Verses 1-26
Chapter 17
17:1-5 When
Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said:
"Father, the hour has come. Glorify the Son that the Son may glorify
you. Glorify him, just as you gave him authority over mankind, that he
may give eternal life to every one whom you have given to him. It is
eternal life to know you, who are the only true God, and to know Jesus
Christ, whom you sent. I have glorified you upon earth, because I have
finished the work which you gave me to do; and now, Father, glorify me
in your own presence with the glory which I had with you before the
world began."
For Jesus life had a climax, and that was the Cross. To him the
Cross was the glory of life and the way to the glory of eternity. "The
hour has come," he said, "for the Son of Man to be glorified" (John 12:23).
What did Jesus mean when he repeatedly spoke of the Cross as his glory
and his glorification? There is more than one answer to that question.
(i) It is one of the facts of history that again and again it
was in death that the great ones found their glory. It was when they
died, and how they died, which showed people what and who they really
were. They may have been misunderstood, undervalued, condemned as
criminals in their lives, but their deaths showed their true place in
the scheme of things.
Abraham Lincoln had his enemies during his lifetime; but even
those who had criticized him saw his greatness when he died. Someone
came out of the room where Lincoln lay, after the assassin's shot had
killed him, saying: "Now he belongs to the ages." Stanton, his war
minister, who had always regarded Lincoln as crude and uncouth and who
had taken no pains to conceal his contempt, looked down at his dead body
with tears in his eyes. "There lies," he said, "the greatest ruler of
men the world has ever seen."
Joan of Arc was burned as a witch and a heretic by the English.
Amidst the crowd there was an Englishman who had sworn to add a faggot
to the fire. "Would that my soul," he said, "were where the soul of that
woman is!" One of the secretaries of the King of England left the scene
saying: "We are all lost because we have burned a saint."
When Montrose was executed, he was taken down the High Street of
Edinburgh to the Mercat Cross. His enemies had encouraged the crowd to
revile him and had actually provided them with ammunition to fling at
him, but not one voice was raised to curse and not one hand was lifted.
He had on his finest clothes, with ribbons on his shoes and fine white
gloves on his hands. James Frazer, an eyewitness, said: "He stept along
the street with so great state, and there appeared in his countenance so
much beauty, majesty and gravity as amazed the beholder, and many of
his enemies did acknowledge him to be the bravest subject in the world,
and in him a gallantry that braced all that crowd." John Nicoll, the
notary public, thought him more like a bridegroom than a criminal. An
Englishman in the crowd, a government agent, wrote back to his
superiors: "It is absolutely certain that he hath overcome more men by
his death, in Scotland, than he would have done if he had lived. For I
never saw a more sweeter carriage in a man in all my life."
Again and again a martyr's majesty has appeared in death. It was
so with Jesus, for even the centurion at the foot of the Cross was left
saying: "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matthew 27:54).
The Cross was the glory of Jesus because he was never more majestic
than in his death. The Cross was his glory because its magnet drew men
to him in a way that even his life had never done--and it is so yet.
(ii) Further, the Cross was the glory of Jesus because it was the
completion of his work. "I have accomplished the work," he said, "which
You gave me to do." For him to have stopped short of the Cross would
have been to leave his task uncompleted. Why should that be so? Jesus
had come into this world to tell men about the love of God and to show
it to them. If he had stopped short of the Cross, it would have been to
say that God's love said: "Thus far and no farther." By going to the
Cross Jesus showed that there was nothing that the love of God was not
prepared to do and suffer for men, that there was literally no limit to
it.
H. L. Gee tells of a war incident from Bristol. Attached to one
of the Air Raid Precautions Stations there was a boy messenger called
Derek Bellfall. He was sent with a message to another station on his
bicycle. On his way back a bomb mortally wounded him. When they found
him, he was still conscious. His last whispered words were: "Messenger
Bellfall reporting--I have delivered my message."
A famous painting from the First World War showed an engineer
fixing a field telephone line. He had just completed the line so that an
essential message might come through, when he was shot. The picture
shows him in the moment of death, and beneath it there is the one word,
"Through!" He had given his life, that the message might get through.
That is exactly what Jesus did. He completed his task; he
brought God's love to men. For him that meant the Cross; and the Cross
was his glory because he finished the work God gave him to do; he made
men for ever certain of God's love.
(iii) There is another question--how did the Cross glorify God?
