There is no worthy deed I can achieve, no grand feat I can perform, no magnificent pursuit I can chase after - even capture! - that will gain me the right to even the smallest amount of favor from the Great I Am. All I do - never mind if you see it as bad or good - must be falseness, foolishness, the most pathetic attempts at righteousness before the Holiness of Jehovah. This in, in part, because of my own lowness. I am formed of dirt, chained to earth, banned from a soaring life in the heavens, and my power to change or elevate my base situation is completely beyond my grasp.
But there is another reason, a more important one, why I deserve no favor, and it is this: the unspeakable Yahweh Himself. The blazing radiance of the King of Heaven - the blinding power burning through the eyes of Creator God and making us all as ashes - the exalted, ineffable holiness of His very Presence - before this, who - who can be worthy? Who can utter so much as a syllable, never mind an entire comprehensible word? Who can open their wide, awe-struck eyes to look around at anything else save the consuming Fire that is the Terror and Glory of His Being?
Now you understand why the fall of Satan was a thing so great, so horrendous, so awful, so unendurable, so shocking. Now you see why the fall of man - our fall - is the same. We took our eyes away from the Glory. We turned our minds from the One Who owns all worth and makes all worth. We dared to name something else glorious equal to or - appallingly! - above the One before Whom everything not only surrenders all worth but disappears entirely.
Do you understand now why earth and sky shall flee from His Presence? Why the Mountain thundered and trembled as He descended to speak to man? Why the seas and skies rage when He rides down on His victorious chariots? They understand the Glory; they understand that they are not worthy. That He looks on us at all is astonishing. That He lets us enter His throne room is outrageous. That He invites us - almost begs us - to enter is very close to scandalizing. That He loves us is . . . well, if it was anyone other than God, it would be impossible. The canyon - the rift, the gulf, the galaxies - between us is too great. But, after all, He is God. Anyone less would have failed. But if God is Yahweh God - and you can be sure He is - then He not only can, He did. He does.
