Giving God glory for striking the One who gave Him glory

One of the more attention-grabbing passages in the Bible can be found near the close of Acts 12. King Herod has decided to persecute members of the church, according to the first verse of the chapter. He has James, one of the 12 and the brother of the apostle John, executed, and he has Peter arrested and imprisoned with the apparent intention of executing him as well. God rescues Peter. Displeased with Peter’s escape, Herod seemingly has the prison guards through whom the angel of the Lord delivered Peter led away to execution before he leaves Judea for Caesarea.

Verses 20-23 explain what happens next in Herod’s life:

Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus the king’s chamberlain, they were asking for peace, because their country was fed by the king’s country. On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. The people kept crying out, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.

It is difficult to imagine many things more revolting than someone being “eaten by worms.” The phrase at the heart of this passage, however, precedes that description of the nature of Herod’s death: “[A]n angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory.” As God’s Word clearly demonstrates, Herod deserved to die for this. He not only set out to destroy God’s elect, but -- in an even more grievous action -- he embraced the people’s apparently insincere praises declaring him to be a god. We read this passage and have reason to think this of Herod: “He got what he deserved.”

Yet, as I read this in my daily Bible reading yesterday, it struck me that Herod’s fate is what mine should be. It is what yours should be as well. His refusal to give God the glory may differ in degree from yours and mine, but it doesn’t differ in substance. We have all sought our own glory, and we still do so even as those upon whom He has showered His saving grace. The reason we don’t face such judgment for every time we refuse to give Him glory, every time we seek our own glory, every time we think proudly of ourselves is because Someone Else has been struck in our place.

The prophet wrote in Isaiah 53 about this substitutionary event hundreds of years before it occurred. We now know the Suffering Servant described in that passage is Jesus of Nazareth. Here are portions of that chapter that depict how the One was struck for the many:

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. . . . By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? . . . But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief. . . . Yet he Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.

May we continuously give God the glory for bringing glory to Himself by striking the One who sought His glory above all instead of striking those who refused to give Him glory.