Beholding God's Glory

In his Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards emphasized nothing more strongly than that a saving belief of the gospel arises from the mind being enlightened to behold God's divine glory (2 Corinthians 4:6).  As a result,  genuine Christians will not only have knowledge of God, but they will love Him and have an intense longing to know Him better.  The teachings and divine works revealed in the gospel clearly manifest the glory of God’s moral perfections.  Those who are born again will exult in seeing God’s holiness, and seeing the beauty of holiness is seeing the most important thing in the world, without which all the world is empty.  Unless God’s majesty and divine excellence is revealed to the heart, nothing is seen that is worth seeing, and there is no saving faith without some degree of this knowledge.  Edwards wrote that it is from seeing God’s glory that all gracious affections arise, that is, that a saving response to the gospel message arises from a sight of this glory.