28 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! 29 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him! Worship the Lord in the splendour of holiness; 30 tremble before Him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. 31 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”
32 Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! 33 Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for He comes to judge the earth. 34 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!
35 Say also: “Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather and deliver us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in Your praise.
36 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!” Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the Lord.
On the 31st of October 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This has always been regarded as the spark which set in motion the Reformation of the Church, and coming out of the Reformation are five key doctrines which we have taken a look at during the past month. So far we have covered Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone and Christ alone, and today we come to the last of the five solas - Soli Deo Gloria: To the glory of God alone.
There is certainly merit in studying each of these key statements individually, but they actually all belong together, and it is the final statement of the five solas which not only brings them together, but more importantly, points us to the whole purpose of not only the Reformation, but also the very reason for our existence.
We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
Nearly 130 years after the events in Wittenberg Germany, there was a call in the Church of England and the Church of Scotland for a confession of faith to be drawn up in English. This lead to the publication of the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1646, and a year later the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms were published. The catechism was basically a teaching guide for the confession of faith in the form of questions and answers. The very first question and answer of the catechism is, “What is the chief and highest end of man? Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever.” There’s the answer to the question of the purpose of your life.
The early Reformed Church deliberately distanced itself from the traditions and man-made rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, and focussed itself and its teachings on the glory of God. This is why there is a sense that the first four solas lead to the logical conclusion that all we do and say in the Church and in the world at large is meant to be for the glory of God alone.
Romans 11:36 says, “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”
When we begin to understand that our lives are meant to be lived for God’s glory instead of our own, and when we grasp the truth that all things exist from Him and through Him and to Him, the logical conclusion is that we should echo Paul’s words in Romans 11:36. “To Him be glory forever. Amen.”
The theologian David Van Drunen makes the point in his book, God’s Glory Alone, that the Reformers didn’t actually name the five terms of what has come to be known as the five solas of the Reformation. This is a relatively recent label which only came into being in the last 120 years or so. However, Van Drunen says, “The Reformers may not have spoken explicitly of ‘the five solas,’ but the magnification of Christ, grace, faith, Scripture, and God’s glory - and these alone - suffused their theology and ethics, their worship and piety. Christ alone, and no other redeemer, is the mediator of our salvation. Grace alone, and not any human contribution, saves us. Faith alone, and no other human action, is the instrument by which we’re saved. Scripture, and no merely human word, is our ultimate standard of authority. God’s glory alone, and that of no creature, is the supreme end of all things.”
It has been well documented that it was while doing an in-depth study of the book of Romans that Martin Luther was convicted of the errors of the Roman Catholic Church. In Romans, the apostle Paul teaches step by step just what God has done in order to reconcile lost sinners to Himself. He teaches how Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification, how we are united with Him in His death and resurrection and how the Christian life is lived not under the law but in the Spirit, and a key verse in Romans is 11:36, where Paul writes, “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” He ends this verse by saying, “to Him be the glory forever,” but in the first half of this verse Paul gives us three reasons why the glory goes to God.
Firstly, where do all things come from? Paul says, “from Him.” All things come from God. The entire universe came into existence from God. The very first verse of the Bible sets the scene for everything that follows: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God planned every single aspect of creation. There is nothing in all of creation that did not originate in the mind and plan of God, and included in that list is His eternal plan to save the lost. I’ve said this before, but it’s important to stress that the Cross of Calvary was not God’s plan B. His glorious plan of redemption is part of His creation.
1 Peter 1:18-21 says, “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” God’s glorious plan of salvation is His eternal plan. All things come from Him.
Secondly, how do all things come into being? Paul says in Romans 11:36, “through Him.” That is, all things come into being through God. God created all things. The first 3 verses of John’s Gospel echo and expand upon Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” Nothing exists that was not created by God. He simply spoke, and everything came into being.
And thirdly, why do all things come into being? Paul writes, “to Him.” In other words, all things came into being to glorify God. It’s all about Him. We tend to think that God created this universe for us. Nothing could be further from the truth. When God created all things, He didn’t do so in order that we might be glorified. Remember, we are part of His creation - we are not the reason for it. There is also this rather strange idea you hear sometimes that God created us because He was lonely, and without us to share His creation with, He would be somehow incomplete. That’s not just wrong. It’s blasphemy.
God spoke creation into being as an expression of His glory. He created us in His image to bring glory to Himself, and our chief and highest end is to glorify Him. The reason that anything exists at all is for the sole purpose that God would be glorified.
The 19th century theologian Albert Barnes wrote, “The reason or end for which all things were formed is to promote His honour and glory. It is not to promote His happiness, for He was eternally happy; not to add anything to Him, for He is infinite; but that He might act as God, and have the honour and praise that is due to God.”
The point is that nothing can make God more righteous, more loving, more holy or more glorious. He is perfect, and perfection by its very definition cannot be made more perfect. God cannot grow in any of His attributes, including His glory.
