the glory of community

Since last February, when I taught the topic of “salvation” at Bethany Bible School, a couple of texts have been paired in my mind.

Exodus 33:18-34:7 and 1 John 4:7-12 both define the essential characteristic of God as love. 1 John says that “God is love”, while Exodus says that Yahweh, “the LORD”, is “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”, something which Yahweh also “keeps to the thousandth generation” (1 Jn 4:8; Ex 34:6-7).

In Exodus, the love of God is linked to the “glory” of God, as in Moses’ request to God—“Show me your glory, I pray”—which led to God’s unfolding revelation of himself to Moses (Ex 33:18). In Exodus 33-34, that revelation of God’s glory “unfolded” in two stages. In the first place, in response to Moses’ request, God directs Moses to “a place in the rock” where Moses might hide while God “passes over”, enabling Moses to glimpse God’s back—not God’s face or else Moses would die (Ex 33:20-23). While passing over, God also proclaims God’s name, “Yahweh”, and pronounces God’s character, “gracious” and “merciful” (Ex 33:19).

Merciful and gracious, it turns out, are the very same characteristics which Yahweh uses to introduce himself again to Moses in the second stage, that is, when God again proclaims God’s name (Ex 34:5-6). Likewise, whereas God “passed over” Moses by the rock in the first revelation, in the second revelation God “passes before” Moses on the mountain (Ex 33:22, 34:6).

It was upon Exodus’s narrative foundation of God’s glory, God’s name, and God’s character that John built his address to “the beloved”, his “little children” (1 Jn 2:1, 28, 3:2, 7, 18, 21, 4:1, 4, 7, 11). The glory of God, for example, also appears as a prominent theme in the theology of John’s gospel, as in the prologue: “We have seen his glory, the glory of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Similarly for John was God’s name important: “Yahweh” or “I am” is the name which Jesus the Son applies to himself repeatedly throughout the gospel (Jn 6:35, 8:12, 8:58, 10:7, 10:11, 11:25, 14:6, 15:1). Finally, for John, God’s character was primary; in addition to the Father’s only Son being full of “grace and truth”, through the Son “God so loved the world” (Jn 3:16). Now, also in his first epistle, the apostle proclaims that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). And that “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world in order that we might live through him” (1 Jn 4:9).

It is here—within the context of God’s love “revealed among us”—that John states the greatest narrative modification to the story of Israel in the person of Jesus, the Christ, the Son. That is, whereas the glory, the name, and the character of God “passed over” Moses in Exodus 33-34, the “signs” of God’s presence “remains”, “abides”, “dwells”, “stays”, “lives” with God’s people—upon one condition: that they “love one another.” As it says, “If we love one another, God abides with us and his love is perfected among us” (1 Jn 4:12).

“If we love one another”, John perceived through God’s revelation of God’s very self in the person of Jesus, God will never take away God’s glory from God’s people; no longer to “pass over”, as a revelation of God’s back, the love shared between the followers of Jesus is that which allows us to begin to “look into” the face of God. Because we have not yet truly, fully loved, God’s glory is still hidden. “We see”, in the words of another apostle, “in a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12). Thus, as John put it, “it is not yet revealed what we will be; but when he is revealed we will be like him, for we will see him as he is”— “face to face” (1 Jn 3:2, compare with 1 Cor 13:12).

So Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And God replied, “Love one another.”

-Joe