The only way to glorify God is to obey him. A child brings honour to his
parents when he brings them obedience. A citizen brings honour to his
country when he obeys it. A scholar brings honour to his teacher when he
obeys his master's teaching. Jesus brought glory and honour to God by
his perfect obedience to him. The gospel story makes it quite clear that
Jesus could have escaped the Cross. Humanly speaking, he could have
turned back and need never have gone to Jerusalem. As we look at Jesus
in the last days, we are bound to say: "See how he loved God! See to
what lengths his obedience would go!" He glorified God on the Cross by
rendering the perfect obedience of perfect love.
(iv) But there is still more. Jesus prayed to God to glorify him
and to glorify himself. The Cross was not the end. There was the
Resurrection to follow. This was the vindication of Jesus. It was the
proof that men could do their worst, and that Jesus could still triumph.
It was as if God pointed at the Cross and said: "That is what men think
of my Son," and then pointed at the resurrection and said: "That is
what I think of my Son." The Cross was the worst that men could do to
Jesus; but not all their worst could conquer him. The glory of the
resurrection obliterated the shame of the Cross.
(v) For Jesus the Cross was the way back. "Glorify me," he
prayed, "with the glory which I had before the world began." He was like
a knight who left the king's court to perform some perilous and awful
deed, and who, having performed it, came home in triumph to enjoy the
victor's glory. Jesus came from God, and returned to him. The exploit
between his coming forth and his going back was the Cross. For him,
therefore, it was the gateway to glory; and, if he had refused to pass
through it, there would have been no glory for him to enter into. For
Jesus the Cross was his return to God.
There is another important thought in this passage, for it contains
the great New Testament definition of eternal life. It is eternal life
to know God and to know Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Let us remind
ourselves of what eternal means. In Greek it is aionios (Greek #166).
This word has to do, not so much with duration of life, for life which
went on for ever would not necessarily be a boon. Its main meaning is
quality of life. There is only one person to whom the word aionios (Greek #166)
can properly be applied, and that is God. Eternal life is, therefore,
nothing other than the life of God. To possess it, to enter into it, is
to experience here and now something of the splendour, and the majesty,
and the joy, and the peace, and the holiness which are characteristic of
the life of God.
To know God is a characteristic thought of the Old Testament. Wisdom is "a tree of life to those who lay hold of her" (Proverbs 3:18). "To know thy power," said the writer of Wisdom, "is the root of immortality" (Wisdom of Solomon 5:3). "By knowledge are the righteous delivered" (Proverbs 11:9). Habbakuk's dream of the golden age is that "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God" (Habakkuk 2:14). Hosea hears God's voice saying to him: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6).
A Rabbinic exposition asks what is the smallest section of scripture on
which all the essentials of the law hang? It answers, Proverbs 3:6,
which literally means: "Know him, and he shall direct thy paths." Again
there was a Rabbinic exposition which said that Amos had reduced all
the many commandments of the Law to one, when he said: "Seek me, and
live" (Amos 5:4),
for seeking God means seeking to know him. The Jewish teachers had long
insisted that to know God is necessary to true life. What then does it
mean to know God?
(i) Undoubtedly there is an element of intellectual knowledge.
It means, at least in part, to know what God is like; and to know that
does make the most tremendous difference to life. Take two examples.
Heathen peoples in primitive countries believe in a horde of gods. Every
tree, brook, hill, mountain, river, stone has its gods and its spirit;
all these spirits are hostile to man; and primitive people are haunted
by the gods; living in perpetual fear of offending one of them.
Missionaries tell us that it is almost impossible to understand the
sheer wave of relief which comes to these people when they discover that
there is only one God. This new knowledge makes all the difference in
the world. Further, it makes a tremendous difference to know that God is
not stern and cruel, but love.
We know these things; but we could never have known them unless
Jesus had come to tell them. We enter into a new life, we share
something of the life of God himself, when, through the work of Jesus,
we discover what God is like. It is eternal life to know what God is
like.
(ii) But there is something else. The Old Testament regularly
uses know for sexual knowledge. "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she
conceived, and bore Cain" (Genesis 4:1).
Now the knowledge of husband and wife is the most intimate there can
be. Husband and wife are no longer two; they are one flesh. The sexual
act itself is not the important thing; the important thing is the
intimacy of heart and mind and soul which in true love precede that act.
