What does the glory of God have to do with Christmas?

We spend December decorating our homes with shimmering tinsel and twinkling LED lights to celebrate the arrival of the Christmas season. But there is a kind of brilliance that cannot be bought in a box or strung across a roof. For thousands of years, the people of God lived with a terrifyingly beautiful reality called “glory.” It was the physical weight of God’s presence, something so intense that Exodus 33:22 tells us Moses had to hide in a rock while it passed by. Later, in 1 Kings 8:10-11, the priests in the Temple had to stop their work because the “cloud” of God’s presence was simply too heavy to stand in.

We often think of Christmas as a quiet, cozy story about a baby in a manger. While that is true, something much more massive was happening beneath the surface. The infinite importance of the Creator — the very thing that used to make people tremble in fear — was being compressed into the frame of a human infant.

The Apostle John describes this cosmic collision with breathtaking simplicity: “So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son,” John 1:14.

For the first time in history, the glory of God wasn’t filling a Tabernacle that even Moses couldn’t enter, as it did in Exodus 40:34-35. It wasn’t like the event at Mount Sinai, where the people were warned in Exodus 19 to keep their distance, and the glory settled down as a cloud and appeared at the summit like a consuming fire, as described in Exodus 24:15-18. Instead, the Bible tells us that “The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God …” as recorded in Hebrews 1:3a. This means that in the person of Jesus, the weight of divine majesty and the very nature of God are fully present in a human life.

The Divine put on skin and bone. He cried when He was hungry, He slept when He was tired, and He eventually walked on dusty roads. When we talk about the “glory” of Jesus, we aren’t talking about a halo or a glow; we are talking about the fact that when you looked at Him, you were looking at the very presence of God Himself.

Before that night in Bethlehem, glory was something people stayed away from if they wanted to survive. The holiness of God’s presence meant that humanity had to maintain a careful distance. But the miracle of the Incarnation changed our access to that presence. He did not diminish His glory to become human; He provided a way for us to behold it.

When John writes “we have seen His glory,” he isn’t just talking about the miracles or the moment in Matthew 17:2 when Jesus, on a mountain, shone like the sun. He is talking about the “unfailing love and faithfulness” that reflects His divine character. In Christ, the fire of God’s holiness is no longer a barrier that keeps us away; it is the light that invites us near.

If you want to see the glory of God this year, don’t just look for it in the spectacular or the miraculous. Look for it in the way Jesus treats the woman at the well in John 4, the way He welcomes the children in Mark 10:13-16, and the way He eventually stretches out His arms on a cross. That is where the “weight” of God’s nature and glory are most clearly seen. The glory of the Father is not limited to a show of power, but in a display of sacrificial love that refused to leave us alone in the darkness of this world.

This Christmas, as you sit by the tree and look at the lights, remember that you are not just celebrating a historical event; you are celebrating the moment the “Unapproachable God” became the God who made His home among us. The King of heaven has arrived, and He isn’t asking you to hide in a rock. He is asking you to come and see.

Scotty