(music) Well, of course, it is right and fitting for us to talk about praising and glorifying God. That's our calling and our great delight. Our greatest joy is found in magnifying God, so that those two things, our joy and God's glory, are not two things, but one mutual aim.

They're wed together. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. That's what we call Christian hedonism around here. So then, is it possible for us to talk about God praising and glorifying us? This seems very awkward, but is it even biblical to go here, to say that God will praise and glorify us?

It's a question because you caught off guard one watcher of your "Look at the Book" videos, Pastor John. Here's the email we got. No name was given. "Hello, Pastor John. I was watching one of your 2017 lab videos, the one titled 'To the Glory of God Alone.' I was really confused with something you said near the end of the session at the 15 minute and 47 second mark.

There you said that 'we' will be praised and glorified. I was stunned. I had never heard that before. What did you mean that 'we' will be praised and glorified? Isn't this for God alone? If not, what Bible verses would help this make sense to me?" Let's begin with this biblical principle.

It's very important. Listen carefully. This biblical principle. Just as God, in His mysterious providence, governs all the actions of non-Christians in such a way that their bad deeds are still blameworthy, so also He governs all the actions of Christians in such a way that their good deeds are still praiseworthy.

That's not a presupposition that I bring to the Bible. That is a conclusion from thousands of hours of pondering what the Bible actually teaches. So we should get out of our minds the thought that any praise that Christians will receive from God is because their good deeds were done without God's decisive enabling power.

Get that out of your mind. That good deeds done by Christians were done without God's decisive enabling power. All our good deeds are done by His power. That is part of what makes them good. And they are praiseworthy. There are numerous texts which teach that everything a Christian does that is pleasing to God was done by the power of God.

For example, Hebrews 13.21, the writer says that God equips us with everything good that we may do His will, working in us—this is the key part—working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Another example is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.10, "By the grace of God I am what I am." And His grace toward me was not in vain.

On the contrary, I worked. I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Paul did the work, but the decisive cause was the grace of God. One more example, Philippians 2.12, where Paul tells Christians to work out their salvation because it is God who works in them, both the willing and the working of His good pleasure.

God causes the miraculous willing and working of our good deeds, but we act the miracle. He causes it, we act it. Now, all of that tends to make us think that only God is to be praised for the good that any Christian does. It tends to make us think that it would be unfitting for God himself to commend His people, to praise His people for their good deeds when He Himself is the decisive cause of those very good deeds.

But that would be a profoundly unbiblical thing to say. This is where human reasoning can so easily go off the rails if it's not magnetized to the iron tracks of all of God's Word. And God's Word says plainly and repeatedly that God's imperfect, ever in need of forgiveness people, are going to be glorified and commended and praised by God in proportion to the way they lived.

So let's start with the glorified texts and then look at the praised texts. Romans 8.30, "Those whom God predestined, He called, and those whom He called, He justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified." That means He's going to make us beautiful, glorious. 2 Thessalonians 1.11, "We always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you." Yes, yes, we all know that.

Yes, amen. "And you might be glorified in Him." That's His glory gets magnified and our glory shines in that process according to the grace, to all of grace, of our God, the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15.43, "So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown," thinking of our bodies now, the bodies of unbelievers, I mean believers, "What is sown in is perishable.

What is raised is imperishable. What is sown is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory." You look in the mirror now, it is not glorious. You look in the mirror at the resurrection, you will be tempted to worship, but you won't because you'll be perfected. So 2 Corinthians 3.18 got it all started, "We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." This comes from the Lord.

Yes, of course it does, who is the Spirit, but it's glorious. One more. The process of 2 Corinthians 3.18 comes to completion in the twinkling of an eye when we see him face to face. 1 John 3.2, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is." All of those passages unpack what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 13.43, "The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father." I'm smiling.

Ace of the day. So the upshot is that the Holy Spirit is gradually bringing Christians into conformity to the glory of Christ and that when we see Christ face to face, this will be completed spiritually at death and physically at the resurrection. God not only takes away the guilt of sin, he will take away the ugliness of sin and what will be left will be glory, glory, beauty, glory.

Christ will not be married to a homely bride. He died for a homely bride. He's faithful to a homely bride, but he is making her glorious. It says that explicitly in Ephesians 5.27, "He gave himself for her that he might present the church to himself in splendor." So the final question is, will we, because of our progressive and climactic glorification, receive praise from the Lord?

And the biblical answer, which our friend is stumbling over, is yes. Matthew 25.21, "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' Faithfulness in this life is acknowledged by the Lord of heaven and commended." 1 Corinthians 4.5, "Do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Then each one will receive his praise from God." Now, that's translated "commendation," and that's fine. Commendation is praise. But the word is "epinos" in Greek. That word is used in Ephesians 1, "to the praise of the glory of God's grace." Ephesians 1.12, "to the praise of his glory." Ephesians 1.14, "to the praise of his glory." It's the same word that we use to describe what we will say to God, he says to us.

In other words, it is a fitting, this is what "epinos" is, a fitting response of strong approval for something glorious or beautiful. There are numerous other places that teach this. John 5.44, Romans 2.7, 1 Peter 1.7, but let me just quote one more. Romans 2.29, "A Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the letter.

His praise," so a true Christian, a true Jew in the Messiah Jesus, "His praise is not from man, but from God." So my conclusion from all these passages is that genuine Christians will be glorified both progressively in this life and then finally at the second coming, and the faithfulness shown to Christ in this life and the beauty completed at the end of this age will receive commendation and admiration from the Lord Jesus himself.

And this will not contradict the biblical teaching that everything we do by the power of Christ will result in him, not us, getting the ultimate glory and praise and commendation, because what Christ will be commending and admiring in us will be the essence of true virtue, which is what?

What's the essence of true Christian virtue? The essence of Christian virtue is our joyful treasuring of God himself in all we do, so that God's admiration of our sanctification and glorification is in fact ultimately the admiration of his own merciful workmanship. Amazing. Thank you for putting all of that together for us, Pastor John.

And thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast. You can do all of that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. A friend of mine in high school drove an old rusty car, and on that old rusty car was a rather snarky bumper sticker on the back.

It read, "You're unique." And then in smaller font underneath it said, "Just like everybody else." "You're unique, just like everybody else." It's a witty line, but there's an important question to be asked about human uniqueness. Is human uniqueness defensible from the Bible? According to the Bible, are we each unique?

I'll ask Pastor John that next time on Monday. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for joining us, and have a great weekend.