He must increase, but I must decrease.” | John 3:30
John the Baptist uttered the above words when being questioned about Jesus; specifically, his disciples were not excited that Jesus had begun to baptize and to move in on their territory. John takes a step back, recognizing that he is getting in the way of a much greater work.
I have seen this quote used to promote a wrong idea: we are battling God over a limited pool of good. This is the idea that our glory and God’s glory exist in an inverse relationship. We must lose for Him to win. The Bible uses words that seems to promote this: sacrifice, denial, putting flesh to death. All of this seems to point to the fact that what God requires from us, for His glory, is for us to lose.
Sacrifice on its own is a poor goal. For many this skews their view of God: he seems to just want us to be less. This God becomes cruel: asking much from us and then lashing out when we fail. Taking away from our experience, while adding to it in a way that doesn’t seem to equal the cost. This does not develop a love for God, but a fear of Him. His power and authority become tools of manipulation rather than goodness and love. In this, it does become a battle between God and us; the battle is not over benefit, but control. We fight God to take back what we feel is ours because we don’t trust Him with it.
Which is why we need a better view of the goal. The purpose of this life, as defined by God, is to gain a knowledge and understanding of God through relationship; to see God face to face. In theological terms, this is called the beatific vision, defined by Jonathan Edwards this way:
The Beautifical Vision of God: that is the tip of the happiness! To see a God of infinite glory and majesty face to face….the vision and fruition of God will be so intimate and clear as to transform the soul into the likeness of God: ‘We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,’ says the Apostle (1 John 3:2).
In other words, we are transformed from a lesser form into the likeness of God by becoming more and more in love with Him (and less in love with ourselves). This humility is not a forced action, but a change of heart. John didn’t become less through some commitment to duty, but because he had such a high view of Jesus that he couldn’t stand being in the way of. The submissive acts the Bible talks about are an outpouring of the work of God in our hearts to magnify Himself. We should be glad to obey God, knowing that it brings us closer to our goal of knowing Him; we gain by giving glory to God.
Theologian Kyle Strobel, who summarized Edwards theology in his book Formed for the Glory of God, explains how we live in the hope of the beatific vision:
As the saint comes to know God, and the union between them grows greater and greater for eternity, the saint is upheld and made fully himself or herself. God’s purpose is not to overtake us, but to fill us with life and love. God calls us to partake in the happiness he has known for eternity past and will continue to know for eternity future. Just as God’s life is not some static floating, so heaven is not static, but is relationally exuberant. For eternity, the saints will see and know just as they are seen and known (1 Cor. 13:12). This eternal journey is a journey into and ever-deepening love.
We are searching this out every time we pray. As we continue to work through the Lord’s Prayer, we will see that this is the trajectory that Jesus was setting for us. When we pray: Hallowed be Your Name, it is not just a recognition of God’s worthiness, or a hope that He will be praised (those are already both true), but it is a petition to God to strengthen us for and through this journey. We ask God to help us see and love Him.