To know God is therefore not merely to have intellectual knowledge of
him; it is to have an intimate personal relationship with him, which is
like the nearest and dearest relationship in life. Once again, without
Jesus such intimacy with God would have been unthinkable and impossible.
It is Jesus who taught men that God is not remote and unapproachable,
but the Father whose name and nature are love.
To know God is to know what he is like, and to be on the most
intimate terms of friendship with him; and neither of these things is
possible without Jesus Christ.
17:6-8 "I have
shown forth your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They
were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now
they realize that everything you gave me comes from you, because I gave
to them the words you gave to me, and they received them, and they truly
know that I came forth from you, and they believe that you sent me."
Jesus gives us a definition of the work that he did. He says to God: "I have shown forth your name."
There are two great ideas here, both of which would be quite clear to those who heard this saying for the first time.
(i) There is an idea which is an essential and characteristic
idea of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament name is used in a very
special way. It does not mean simply the name by which a person is
called; it means the whole character of the person in so far as it can
be known. The Psalmist says: "Those who know thy name put their trust in
thee" (Psalms 9:10).
Clearly that does not mean that those who know what God is called will
trust him; it means that those who know what God is like, those who know
his character and nature will be glad to put their trust in him.
The psalmist says: "Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God" (Psalms 20:7).
This means that he can trust God because he knows what he is like. The
Psalmist says: "I will ten of thy name to my brethren" (Psalms 22:22).
This was a psalm which the Jews believed to be a prophecy of the
Messiah and of the work that he would do; and it means that the
Messiah's work would be to declare to his fellow-men what God is like.
It is the vision of Isaiah that in the new age, "My people shall know my
name" (Isaiah 52:6). That is to say that in the golden days men will know fully and truly what God is like.
So when Jesus says: "I have shown forth your name," he is
saying: "I have enabled men to see what the real nature of God is like."
It is in fact another way of saying: "He who has seen me has seen the
Father" (John 14:9). It is Jesus' supreme claim that in him men see the mind, the character, the heart of God.
(ii) But there is another idea here. In later times when the
Jews spoke of the name of God they meant the sacred four-letter symbol,
the tetragrammaton as it is called, IHWH. That name was held to be so
sacred that it was never pronounced, except by the High Priest when he
went into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.
These four letters stand for the name Yahweh (Hebrew #3068 and Hebrew #3069).
We usually speak about Jehovah and the change in the vowels is due to
the fact that the vowels of Jehovah are those of Adonai (Hebrew #136),
which means "Lord." In the Hebrew alphabet there were no vowels at all.
Later the vowel sounds were shown by little signs put above and below
the consonants. The four letters Y-H-W-H were so sacred that the vowels
of 'Adonai were put below them, so that when the reader came to IHWH he
would read, not Yahweh, but 'Adonai. That is to say, in the time of
Jesus the name of God was so sacred that ordinary people were not even
supposed to know it, far less to speak it. God was the remote, invisible
king, whose name was not for ordinary men to speak. So Jesus is saying:
"I have told you God's name; that name which is so sacred can be spoken
now because of what I have done. I have brought the remote, invisible
God so close that even the simplest people can speak to him and take his
name upon their lips."
It is Jesus' great claim that he showed to men the true nature
and the true character of God; and that he brought him so close that the
humblest Christian can take his unutterable name upon his lips.
This passage also sheds an illuminating light on the meaning of discipleship.
(i) Discipleship is based on the realization that Jesus came
forth from God. The disciple is essentially a person who has realized
that Jesus is God's ambassador, and that in his words we hear God's
voice, and in his deeds we see God's action. The disciple is one who
sees God in Jesus and is aware that no one in all the universe is one
with God as Jesus is.
(ii) Discipleship issues in obedience. The disciple is one who
keeps God's word as he hears it in Jesus. He is one who has accepted the
mastery of Jesus. So long as we wish to do what we like, we cannot be
disciples; discipleship involves submission.
(iii) Discipleship is something which is destined. Jesus' men
were given to him by God. In God's plan they were destined for
discipleship. That does not mean that God destined some men to be
disciples and some to refuse discipleship. Think of it this way. A
parent dreams great dreams for his son; he works out a future for him;
but the son can refuse that future and go his own way. A teacher thinks
out a great future for a student; he sees that he has it in him to do
great work for God and man; but the student can lazily or selfishly
refuse the offered task. If we love someone we are always dreaming of
his future and planning for greatness; but the dream and the plan can be
frustrated. The Pharisees believed in fate, but they also believed in
free-will. One of their great sayings was: "Everything is decreed except
the fear of God." God has his plan, his dream, his destiny for every
man; and our tremendous responsibility is that we can accept or reject
it. As someone has said: "Fate is what we are compelled to do; destiny
is what we are meant to do."
