Tuesday 1 February 2011

Soli Deo Gloria

Don Carson is one of my favourite writers. At the end of the preface to all of his books he writes, Soli Deo Gloria (for the glory of God alone). His desire is that what he has written would be used by God in order to further God’s glory. Upper-most in our decision-making should be Soli Deo Gloria. Tozer claims that ‘God will not lead us except for His own glory and He cannot lead us if we resist His will.’ One of the amazing things about God’s glory is that it is always consistent with the ultimate good of his people. But it is not necessarily consistent with our comfort, status or even health.

The wonderful fact that God’s glory is always consistent with the ultimate good of his people does not mean that his central motivation is to work for our good. His central motivation is to act with holiness, righteousness, grace and mercy—in other words to act in line with promoting his glory. So when the so-called ‘prosperity-gospel’ tells us that God wants us to be wealthy and healthy all the time they are putting people at the centre of God’s workings in the world, rather than God’s glory at the centre of his concerns, and measuring what is good by our ease rather than our spiritual growth. With this in mind we need to give up our tendency to simply want use God to serve our ends. ‘Instead of trying to employ God to achieve our ends we must submit ourselves joyously to God and let Him work through us to achieve His own ends’ (Tozer).

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