So while we cannot add to His glory, what we can do as David sang God’s praises in 1 Chronicles 16, is to ascribe glory to God by honouring His name and by giving Him the reverence He is owed.
Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.” All of creation exists from Him and through Him and to Him. It all exists in order to bring glory to Himself, and Himself alone. Soli Deo Gloria.
The great tragedy is that human beings, the one part of His creation which is formed in His image in order to glorify Him the most, don’t do so. This is what sin has done to us, and even though we are saved, we still do not glorify God as we should. Our selfishness and self-centredness continue to dominate our minds.
We even bring this mindset into the Church. This is the one place where you’d think the glory of God would be our priority, but too often we put ourselves and our wants and preferences above our need to worship Him. I love the story of a lady who said to the minister after Church one Sunday, “I didn’t really enjoy the worship today.” His answer? “Oh that’s okay. We weren’t worshipping you.” It’s an amusing story, and I don’t know how true it is, but it does sum up rather accurately what we sometimes think Church should be like, doesn’t it?
The reformer John Calvin wrote, “We never truly glory in God until we have utterly discarded our own glory. It must, therefore, be regarded as a universal proposition, that whoso glories in himself glories against God. The elect are justified by the Lord, in order that they may glory in Him, and in none else.” We would do well to listen to Calvin’s warning here. When we glory in ourselves, in reality we are opposing the glory which is due to God, and God alone.
What Calvin says here is important, because he highlights what the Reformation was really all about - recognising and acknowledging the glory of God. Isaiah 42:8 is very clear: “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”
The Reformation was far more than a mere dispute over doctrine (as important as it was to highlight the heresies of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings). True worship of the one true God was a major priority of the Reformers. They took seriously the teaching in Romans 1 that the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. At the very foundation of human sin is the refusal of sinners to honour and glorify God as God and to thank Him for all that He has given us. Instead of bowing the knee to Him as we should, in our unrighteousness we suppress the truth and worship gods of our own making.
Paul wrote this letter to the Church in Rome nearly 2000 years ago, but just listen to what he writes in chapter 1, and as we look at the world around us, he may just as well have written these words yesterday: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Romans 1:18-32)
This is what happens when we strip God of His glory and we think this life is all about us, rather than about Him. When we substitute something else for the God of the Bible, or we redefine His nature to suit our own agenda, we are not worshipping and glorifying the one, true God, but rather a god of our own making.
How often do we hear, “I cannot believe that a loving God would send people to hell.” What people are doing here is redefining the nature of God by denying His holy wrath, and whichever god they now worship is certainly not the God of the Bible. You also hear people beginning a sentence with, “to me God is…” then they fill in the gaps with their perception of what God is like or what He should be like. When we redefine God, we are denying the true God. What matters is how He defines Himself.
We will be following up this series on the five solas of the Reformation during the next few weeks by looking at the holiness of God, a concept which the Church has sadly moved way down our list of priorities. Generally speaking, the Church does not have the high view of God and His holiness that we should have, and the result is that we don’t glorify Him as we should.
This is why we need to get back to the call which came out of the Reformation all those years ago. It is only when we glorify God as we should, that our lives have any real purpose.
Soli Deo Gloria should perfectly summarise the Christian faith and life. As we read the Bible, we soon learn that our true purpose is to bring glory to Him. Interestingly enough, whenever we talk about bringing glory to God, the first questions which often come to mind are something like, “How can we glorify God? What do we need to do to glorify Him, and what kind of programmes do we have that can bring glory to God?”
They are fair questions, but how easily do we find ourselves asking questions about ourselves and about how we should think or act in order to glorify God? This is a direct result of the low view we have of the holiness of God.
The reformers had it right. They didn’t ask what they could do to make it right.
Rather, they started with God Himself. They recognised and understood that God’s glory is in reality one of His attributes. God is inherently majestic and full of glory. Glory is not something we give to God. He already is perfect in His holiness and glory. What we should be doing is acknowledging that truth, and then worshipping Him because of who He is.
God delights to reveal His glory in this world He created. He glorifies Himself in what He has made, and the ultimate glory of God is revealed in the Cross of Calvary. In Jesus Christ, God brings glory to Himself as He redeems His own people by the atoning sacrifice of His Son. That’s the paradox of the cross. The place of the greatest shame and humiliation is where God is glorified the most.
Philippians 2:7-11 says that Jesus “emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
Sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, sola Scriptura, Soli Deo Gloria.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read 1 Chronicles 16:28-36
This is an excerpt from King David’s psalm of thanks when the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem.
The New Testament Church (of which we are a part) is very different to the days of the tabernacle, yet there is much we can learn from them as to how we should worship God today.
Discuss this in your group.
God is perfect in His holiness and glory, so how do we “bring glory to God?”
Although the term “five solas of the Reformation” was only coined much later, the message the early reformers taught was clear.
How is this same message still relevant in the Church today?
Discuss each of the five solas (see the picture above) as a whole. How does this one statement summarise
- The life and witness of the Church, and
- How we are to live our individual lives for God?