marvel at me, enjoy me. You can call that megalomania, if you are of that mindset, or you can call it love, because we were made to know him and to be with him and to love him and to be satisfied in him. So, to call our attention to himself over and over is love. How else could an infinitely beautiful, all-satisfying God love his creatures to the full?

When Adam and Eve sinned, the essence of that sin was the preference of self-exaltation over God-exaltation — which is the fundamental condition of every human being since then. How then will God move forward with his purpose to be glorified in the world, when we have so defaced his image? One might answer, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1); “the rivers clap their hands . . . the hills sing for joy” (Psalm 98:8); “the mountains and the hills . . . break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). The whole universe is designed to glorify God (Colossians 1:16; Romans 1:19–23). The glory of God seen in natural revelation will be so clear at the last judgment that every tongue will be stopped.

A Chosen People

But natural revelation is not God’s main plan for the glorification of his name in this world. He created persons for his glory, and he will get glory through persons. This is his main plan: a people for the sake of his name forever and ever. So, he does something very wonderful and very offensive. He chooses one people from all the peoples of the world and focuses his saving attention almost entirely on them for two thousand years. This is wonderful because he did not have to choose anyone. He could have been done with us humans. And this is offensive because he chose one ethnic group. Not two, not ten, not a thousand — one. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2).

Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on . . . you above all peoples. (Deuteronomy 10:14–15)

Why? Why this people and not another? And Moses answers in Deuteronomy 7:7–8,

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you.

Why did he set his love on this people? Answer: because he set his love on this people. He loved them because he loved them. “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19; Romans 9:15). This is an election of Israel according to grace (Romans 11:5).

“In making the church beautiful, God is putting his own beauty on display in the beauty of the church.”

And since the choice of Israel is totally of grace and not deserved by any ethnic feature or any human trait or any spiritual qualification, it excludes all boasting except in the grace of God. As soon as any Jewish person begins to boast that God must show him favor because of his Jewishness, the words of John the Baptist ring out: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).

This means that when the Bible speaks of Israel as chosen and existing for the glory of God, it means ultimately for the glory of the grace of God.

Bring my sons from afar
     and my daughters from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name,
     whom I created for my glory. (Isaiah 43:6–7)

The people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise. (Isaiah 43:21)

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you. . . .
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
     My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:9–11)

You are my servant,
     Israel, in whom I will be glorified. (Isaiah 49:3)

I made the whole house of Israel . . . cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. (Jeremiah 13:11)

He saved them for his name’s sake,
     that he might make known his mighty power. (Psalm 106:8)

[You are] the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
     that I might be glorified. (Isaiah 60:21)

So, what is clear from all those texts is that when the psalmist says, “The Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession” (Psalm 135:4), he means he chose Israel for his glory. God spent two thousand years focusing his revelatory word and his redemptive work mainly on one people, that they might be for him a name, a praise, and a glory. The glory of Israel is her existence for the glory of God. And by and large, Israel did not bear that kind of fruit for God — not yet.

A Praising Church

When the Messiah came, Israel’s failure reached a climax in the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus. In the parable of the wicked tenants, the owner of the vineyard sends his son to collect the fruit of God-glorifying obedience from Israel, and the tenants say, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance” (Matthew 21:38).

To this, Jesus responds with one of the most decisive statements in the history of the world. He says, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43). This is one of the most important turning points in the history of the world. The two-thousand-year-old focus on Israel ceases. “The times of the Gentiles” begin (Luke 21:24). A God-appointed hardening falls upon Israel (Romans 11:7–8, 25). And Jesus sends his missionaries to gather in the sheep that are not of this Jewish fold (John 10:16). And now, for another two thousand years, God has been gathering his blood-bought church from every people and tribe and language and nation for the glory of his name (Revelation 5:9; Acts 20:28).

And he will succeed. “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). And as it comes, the full number of the Gentiles will be complete, the hardening of Israel will be lifted, a generation of ethnic Israel will turn en masse to Christ (Romans 11:25–26) and be grafted back into the olive tree (Romans 11:24) by faith in Jesus the Messiah (Romans 10:9–13). And there will be one covenant people, the church, Jew and Gentile, to meet the Lord when he comes (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

And what is the glory of that church? The glory of the church, like the glory of Israel, is to show that God is supremely glorious above all created glory. The church — the new covenant people — exists for the glory of God.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

This is why the church exists — to make the excellencies of God known, like the glory of his wisdom. Ephesians 3:10: “Through the church the manifold wisdom of God [will] now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

But just as with Israel, the most ultimate purpose of the church (after which there are no greater purposes) is the praise of the glory of God’s grace. Ephesians 1:4–6: “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world . . . [and] predestined us for adoption . . . to the praise of [the glory of his] grace.” Everything begins before the foundation of the world with the grace of God — the free, unconditional, gracious election of a people. And at the end of history, in the consummation of all things, the ultimate goal is the glory of that grace shining in the glad praises of God’s people, the church, forever. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20–21).

