Soli Deo Gloria
We have here another Latin phrase, Soli Deo Gloria, which means, “Glory to God Alone.” While this seems obvious, it is often denied in practice and not in profession. This phrase was often emphasized during the Reformation. The Roman Catholic church believed that the purpose of the system of sacraments was to dispense grace to those who attended Mass. The Roman Catholic church does believe in salvation by grace, but not by grace alone (as stated in the Sola Gratia article). This false dispensing of grace through works (penance, confession, praying the rosary...etc.) is how they believe one is justified before God. Since that is the case, who then shares in the glory?
Well, God certainly gets the glory for allowing us to be saved and giving us grace at all. However, the glory of God in salvation does not end there. What they have concluded is that the individual who partakes of this dispensed grace and the church who graciously dispenses grace gets glory as well. So, all three share in the ultimate glory of a person’s salvation: God, the Church, and the individual. The Reformers rejected this conclusion and said that God alone gets the glory in the salvation of the individual. They Reformers continued by also saying that God is also glorified by the restoration of the entire cosmos at the end of the age.
A second way God alone gets the glory in all things is by asking the question, “who has the final choice in salvation?” If the answer is anything other than “God,” then there is a sharing of glory. Pressing this further, if God alone gets all the glory in salvation, it is not for making salvation possible, but for securing salvation for all those who will be saved. Again, this goes back to the same issue with the Roman church, because they believe that grace is necessary, but that grace alone is not sufficient. The same is true in the Protestant context. To say that God gets the glory for making provisions for salvation, is to say that grace is necessary. However, it precludes and even rejects the idea of grace being sufficient. So Protestants who hold to this provisionary view actually agree with the Roman Catholic Church on this issue.
Finally, a point that is often overlooked. God alone gets the glory through all evil occurrences. Whether they are natural disasters or the sins of individuals. This is an area that is often called, “theodicy,” which is the area of study that seeks to justify God’s power and goodness in light of the existence of evil. We often hear arguments such as “free will,” or even the heinous heresy of open theism, which says that God did not know that an evil thing would occur, but He is going to make some good out of it. But the more Biblical (thus best) argument is that God “meant,” for this evil to occur. And while evil occurs, God is storing up wrath to pour out on all evil and evildoers, but for now, He is being patient until that day. So we see that God is both good and powerful because He has a good purpose for the evil that occurs and He is powerful enough that He will destroy it all one day.
Many people may even recoil at this fact, however, if God destroyed all evil the moment it occurred, there is no hope of salvation for humanity. As Jonathan Edwards stated in his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment.” Yet, we know that God does save wicked men. How is God just if God does not pour out His wrath on sinful men? The Apostle Paul answers this in Romans 3:22b-26, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
God pours out His wrath on the evil and the evildoer because of the evil that has occurred, but for the believer, God pours it out on His own Son (see What is the Trinity?) It is in this way that justice is satisfied while simultaneously extending mercy to those who deserved it. It is in this way that God is considered both just (in that evil can occur while he is simultaneously good and powerful) and justifier (the power of God and the goodness of God displayed in Jesus Christ). This means that even in light of evil existing in the world in all kinds of ways, God alone gets the glory. Therefore, we can take hope, knowing that while the evil that occurs around us, God meant for it to occur and that one day it will all be abolished, “to the praise of His glory.” (Eph 1:12-14.) And not only will God get the glory for all of this, but He alone will get the glory.
