Glory Belongs To God

“Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us; but unto Thy name give glory.”  Psalm 115:1 

A.W. Tozer once said, “The glory of God is the health of the universe.  Wherever God is not glorified, that part of the universe is sick.  Hell is sick because God is not glorified there.  Heaven is abounding in glorious health because God is glorified there.    And earth is somewhere in between because only some glorify God here.”  When I speak of glory I wish to speak biblically.  The Bible has much to say about glory.  The ancient Hebrew idea is wrapped up in the Old Testament with the word, kabod, which means something is heavy in weight.  It is heavy, awesome, powerful, grand.  To glorify something in the Old Testament means to give weight to it, to honor it.  The ancient Greek idea is communicated in the New Testament with the word, doxa, which means to praise, and recognize the importance of something.  The question for us is, who is heaviest in our lives?  To whom do you give your praise?  Who is recognized as most important in our daily lives?  Or we might just simply ask, who gets the glory? 

Glory is ours to ascribe, but never ours to own.  “Not unto us” is the believer’s cry. Glory does not belong to us because there is never any good thing that originates in us.  Any good action that comes through us originates with God.  This is why Psalm 115:1 says twice, for emphasis, “not unto us, not unto us!”  This is why Paul said, “by the grace of God, I am what I am.”  It is only by God’s grace that anything good comes out of us.  Therefore, the glory that surrounds us never belongs to us.  All glory belongs to God.  The psalmist prays that glory will be given to God’s name alone and we should do the same.  “Not unto us, O LORD, but unto Thy name give glory.”  This should be our constant prayer.