We talk often on this podcast about how God gets more glory or most glory by various things. It's in our slogan, of course. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Thus we can conclude that, for example, depression will not exist in heaven because we can give God more glory without depression.

That's APJ 30. And God gets more glory in our struggle with sin than if we were made sinless immediately. That's APJ 30. And God gets more glory in the harmony of diversity in male and female genders and in his abundance of ethnicities than he would get if we were all the same.

That's APJs 169 and 927. And Christ receives more glory in the atonement than he would have if he didn't take up the cross. That's APJ 265. We talked about that. And Christ gets more glory by defeating Satan at the cross than he would have by taking out Satan at a distance, like as a sniper.

That's APJ 408. And God gets more glory from our willing service than if he forced and coerced labor from us as a tireless slave labor force. That's APJ 1432. On and on it goes. With this background in place, we get a question from Devin in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Hello, Pastor John.

Thank you for this podcast and for your excellent books, particularly Providence, which I just read and finished with great delight. I have a question for you about discerning our intensity of glorifying God. It seems central to Christian hedonism, this idea that there are levels of glory that can be given to God.

There's a way to bring him some glory, and then we can bring him more glory, and occasionally we can bring him most glory. Hence, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. You seem to root a lot of ethical decisions in this gradation of doing what most glorifies God.

I went to the podcast archive and found that you have explained that we can honor God in three various states of emotion. When our affections are white hot or cooled off, even when our hearts fall into deep depression. But we glorify God most when our affections are white hot." That was APJ 30.

You talked about that. Where in Scripture do you find this gradation of glory from what I see in the Bible? We either honor God or dishonor him, glorify him or fail to honor him. It seems more binary. But I assume you put a lot more thought into this than me.

Thank you for any help. Well, that's a sharp question. I like that kind of question because it presses me into the Bible to see if my thoughts are in sync with God's Word. So the question is, is there biblical warrant justification for speaking of more or less glorifying God, acts that more or less glorify God, rather than a simple either/or?

Either we glorify him or we don't. No gradations. Does the glorification of God by man happen in degrees, glorifying more sometimes, less sometimes? Or is that an unbiblical way of thinking and is the only way we should speak, namely that we glorified God or we didn't, without speaking of degrees or gradations of glorification?

Now, Devon has a good biblical ground for asking this because if you do the word search on all kinds of formations of the word "glory" or "more" or "less" or other degree words, you do find that the Bible does not very often speak of God being given more or less glory by his people.

Almost entirely it speaks of God's being glorified without any references to degrees of more or less. So why do I speak so often about God being more or less glorified? And here's the answer. So general answer and then some biblical specifics. It basically flows from asking, "What does glorify mean?" I think it means, "Show God to be glorious." I think that's what glorify means.

Show God to be glorious, that is, show him to be great or beautiful or valuable. Or you could break it down. Show him to be wise, strong, kind, good, loving, just, holy, merciful, gracious, satisfying. So to glorify is to make clear to others what God is like so as to seek their praise and admiration of him so that they join us in seeking to show how great he is.

That's what glorify means, as I understand it. So once we trace the meaning of glorify back to things we do or feel or think or say to make God look glorious, then it seems right to say that since our doing and speaking and feeling and thinking are more or less in accord with God's worth from day to day, from hour to hour, therefore our showing God's worth will vary in the way our acting and speaking, feeling, and thinking vary in the degree that they reflect God's character.

That's basically my argument. In other words, my speaking of God getting more or less glory from my life of holiness and love follows from the fact that biblically my holiness and love are greater or lesser from time to time. And so I am showing with greater or less clarity or greater or less accuracy or greater or less fullness the glory of God because my behavior is more or less in accord with God's character.

That's my basic understanding of how degrees of glorification are rooted in degrees of clarity that God's character is seen in my degrees of holiness. Now let's look at some text to see whether or not there really are biblical pointers to the legitimacy and helpfulness of talking like this. Let's start with degrees of glory when talking about the progress of redemptive history, 2 Corinthians 3, 7 to 10.

Now if the ministry of death carved in letters of stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. So it is not unbiblical to speak of God's acting through his people in one way to show less of his glory and in another way to show more of his glory.

And by inference, I would say that's true individually as well. Or consider 2 Corinthians 4, 15, "For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God." Now I think that implies that if thanksgiving increases in your life or in your church, God gets glory more clearly, more fully than if thanksgiving were not increasing in your life or in your church.

Otherwise, I don't see why Paul would refer to the increase of thanksgiving and then connect it with the glory of God the way he does. Or consider Philippians 1, 9, "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment." And then he links this incremental growth or increase of love with his aim that we be filled with the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God.

So I draw from this that my growth in love from one degree to the next is like the good deeds, part of the good deeds or expressed in good deeds that Jesus said cause people to glorify God. "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds, your love, and glorify God." So if my love abounds more and more, it seems that the correlation of what they are done for, what my deeds are done for, and my love is shown for would also be greater.

Namely, God is seen more clearly to be glorious because I have more clearly reflected his character. Or what about Ephesians 5, 18, "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart." Now what that implies is that the engagement of our heart matters in whether our songs of praise are fitting.

Jesus said, "These people honors me with their lips, they sing with their lips, but their heart is far from me." So it seems to me that the heart is a very variable source of affections for God. The heart can be warm or cold or all kinds of gradations in between, and Paul says this matters for the authenticity of our worship, and I would say for the degree to which our worship conforms to the worth of God and thus the degree to how clearly he is shown to be our treasure in singing, that is, how clearly he is glorified.

Same thing could be said about the great commandment, right? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, as more or less of our hearts are engaged, we show more or less clearly the worthiness of God to be loved.

So to wrap it up, let me take Paul's words when he speaks about his own preaching the mystery of Christ, which includes the truth that Christ is in you, the hope of glory. He says—this is Colossians 4:4—"Pray that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak." So he's asking, "Oh God, would you put it in the hearts of the Colossians to pray for me that when I open my mouth, the mystery of Christ, the glory of Christ would be clear?" Paul knew that when he preached the glories of Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ, sometimes they were more clear than other times.

That's why he asked for prayer. So he asked for the Colossians to pray that it might be more clear, which is another way of saying so that Christ would appear more glorious. So that's the way I think about the gradations of glorifying Christ. Very good thoughts. Thank you, Pastor John.

And thank you for the great follow-up question, Devin. Perhaps you've been listening for a while and you want clarity on something that you've heard. Maybe you have an episode or episodes that you want to better understand. Give me the episode numbers, send me an email, and do that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well it's never a bad time to soak in the glorious truths of Psalm 16. A glorious psalm. I know a lot of you have memorized it by heart. Pastor John certainly has. And that is the theme up next time. I'm your host Tony Reiki. We'll see you back here on Wednesday for Psalm 16.

Amen. Amen. Amen.