We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.
—1 John 3:2-3
God’s glory is His holiness. To glorify God is to yield ourselves so that God may show forth His glory in us. It is only by yielding ourselves to be holy, to let His holiness fill our lives, that His glory can shine forth from us. The one work of Christ was to glorify the Father. Our one work is, like Christ’s, so by our obedience, testimony, and life to make known our God as “glorious in holiness” (Exodus 15:11).
When the Lord Jesus had glorified the Father on earth, the Father glorified Him with Himself in heaven. This was not only His just reward, but was also a necessity in the very nature of things. The law holds good for us, too. A heart that yearns and thirsts for the glory of God, that is ready to live and die for it, becomes prepared and fitted to live in it. Living to God’s glory on earth is the gate to living in God’s glory in heaven. If with Christ we glorify the Father, the Father will with Christ glorify us, too.
If here on earth we have given ourselves to have God’s glory take possession of us, and if God’s holiness and His Holy Spirit dwell and shine in us, then our human nature, with all our faculties, created in the likeness of God, will have poured into and transfused through it the purity, the holiness, the life, and the very brightness of the glory of God.
Nothing can be made manifest in that Day that does not have a real existence here in this life. If the glory of God is not our life here, it cannot be hereafter. It is impossible. Only he who glorifies God here can God glorify hereafter. Man is the image and glory of God. It is as you bear the image of God here, as you live in the likeness of Jesus—who is “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person” (Hebrews 1:3)—that you will be made ready for the glory to come. If we are to be as the image of the heavenly Christ in glory, we must first bear the image of the earthly Christ in humility.