There is throughout this whole passage, and indeed throughout
this whole chapter, a ringing confidence about the future in the voice
of Jesus. He was with his men, the men God had given him; he thanked God
for them; and he never doubted that they would carry on the work he had
given them to do. Let us remember who and what they were. A great
commentator said: "Eleven Galilaean peasants after three years' labour!
But it is enough for Jesus, for in these eleven he beholds the pledge of
the continuance of God's work upon earth." When Jesus left this world;
he did not seem to have great grounds for hope. He seemed to have
achieved so little and to have won so few, and it was the great and the
orthodox and the religious of the day who had turned against him. But
Jesus had that confidence which springs from God. He was not afraid of
small beginnings. He was not pessimistic about the future. He seemed to
say: "I have won only eleven very ordinary men; but give me these eleven
ordinary men and I will change the world."
Jesus had two things--belief in God and belief in men. It is one
of the most uplifting things in the world to think that Jesus put his
trust in men like ourselves. We too must never be daunted by human
weakness or by the small beginning. We too must go forward with
confident belief in God and in men. Then we will never be pessimists,
because with these two beliefs the possibilities of life are infinite.
17:9-19 "It is
for them that I pray. It is not for the world that I pray, but for those
whom you have given me because they are yours. All that I have is
yours, and all that you have is mine. And through them glory has been
given to me. I am no longer in the world and they are no longer in the
world, and I go to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you
gave to me, that they may be one, as we are one. When I was with them I
kept them in your name, which you gave to me. I guarded them and none of
them went lost, except the one who was destined to be lost--and this
happened that the scriptures might be fulfilled. And now I come to you. I
am saying these things while I am still in the world that they may have
my joy completed in themselves. I gave them your word, and the world
hated then, because they are not of the world. I do not ask that you
should take them out of the world, but that you should preserve them
from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the
world. Consecrate them by the truth; your word is truth. As you send me
into the world, I send them into the world. And for their sakes I
consecrate myself, that they too may be consecrated by the truth."
Here is a passage close-packed with truths so great that we can grasp only fragments of them.
First of all, it tells us something about the disciple of Jesus.
(i) The disciple is given to Jesus by God. What does that mean?
It means that the Spirit of God moves our hearts to respond to the
appeal of Jesus.
(ii) Through the disciple, glory has come to Jesus. The patient
whom he has cured brings honour to a doctor; the scholar whom he has
taught brings honour to the teacher; the athlete whom he has trained
brings honour to his trainer. The men whom Jesus has redeemed bring
honour to him. The bad man made good is the honour of Jesus.
(iii) The disciple is the man who is commissioned to a task. As
God sent out Jesus, so Jesus sends out his disciples. Here is the
explanation of a puzzling thing in this passage. Jesus begins by saying
that he does not pray for the world; and yet he came because God so
loved the world. But, as we have seen, in John's gospel the world stands
for "human society organizing itself without God." What Jesus does for
the world is to send out his disciples into it, in order to lead it back
to God and to make it aware of God. He prays for his men in order that
they may be such as to win the world for him.
Further, this passage tells us that Jesus offered his men two things.
(i) He offered them his joy. All he was saying to them was designed to bring them joy.
(ii) He also offered them warning. He told them that they were
different from the world, and that they could not expect anything else
but hatred from it. Their values and standards were different from the
world's. But there is a joy in battling against the storm and struggling
against the tide; it is by facing the hostility of the world that we
enter into the Christian joy.
Still further, in this passage Jesus makes the greatest claim he
ever made. He prays to God and says: "All that I have is yours, and all
that you have is mine." The first part of that sentence is natural and
easy to understand, for all things belong to God, and again and again
Jesus had said so. But the second part of this sentence is the
astonishing claim--"All that you have is mine." Luther said: "This no
creature can say with reference to God." Never did Jesus so vividly lay
down his oneness with God. He is so one with him that he exercises his
very power and prerogatives.
