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Our joy in the new creation will be to worship the Lamb who was slain, together with people from every tribe and nation and language and tongue. The diversity of the peoples there will bring more glory to God than if everyone were Scottish!
When a choir sings in unity, it’s powerful. But when people sing in four-part harmony, there’s a depth and richness and fullness to the sound that is like nothing else. In a similar way, the breadth of the peoples praising God in the new creation will bring him a range and depth of glory that we can’t image when compared to a mono-cultural offering of praise. Or imagine a painting. If only other artists from same school like it, then maybe it’s not all that great. But imagine that not just artists, but lay people from all nations and down through the centuries since – in fact everyone who has every stood in front of it – says, ‘That’s breath-taking!’ The glory of that painting is then much greater than if just a few like-minded people admire it. Similarly, God’s glory is magnified and increased when all people everywhere through all time find him worthy of all their praise.
And the diversity of peoples God loves undercuts our instinct to think that ‘people like me’ are somehow more deserving. Jesus is Lord over every square inch of all creation. He loves all he has made and all peoples. And so we are humbled. Every one of us stands before him on the same basis: chosen by the Father, saved by the grace shown us in Jesus’ death, united to him by the same Spirit. And so we all glorify him; we all give him all our praise. As Grace Church, we want to be part of that!
