Give Glory to God

Old Testament

Psalm 50:15 

Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name;
Make known His deeds among the peoples!   

Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name;
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

Blessed be the Lord,
Who daily loads us with benefits,
The God of our salvation!

We give thanks to You, O God, we give thanks!
For Your wondrous works declare that Your name is near.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
To declare Your loving kindness in the morning,
And Your faithfulness every night.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the Lord is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.

Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits.

Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.

The New Testament

And it happened when He was in a certain city, that behold, a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus; and he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." Then He put out His hand and touched him, saying, "I am willing; be cleansed." Immediately the leprosy left him. And He charged him to tell no one, "But go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded." However, the report went around concerning Him all the more; and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by Him of their infirmities. So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. 

Now it happened as He went to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then as He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" So when He saw them, He said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, "Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?" And He said to him, "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well." 

The Heavenly Doctrines

Our Need for Spiritual Healing

The Lord saves mankind out of mercy alone and...does not demand any praise or thanks in return for His Divine benefits.

What is a person's own leads him to love self more than the Lord and to love the world more than heaven, whereas the life of heaven consists in loving the Lord above all things and the neighbor as oneself. From this it is evident that the first life, which is that of hell, must be completely destroyed, that is, evils and falsities must be removed, in order that the new life, which is that of heaven, may be implanted.... There are thousands and thousands of hidden ways, scarcely a single one of which is known to mankind, by which the Lord leads a person from the life of hell to the life of heaven.

A person who is being regenerated is first purified from falsities, after that the truths of faith he knows are planted in the good of charity, and finally that good itself is implanted in him. When all this has been done the person has been regenerated and he is then in heaven with the Lord.

Healings were done by the Lord on the Sabbath day because “healing” involved the healing of spiritual life.

The Ten Lepers

"Leprosy" symbolizes the profanation of truth, and the profanation of truth is various, is light or grievous, interior or exterior, and is according to the quality of the truth profaned.

"Leprosy" means truth when it has been rendered profane, and so has been falsified.

Naaman, of Syria, the leper, symbolized those who falsify the knowledges of truth and good from the Word.....

One Healed Leper Returned to Give Thanks

Blessing is expressed by the mouth by means of truths, while thanksgiving comes from the heart
out of good.

To give praise to God, and to praise God, is to confess Him, and from confession of heart to worship Him.

To "fall upon the face" is a testification of humiliation of heart from the good of love, and "to worship God" is a testification of humiliation of heart by truths from that good.

The meaning of "falling upon the face and worshiping," as being here to give thanks from a humble heart; for "falling upon the face" signifies humiliation of heart, since to fall upon the face corresponds to such humiliation; for all the acts of the body so correspond to the affections of the mind that the two make one by correspondences; thus to fall upon the face before God in worship makes one by correspondence with humiliation of the heart. From this it became a custom with the ancients, and it still continues with many nations, to fall upon the very face in worship; while in the Christian world at present it is the custom simply to fall upon the knees.

To fall upon the face before God is the representative gesture of deepest humiliation because the face is the form of a person's affections.

His Faith Has Made Him Well

The very first thing a person needs to do is to acknowledge that the Lord is the Savior of the world; for unless he acknowledges this no one can receive any truth or good at all from heaven, or therefore receive faith from there. And since it was the very first and most essential thing, therefore in order that He might be acknowledged when He came into the world the Lord questioned the sick, when He healed them, about their faith; and those who had faith were healed. This faith was that He was the Son of God who was to come into the world, and that He had power to heal and save. Furthermore every healing of sickness by the Lord when He was in the world served to mean a healing of spiritual life, thus served to mean the things that belong to salvation.

All the diseases healed by the Lord symbolize spiritual diseases which can only be healed by the Lord by looking to His Divine omnipotence and by repentance of life. The faith by which spiritual diseases are healed by the Lord can be given only through truths from the Word and a life according to them. The truths themselves and the life itself according to them make the quality of the faith.

The Lord teaches that they have faith in Him who live according to His commandments, so that the life which results from doing so goes to compose their faith. Acknowledging the Lord and acknowledging that all salvation comes from Him constitute the beginning of the life from God with a person.

Give Glory to God

To give glory to the God of heaven is to acknowledge and worship the Lord.

The Lord cannot give His glory to anyone, and fill him with wisdom and blessedness, unless He is acknowledged and worshipped, since by this means a person conjoins himself to Him in love and faith. For acknowledgment and worship, in order to be acknowledgment and worship, must be from love and faith; and without conjunction by means of these, good cannot possibly flow in from the Lord, because it is not received.

 To give glory to God means to worship the Lord from His Divine truth by a life according to it.... The meaning of "giving glory to Him," is to live according to the Divine truth, that is, according to His commandments in the Word.

The "Lord's glory" means the enlightenment of people and angels, and blessing them with wisdom and happiness; which is done solely through the reception of Divine truth in doctrine and at the same time in the life.

Why We Need to Thank the Lord

To give praise to God and to praise God is to confess Him, and from confession of heart to worship Him....

The Lord does, it is true, demand humility, worship, thanksgiving, and much else from a person, which seem like repayment, so that His gifts do not seem to be free. But the Lord does not demand those things for His own sake, for the Divine derives no glory at all from a person's humility, worship, or thanksgiving. It is utterly inconceivable that any self-love should exist within the Divine, causing Him to require such actions for His own sake. Rather, they are required for a person's own sake, for if someone possesses humility he is able to accept good from the Lord, since in that case he has been parted from self-love and its evils which stand in the way of his accepting it. Therefore the Lord desires a state of humility in a person for that person's sake, because the Lord can flow in with heavenly good when that state exists in him.

When it says that the Lord desires people to worship and adore Him in humility, it seems as though He desires to display His glory and loves to be adored for His own sake. But the truth of the matter is altogether different. It is not for His own sake but for that of the human race. He is moved not by self-glory but by love. For He wishes to be joined to the human race, and to impart eternal life and happiness to it. But this cannot be accomplished unless a person worships Him in humility; and such humble worship does not exist unless the person acknowledges and believes that he himself is dust and ashes, that is, nothing but evil, that Jehovah or the Lord is the Greatest and Most Holy One, and that of himself he does not dare to approach Him. When a person worships Him in such humility the Lord can enter in with the life of His love, bringing him heaven and eternal happiness. This is the reason why Jehovah or the Lord extols His power and glory to so great an extent in the Word.

Confessing the Lord with Humility of Heart

Saying, "we give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty", symbolizes the acknowledgment that all being, living, and ability are from the Lord.

True confession of the heart, because it flows from celestial love, is confession in the genuine sense. The person with whom it exists acknowledges that everything good comes from the Lord and everything evil from self. When that acknowledgement exists with him it is a state of humiliation, for in this case he acknowledges the Lord to be everything in him and he himself in comparison to be nothing.

Because the Lord is to be adored, worshiped and glorified, people believe that He loves adoration, worship and glory for His own sake. But in fact He loves these for mankind's sake, since a person comes thereby into a state such that the Divine can flow in and be perceived, because the person thereby sets aside his native character which inhibits the influx and reception. For his native character, which is love of self, hardens the heart and closes it up. He sets this character aside by acknowledging that of himself he does nothing but evil, and from the Lord only good, thus occasioning a softening and humbling of the heart from which springs adoration and worship. It follows from this that the uses the Lord performs for Himself through mankind exist to the end that He may do good to people out of love, and because this is His love, their reception of it is His love's delight.