That’s the first strand running through the Bible concerning the glory of the church. The glory of the church is her existence and her mission to show that God is supremely glorious above all created glory, especially in the glory of his grace.

God’s Glory for the Church

The other strand is that the church is herself being made glorious with the very glory of God. So, the first strand is that she exists for the glory of God. And the second strand is that as a way of doing that — as a way of glorifying God — she is being made glorious. Her glory is that she is glorious. And her glory is that her gloriousness exists for the glory of another.

This was as true of Israel as it is the church. Just one passage concerning Israel’s being made glorious, Ezekiel 16 is a picture of God choosing Israel for his wife.

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. . . . You were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred. . . . When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, “Live!” . . . When I passed by you again . . . behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. . . . You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God. But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore. (Ezekiel 16:3–15)

That’s the story of the whole Old Testament. God blesses and beautifies his people again and again, and instead of glorifying him for his grace, she dishonors him with her idolatry. And the mouth of the whole world is stopped (Romans 3:19). And so, as we saw, the natural (that is, Jewish) branches are broken off, and for the last two thousand years God has been grafting wild olive branches into the tree of salvation and making Gentiles into sons of Abraham by faith in the Jewish Messiah (Galatians 3:7) — creating the church.

And now the church is being made glorious. Christ died to create for himself a beautiful bride.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

Or to change the metaphor from wife to brothers, Romans 8:29–30:

[God] predestined [the church] to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

That is, our glorification, our beautification, is conformity to Christ, and it is as sure as our predestination. He can speak of it in the past tense, even though it is happening incrementally now. “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we all] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Glorification has begun.

We are being made glorious with the very glory of Christ. “[If] we suffer with him . . . we [will] be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17). Even now, “he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). Whatever beauty there is in us, it is the beauty of his holiness. And the day will come when our likeness to Christ will be perfected both morally and physically.

• “When he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
• “[He] will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21).
• “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).
• “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

The whole creation awaits with groaning the beautification of the church — the glory of the church. Remember, persons are the pinnacle of his creation, not galaxies. Persons are the pinnacle of his glory, not nature. The Son will have a beautiful bride, not just a great estate. The beauty of the church was the plan from eternity to eternity: “We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7). The eternal plan was the glory of the church. Persons praising the glory of God’s grace are at the pinnacle of God’s purpose.

“The aim of God to be glorified and the aim of the church to be glorious is one aim.”

It should be obvious now, I think, how the two biblical strands of the glory of the church relate to each other. The first strand is that the glory of the church is her existence and her mission to glorify God. Her glory is to make God look glorious. And the second strand is that the church is herself being made glorious with the very glory of God. And the connection is that in making the church beautiful with his own beauty — the beauty of his Son — God is putting his own beauty on display in the beauty of the church. The two strands become one. God is glorified in the very glorification of the church. The aim of God to be glorified and the aim of the church to be glorious is one aim.

Glory and Gladness in Preaching

Let me close by drawing out something that has profound implications for the way we preach — indeed, the way we do everything. Press in with me for a moment to the reality that is being created when the church is being made beautiful or glorious. What is the essence of her beauty? Paul gives us a clear pointer in Ephesians 1:6 when he says that the ultimate aim of election and predestination and adoption is the praise of the glory of the grace of God. Praising the beauty of the grace of God is close to the essence of our beauty.

But what is the essence of praise? Jesus said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8). The essence of praise is not the movement of the lips in songs or prayers or preaching, nor the lifting of the hands or kneeling. The essence of praise is not any motion of muscles, nor is the essence of praise right thoughts or right words about God, because the devil has those. The essence of praise is when those right thoughts about God give rise to right affections for God, which spill over in various forms. The essence of praise is the heart’s gladness in the glory of God. “You, God, are my gladness, my joy, my pleasure.” “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). There is no proper praise of the glory of the grace of God that is not a gladness in the glory of God. It may be more. But it is not less.

Therefore, I would be so bold as to say that the essence of the beauty of the church — not the totality of it, but the essence of it — is that our hearts finally enjoy God above all things, and at the last day, enjoy him with no competing affections whatsoever. That will be the final goal of our glorification, and that will be the final goal of God’s glorification. And the two strands of the glory of the church will be one. He will be supremely glorified in the church because the church will be supremely satisfied in him, spilling over in endless praise to the glory of God’s free and sovereign grace.

Brothers, if you believe this, the effects on your preaching for the gladness of your people in the glory of God will be profound and pervasive. What God may be pleased to do in the beautification of your people is incalculable.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20–21)