Glory Restored
When I consider the heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings (angels)
And crowned him with glory and honour
Psalm 8:3-5
Humanity certainly had an exalted origin – created in God’s image and likeness and enjoying His unhindered presence. Our forebears probably knew a measure of God’s glory, which when lifted through sin, suddenly brought a realisation of their nakedness (Genesis 3:7), both before God and each other.
The Hebrew word for glory is pronounced chabod and so the loss of glory is ichabod (adding i to create the opposite to whatever word follows). In 1 Samuel 4, just after Eli the priest died, having just heard the news that Israel had not only been defeated in battle but had lost the Ark of the Covenant, his daughter-in-law also died, in childbirth. In her last moments she names her new-born Ichabod because “the glory has departed from Israel” (v.21).
We all come into this world with the name ichabod; because God’s original glory has gone. But the story of salvation is the story of glory restored through Jesus and His sacrifice of Himself for us. Isaiah in a passage quoted in the New Testament of Christ’s ministry wrote “And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it” (Isaiah 40:5). Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:18 “and we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory …” So glory was lost through Adam but is restored through Christ, and increased as we continue to behold Him.
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