For the love of glory

   The following notion is a cliche, and that is a sad thing: lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  I say that this is a cliche not just because it is a widely heard proverb, but because it also means very little to us.  If you were to ask me what it means, I could probably come up with an answer, and it would be a very churched answer, couched in the vocabulary of American Christianity (which is itself quite cliched).  That any precept, teaching, or truth of God should become a cliche is not an indictment of God, but an indictment of us.  Cliches fall on deaf ears; they have been robbed of their power to be heard, and we have robbed them of that power.
   Here is the same cliche in different terms.

"[F]or they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God." (John 12:43)

   This was said by Jesus in reference to leaders in the Jewish community at that time.  These particular leaders believed what Jesus preached, but they were so concerned that they might lose their powerful positions in the synagogues that they said nothing.  Funny how so often the most powerful action a man takes is inaction.
   How true is this precept in our lives.  That is not a question; this precept is true, as true of many of us as it was of these Jewish leaders.  And while this scripture could easily fall on deaf ears, echoing as it does the cliche that we are used to, the cliche that we would rather ignore because it indicts our activities, it should strike us in it's significance.  Here were men who were religious leaders of the chosen race of the one true and living God, seeing the messiah that all of Israel had so yearned for, and believing that he was in fact the messiah of prophecy, but they would not admit they believed.  They kept silent so that they could keep their positions in the synagogues.  They willingly ignored the fulfillment of a promise for the sake of a position.  They traded the eternal for the temporal.
   There is more than cliche in these scriptures if we can tune our ears to it.  God is reminding us of something that, because we do it all the time, we are blind to it.  We are constantly pursuing the glory that comes from man with a fervor we would not dedicate to pursuing God's glory.  We are constantly laying up treasure on earth; constantly tucking our hearts away amid our stuff.  These truths are cliche to us because this is our way of life.  Of course I love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God!  Stop telling me what I already know!
   But we must not know it.  If we did know these truths, if these truths had roots within us, we would change.  If we really knew that we were trading God's glory for man's, many believers would react with disgust.  How many?  My initial estimate: not many.  And I think the reason is because very few believers know what the glory of God is.  Very few understand what is really to gain when we go after God.
   One explanation for this phenomenon - that few believers really know what glory God has for them - I can give from personal experience.  Many Christians have been taught that salvation is the end state.  We've been taught that the best thing God has to give us is salvation from our sins, and while this is inarguably the most important thing that Jesus has done, it ignores what he said to the disciples.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)

   Salvation is only the beginning of the Christian life.  As the scripture tells us, we are moving "from glory to glory," not moving to glory and then staying there.  And we're not just moving toward any old glory, but towards God's glory.  Since Jesus has gone to be with the father, that's where we're headed, too.  And not in some distant sense, only after we die, but right here and right now and tomorrow and the day after that.  From the moment that we accept the free gift of God in Jesus, we have the opportunity to come into the fullness of glory that Jesus promises.  In fact, this is exactly what we should desire.
   This may be a hard thing for some believers to grasp: that we should desire glory.  In ignorance we have embraced humiliation and thought it was humility.  But there is glory to be gotten, and it's glory that we've been promised.  Walking in the glory of God requires humility, but it also requires passion: a passion for Jesus and the things of God.  And the glory of God is for His glory, not ours.  What the scripture shows us in the words of Jesus is that we are going to long for some kind of glory, either of men or of God.  We'll not hesitate to say that God's glory is better, but our lives usually reveal that we believe the opposite.  To the question of which we should pursue, God's glory is the obvious right answer, but life is not lived by answers, it's lived by actions.
   So this is what the love of glory comes down to: the choice between that which comes from man and that which comes from God.  There is no third choice.  And there is no abstention, because we will choose one or the other.  In the end we have the same cliche, as some will hear it.  But I hope that it will be less a cliche than it has been when we truly consider it, and consider what may happen if we choose the glory of God.