Father, Glorify Me

Lesson #275

In the last lesson Jesus, again made it clear that to know the Father, one must know Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as Jesus is the only way to the Father. In this lesson we continue with Jesus praying: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4 ESV). As Jesus prays he is looking ahead to the other side of his death when the work assigned to him to do will be complete. As we followed Jesus through our study, we saw him making God known to the world by his teaching and by his miracles. As he did this he drew closer and closer to the cross where he would die as the perfect sacrifice for our sin and would rise from the grave to obtain victory over death. This act of purchasing our salvation provided payment for our debt to satisfy the law to establish justice allowing God to show mercy and extend grace to us.

With the assignment then complete, Jesus will be ready to go home to his Father. Jesus now prays: “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5 ESV). When Jesus came to earth and took on human flesh, he laid aside his glory. However, there was a time when some of his glory shown forth: “And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 7:1 – 2 ESV). What Jesus is asking the Father is for the return of his full glory, the glory we will see when we stand before him in our glorified bodies in heaven. We see this in John 17:24 (ESV): “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

“Before the foundation of the world” refers to eternity past when the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14). Nothing could be more clear than these verses that Jesus existed in glory with his Father during eternity past. That glory he had and is asking for is a magnificent display of his greatness and power, that every knee will bow to him (Philippians 2:10). Jesus is not asking for anything that does not strictly belong to him, but since he rose in bodily form, it appears that he is asking for that glory to be displayed from that body. I don’t think we have any idea of the glory that will be displayed from our glorified bodies when we are in heaven.

John 17:1 – 5, is a remarkable passage, which teaches us that Christ is not a God who has been newly contrived, or who has existed only for a time; for if his glory was eternal then he also has always existed.

Prayer

Father, as we read again these five verses we have been studying, we can’t help but be impressed that Jesus is unique. No other human has ever existed or ever will that can make the claims that Jesus did and then perform works of power to back up his claim. These verses clearly show that he is the Son of God and that we must hear and obey him. We must embrace an understanding of this in belief or we will spend an eternity agonizing in hell over our failure to respond when we had the opportunity.