In Search Of A Better Tomorrow

Daily Devotional: The Glory of God in Jesus Christ

By Wil Pounds

The Glory of God in Jesus Christ

What do you think God the Son would say to God the Father during the night before He gave His life as an atonement for the sin of the world?

Imagine with me for a moment what the divine communication between God the Father and God the Son should be. I wonder what deep conversation must take place among the members of the Trinity. Communication between the Divine must be too deep and immeasurable to comprehend for us. The LORD said to Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways … As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts “(55: 8-9).

Even in the prayer of Jesus recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, we are allowed to enter into this deep conversation that is happening in the Godhead. He is exalted, holy and sublime. It is God speaking to God. This prayer is full of simple phrases that convey deep thoughts of Himself (vv.1-5), to His disciples who were with Him (vv. 6-19) and to you and to me (verses 20-26).

Jesus is then the burning bush of the New Testament on the most sacred ground on the New Testament soil.

This is a “sincere and loving prayer” of the depth of the heart of Jesus. It is “so honest, so simple, so deep, so broad, no one can go deep into it,” wrote Luther.

In the verse the petition is so simple, yet so profound in its simplicity. “Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee … Now therefore, glorify thou me, beside thy Father, with that glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17 :fifteen).

Jesus speaks of His pre-incarnate glory in eternity past before He became flesh. Jesus possessed and manifested the same glory with God before He became flesh. The very essence of the deity Jesus possessed can not be changed. “He existed in the form of God.” He was equal to God (Phil 2: 6). Jesus was and is essentially and unalterably God. This fact did not change when He also took “the form of a servant, made like men” (v.7).

The apostle Paul in Philippians 2: 7 writes of the divestment of visible outward manifestations of the visible glory of Jesus in His flesh. Paul is careful to emphasize that Jesus did not divest Himself of His divine nature, or of His essential attributes of the deity. It was a self-limiting of His outward visible glory and not of His deity. He limited only the manifestation of His glory, which He demonstrated in heaven. He is God of the true God. The stripping took shape or the essential characteristics of a servant, and humbled “himself, becoming obedient unto death, death on a cross” (verse 8). He resembled any domestic servant of today. He was fully human-fully God.

Jesus Christ preserved all the essential, unchanging, and unchanging attributes essential to the nature of God. The essential nature of Jesus is the same as the essential nature of God. The essential form never changes and never changes. He is God.

Since it is true about Jesus, then what does He mean when He says to the Father: “Now then, Father, glorify me at your side, with that glory which I had with you, before the world was” (John 17: 5 )? Is Jesus praying for the restoration of His essential attributes of divinity? No, of course, no, that’s impossible because His deity never changed. This glory was the glory of God. However, Jesus did not manifest this glory during the days of His incarnation. He hid it behind the veil of His flesh. Jesus is going to glorify the Father in His visible outer glory as He did in eternity past. His glory present in heaven is even greater than in the past because He was obedient to the Father until death. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name” (Phil 2: 9). So that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow to those in the heavens, and every tongue “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (verses 10-11). It is evident that this glory is the ultimate in praise, honor and glory of renown that can ever be given. It is of His intrinsic value or character. All that may be appropriately known to Yahweh, Jehovah or the LORD is the expression of His glory.

Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty, the
Lord mighty in battle. . .
Who is this King of glory?
Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory “(Psalm 24: 8, 10).

When we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father.

Selah!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2009 translated by Katia Blandin