Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling, and to cause you to stand, rejoicing, without blemish before his glorious presence

Jude 24, NET

Continuing on in the study of Jude’s doxology we come upon this phrase about Gods glorious presence. I will aim to describe both, Gods glory and presence, and their inseparability.

Before we talk about Gods presence in substantive terms, we should discuss how God’s presence is described in scripture. God is described as having omnipresence, which means he is everywhere, all at once. The biblical writers understood this concept well.

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, Watching the evil and the good.

Proverbs 15:3

or as the Psalmist writes:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

139:7

Some have difficulty with this concept, which is understandable. After all, how can one being be everywhere, and if He is everywhere, how can He be any one place, specifically? Now of course, we must remember, God transcends far above space and time, and this is in part what makes Him God. Even so, we know it is true as God answered this question, calling himself a “God at hand” while also claiming he “fills up” the heavenly and earthly realms.

Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:23-24, ESV

Scripture itself seems to teach about His manifest presence more than His omnipresence. He was in the garden of Eden, the burning bush, with Elijah on the mountain, in the tabernacle and the temple. Most tangibly we have Gods presence in the incarnate Christ, our Immanuel, “God with us”. Gods presence is relational and deeply rooted in the covenant of His grace. He draws near to us, for our redemption.

The early story from Genesis teaches us that God walked with Adam in the garden. He knew Adam, and Adam knew God. That is until Adam and Eves fall, when they entered into rebellion and immediately were naked, afraid and… shamed.

This is what our sin does, or better stated what Satan want’s us to do with our sin. He wants nothing more than to separate us from Gods presence, to shame us and scare us into hiding. In some sense, this is a temporary, appropriate response. God is holy, and He cannot tolerate sin in His presence. Our sin should be separate from his holiness.

In the ancient Jewish world, God would enter into a special room of the temple to receive the sacrifice of His people on the day of atonement. The high priest would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. However, this sacrifice wasn’t a complete atonement, and so Gods people were still sinful. God would appear In this room, the Holy of Holies, with a veil separating it from the temple, symbolically separating man kinds sin from Gods holiness.

When Christ died, as it is written in Matthew 27:51, the veil that separated man from Gods presence, was torn in two. The atonement is complete, although still not completely known.

As Christians we should long for Gods presence, but often sin limits our perception.

If you are in Christ, your sin no longer separates you from God. That is the work of the cross, and the beauty of the gospel. It does however limit our perception of Gods presence. When we have unrepentant sin, it is as if we have pulled the heavy drapes over every window of our house so the sun cannot enter. As we repent, we open the drapes, and the sun exposes more and more rooms of our house, until the whole space is filled by sunlight. This is an incomplete picture of something so radical words cannot accurately express, but the analogy is true. As we repent, Gods presence becomes more and more tangible and evident in, and around us, and it is glorious.

Biblical counseling often requires walking through repentance together, to ready the heart for Gods presence.

I enjoy the ministry of reading and praying through Psalm 32 and Psalm 51.

Psalm 32 is especially helpful for teaching the purpose of confession and repentance. It describes the feelings and symptoms of unrepentance and perceived distance/separation from God, as “my whole body waisted away” and “I groaned in pain all day long”.

Then of course Psalm 51 was Davids prayer of repentance after his affair and murder. He pleads “wash away my wrongdoing, cleanse me of my sin” and rightfully how above all David (and we) “sinned against God”.

A heart that repents, is restored. It comes out from hiding and breaks free from shame. God knew where Adam was, and what he had done. He is omnipresent after all! God knows every secret and non secret sin, you have or will ever commit. He knew them so well, and their impact on your relationship to Him, that he died on the cross to atone for them. To redeem you and break you free. So you could enjoy His presence, partially now and completely in the fullness of time, as Jude describes.

His presence brings His glory.

When we read Scripture we find many stories of Gods presence. I like the one of Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3.

As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the GLORY of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the GLORY of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the GLORY of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

This word for Glory is Kavod. Actually, what it means is great weight. In fact, this is the weight of Glory. The Kavod, or Glory of God is of greatest worth. Nothing compares to having His presence. We need Gods presence more than anything else in the entire universe. More than air! Gods presence was overwhelming for Solomon as it filled the temple just as it overwhelmed the Apostles in the upper room when the Holy Spirit rushed in and descended upon them. Like the example in these stories, our response should be humility, worship and gratitude.

Now, we are the temple of God and experience this same weight of Glory when the Spririt of God indwells our own receiving hearts, as He wages war with the sin in and around us, and propels us through the cosmic spiritual war of our souls and the world at large.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

1 Corinthians 6:19, ESV

The first and second temples of ancient Judaism were, magnificent, lavish and beautiful. They were designed to have the outward representation of Gods glory, His worth, His Kavod. Now we display His glory, as His temples, through outward representation of what His Spirits is doing internally in us.

We give glory to God through confession and repentance, and worship him. He is glorified through us, when He produces fruit in us, like love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These things are worth more than any tangible wealth or object on Earth or the material world. These have the Kavod, or weight of Gods glory.

Someday, as Jude writes, we will be in His glorious presence, without sin.

In the age that is to come, in the new heaven and new earth, we will stand before God, with all sin removed and enjoy His presence, as Adam did, in completeness. We know that Jesus gave up all the glory of heaven, to “be with us”, and now he is glorified above all, being the only one worthy, or worth the weight of glory. His sinless life, traded for ours. His glory subdued, to give unto us what we never deserved or could have earned: the full and complete restoration of Gods presence.

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

My prayer is for His manifest presence to be evident in each of us, in each ministry and counseling session, in each exchange and interaction, in every mundane task of every moment of every day. May we enter into His presence, and Him into ours. May He overwhelm us with His glory, as we seek to glorify Him. Sola Deo Gloria. Amen.