The great interest of this passage is that it tells us of the things for which Jesus prayed for his disciples.
(i) The first essential is to note that Jesus did not pray that
his disciples should be taken out of this world. He never prayed that
they might find escape; he prayed that they might find victory. The kind
of Christianity which buries itself in a monastery or a convent would
not have seemed Christianity to Jesus at all. The kind of Christianity
which finds its essence in prayer and meditation and in a life withdrawn
from the world, would have seemed to him a sadly truncated version of
the faith he died to bring. He insisted that it was in the rough and
tumble of life that a man must live out his Christianity.
Of course there is need of prayer and meditation and quiet
times, when we shut the door upon the world to be alone with God, but
all these things are not the end of life, but means to the end; and the
end is to demonstrate the Christian life in the ordinary work of the
world. Christianity was never meant to withdraw a man from life, but to
equip him better for it. It does not offer us release from problems, but
a way to solve them. It does not offer us an easy peace, but a
triumphant warfare. It does not offer us a life in which troubles are
escaped and evaded, but a life in which troubles are faced and
conquered. However much it may be true that the Christian is not of the
world, it remains true that it is within the world that his Christianity
must be lived out. He must never desire to abandon the world, but
always desire to win it.
(ii) Jesus prayed for the unity of his disciples. Where there
are divisions, where there is exclusiveness, where there is competition
between the Churches, the cause of Christianity is harmed and the prayer
of Jesus frustrated. The gospel cannot truly be preached in any
congregation which is not one united band of brothers. The world cannot
be evangelized by competing Churches. Jesus prayed that his disciples
might be as fully one as he and the Father are one; and there is no
prayer of his which has been so hindered from being answered by
individual Christians and by the Churches than this.
(iii) Jesus prayed that God would protect his disciples from the
attacks of the Evil One. The Bible is not a speculative book; it does
not discuss the origin of evil; but it is quite certain that in this
world there is a power of evil which is in opposition to the power of
God. It is uplifting to feel that God is the sentinel who stands over
our lives to guard us from the assaults of evil. The fact that we fall
so often is due to the fact that we try to meet life in our own strength
and forget to seek the help and to remember the presence of our
protecting God.
(iv) Jesus prayed that his disciples might be consecrated by the truth. The word for to consecrate is hagiazein (Greek #37) which comes from the adjective hagios (Greek #40). In the King James Version hagios (Greek #40) is usually translated "holy" but its basic meaning is "different" or "separate." So then hagiazein (Greek #37) has two ideas in it.
(a) It means to set apart for a special task. When God called
Jeremiah, he said to him: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to
the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).
Even before his birth God had set Jeremiah apart for a special task.
When God was instituting the priesthood in Israel he told Moses to
ordain the sons of Aaron and to consecrate them that they might serve in
the office of the priests (Exodus 28:41). Aaron's sons were to be set apart for a special office and a special duty.
(b) But hagiazein (Greek #37)
means not only to set apart for some special office and task, it also
means to equip a man with the qualities of mind and heart and character
which are necessary for that task. If a man is to serve God, he must
have something of God's goodness and God's wisdom in him. He who would
serve the holy God must himself be holy too. And so God does not only
choose a man for his special service, and set him apart for it, he also
equips a man with the qualities he needs to carry it out.
We must always remember that God has chosen us out and dedicated
us for his special service. That special service is that we should love
and obey him and should bring others to do the same. And God has not
left us to carry out that great task in our own strength, but out of his
grace he fits us for our task, if we place our lives in his hands.
17:20-21 "It is
not only for these that I pray, but also for those who are going to
believe in their word of testimony to me. And my prayer is that they may
all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so that they
may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me."
Gradually in this section Jesus' prayer has been going out to
the ends of the earth. First, he prayed for himself as the Cross faced
him. Second, he prayed for his disciples, and for God's keeping power
for them. Now his prayers take a sweep into the distant future, and he
prays for those who in distant lands and far-off ages will also enter
the Christian faith.
Here two great characteristics of Jesus are full displayed.
First, we see his complete faith and his radiant certainty. At that
moment his followers were few, but even with the Cross facing him, his
confidence was unshaken, and he was praying for those who would come to
believe in his name. This passage should be specially precious to us,
for it is Jesus' prayer for us. Second, we see his confidence in his
men. He knew that they did not fully understand him; he knew that in a
very short time they were going to abandon him in his hour of sorest
need. Yet to these very same men h& looked with complete confidence
to spread his name throughout the world. Jesus never lost his faith in
God or his confidence in men.
