His Glory and His Love

I've always struggled with the thought of God creating us for his own glory.  I've experienced his grace often enough and seen Him do things that only He could do enough times to realize that He and He alone is worthy of all glory, and I desire to worship Him because of that.  However, when I let myself think about it long enough, I struggle with the fact that it seems so arrogant to create people so that they will worship you.  My flesh and the evil one really start messing with my mind and telling me that there is no way that God can love me if the only reason he created me was to bring glory to Himself.  It seems so self-serving.  Sure, I know that He is God and that alone gives him every "right" to do as He pleases.  But it doesn't make the feelings any less strong when I'm struggling and doubting His love...and especially when I see and experience the brokenness of this world.

However, yesterday as I was reading "Give Them Grace," by Elyse Fitzpatrick, I was reminded of a beautiful thing.  The incarnation of Jesus Christ.  This is as opposite of arrogance and serving self as one could possible get.  Here is what she says in the chapter called, "The One Good Story":

The modesty that we see in the beloved Son's life is a refusal to show off or insist that everyone give him his due.  He didn't proclaim his greatness in the streets (Matt. 12:19); he didn't show off in front of his enemy (Matt. 4:1-11).  Although he could have called down legions of angels or obliterated all his detractors and the ever-so-slow disciples, he restrained himself.  He didn't need our approval or praise.  He had nothing to prove, and he lived humbly because he loved us and never showed off.

It made me think about how God Himself became man and literally restrained Himself...held back his power to overcome the enemy and all the people who were mocking him to his face in spite of the ways he had served them during his 33 years among them.  He suffered WITH them.  He chose to experience along with them how broken their sin had made the world He had created to be perfect.  If you are familiar at all with Jesus's life and interactions with people, you know that he was just so out-of-the-box.  From healing people that others had avoided for years, to living as a homeless man who didn't know where his next meal would be, to dining with outcasts and those who persecuted his people, to washing the feet of the ones who would deny and kill him, and finally refusing to use the power that was his to choose not to go to the cross and die a criminal's death for the laws he never broke.  Ok, so maybe He isn't as arrogant as I am tempted to believe sometimes.  It's just mind-boggling to me!  God did all of this because, while He is passionate for His glory, He loves us.  If He only wanted His glory, all He would have to do would be to demand it from us and destroy us if we refused to give Him what He deserves....which is actually the end result apart from Christ.  But He didn't leave it like that.  He couldn't...because of His amazing love. 

"...Jesus Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!  Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."  (Philippians 2:6-11)