Thine is the Glory

“Thine is the glory.”

Is this a statement of fact? Or is this a statement of attribution?

What I mean is, is “Thine is the glory” a descriptive statement – one that describes who God is? Or is this a statement of attribution – a statement of faith?

You see, when you take the CEO of a multi-national corporation and strip him of his/her fancy suits and designer clothes and put them in regular clothes, when you strip them of their fancy titles and their office and leave them on a busy street corner in any downtown, there is no way anyone would notice anything different about them. That’s because what makes someone glorious is their power, fancy suits and clothes, and their titles. Without them, there is no inherent glory in and of themselves.

Not so with God.

Where as a person is deemed glorious by their attributes, there is no glory apart from God. God, in his very being is glory. In fact, we can say, there would be no glory apart from God. Glory exists because God is glorious. You don’t make the sky blue, it is blue. You can’t make water wet, it is wet. You can’t make the sun light, it is light. In the same way the glory is who God is.

“Thine is the glory,” is a shout of victory. Because Christ has already won the victory over sin and death, we share in Christ’s victory. It is the church’s triumphant shout that death does not get the last word, that our past sins no longer define us, that those who have been saved by the blood of Christ share in his glory.

“Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory!”

Amen!