What was his prayer for the Church which was to be? It was that
all its members would be one as he and his Father are one. What was that
unity for which Jesus prayed? It was not a unity of administration or
organization; it was not in any sense an ecclesiastical unity. It was a
unity of personal relationship. We have already seen that the union
between Jesus and God was one of love and obedience. It was a unity of
love for which Jesus prayed, a unity in which men loved each other
because they loved him, a unity based entirely on the relationship
between heart and heart.
Christians will never organize their Churches all in the same
way. They will never worship God all in the same way. They will never
even all believe precisely the same things. But Christian unity
transcends all these differences and joins men together in love. The
cause of Christian unity at the present time, and indeed all through
history, has been injured and hindered, because men loved their own
ecclesiastical organizations, their own creeds, their own ritual, more
than they loved each other. If we really loved each other and really
loved Christ, no Church would exclude any man who was Christ's disciple.
Only love implanted in men's hearts by God can tear down the barriers
which they have erected between each other and between their Churches.
Further, as Jesus saw it and prayed for it, it was to be
precisely that unity which convinced the world of the truth of
Christianity and of the place of Christ. It is more natural for men to
be divided than to be united. It is more human for men to fly apart than
to come together. Real unity between all Christians would be a
"supernatural fact which would require a supernatural explanation." It
is the tragic fact that it is just that united front that the Church has
never shown to men. Faced by the disunity of Christians, the world
cannot see the supreme value of the Christian faith. It is our
individual duty to demonstrate that unity of love with our fellow men
which is the answer to Christ's prayer. The rank and file of the
Churches can do and must do what the leaders of the Church refuse
officially to do.
17:22-26 "And I
have given them the glory which you gave me, that they may be one as we
are one. I am in them, and you are in me, so that their unity with us
and with each other may stand consummated and complete. I pray for this
that the world may realize that you sent me, and that you loved them as
you loved me. Father, it is my will that those whom you have given me
should be with me where I am going, that they may see my glory which you
gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world did not know you, but I knew you, and these
realized that you sent me. I have told them what you are like, and I
will go on telling them, that the love with which you loved me may be in
them, and that I may be in them."
Bengel, an old commentator, exclaimed as he began to comment on
this passage: "O how great is the Christians' glory!" And indeed it is.
First, Jesus said that he had given his disciples the glory
which his Father had given him. We must fully understand what that
means. What was the glory of Jesus? There were three ways in which he
talked of it.
(a) The Cross was his glory. Jesus did not speak of being
crucified; he spoke of being glorified. Therefore, first and foremost, a
Christian's glory is the cross that he must bear. It is an honour to
suffer for Jesus Christ. We must never think of our cross as our
penalty; we must think of it as our glory. The harder the task a knight
was given, the greater he considered its glory. The harder the task we
give a student, or a craftsman, or a surgeon, the more we honour him. In
effect, we say that we believe that nobody but he could attempt that
task at all. So when it is hard to be a Christian, we must regard it as
our glory given to us by God.
(b) Jesus' perfect obedience to the will of God was his glory.
We find our glory, not in doing as we like, but in doing as God wills.
When we try to do as we like--as many of us have done--we find nothing
but sorrow and disaster both for ourselves and for others. We find the
real glory of life in doing Gods will; the greater the obedience, the
greater the glory.
(c) Jesus' glory lay in the fact that, from his life, men
recognized his special relationship with God. They saw that no one could
live as he did unless he was uniquely near to God. As with Christ, it
is our glory when men see in us the reflection of God.
Second, Jesus said that it was his will that his disciples
should see his glory in the heavenly places. It is the Christian's
conviction that he will share all the experiences of Christ. If he has
to share Christ's Cross, he will also share his glory. "The saying is
sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we
endure, we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:11-12). Here in this world at best we see dimly in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The joy we have now is only a faint foretaste of the joy which is to
come. It is Christ's promise that if we share his glory and his
sufferings on earth, we shall share his glory and his triumph when life
on this earth is ended. What greater promise could there be than that?
From this prayer Jesus was to go straight out to the betrayal,
the trial and the Cross. He was not to speak to his disciples again. It
is a wonderful and a precious thing to remember that before these
terrible hours his last words were not of despair but of glory.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)