The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive

In our Theology II class a frequent term used is "the glory of God is man fully alive," but what does this really mean.  That question is the question that Mr. Cole will not stop asking. At the beginning of the year, we answered this question and he asked us to answer it again. Here is my reflection on St Irenaeus's quote from about 185 AD. 

Well I think that we can all a agree that God created the world and he did it to express his love for us. God is a perfect being that did not need to create the world and can not gain anything by creating the world. Therefore, God did not create the world for his personal gain, but share his glory with the world.  God truly expressed his love for us by creating us.  So the Glory God is when he manifests himself and his goodness through creation.  God created us, human beings, to be in communion with him.  One problem, when Adam and Eve committed original sin, we fell out of communion with God and could no longer fulfill our one true task.  So God sent his only son to redeem us by sacrificing himself on the cross.  Again, this is God showing his everlasting and  generous love for us.

The next step we must take to understanding the glory of God is man full alive now that we know what the Glory of God is.  Man fully alive is a person doing what God would want us to do, making the morale Christian decision and helping others.  An easy way to do this is when you are presented with a difficult situation, think with your heart and not your head.  This will usually get you going on the right track and you will often make the right decision. God also created us to work, so we can glorify God through our work. In our respective jobs, we should work hard to do the best we can. Now that we have an understanding what man fully alive is, we can begin to piece the phrase together.  So if the glory of God is creation and man fully alive is someone a good morale decision, when we put them together it takes on a new meaning.  The glory of God is man fully alive means that when a Christian is acting as God wants him to, then he is showing the world the Glory of God through his actions and works.  I hope that this helps explain the confusing and unanswerable concept of "The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive."