Glory at the Cross
God’s glory is his greatest concern. It is his pleasure to reveal his glory (splendour) God and our delight to give him glory (honour and magnify him). It is the revealing of his glory that stirs worship and produces in us our greatest happiness in the contemplation of his majesty. The glory of God is the outshining of his being. It is his excellence displayed.
John writes his gospel with the express purpose of revealing the glory of Jesus and the glory of God in Jesus. Jesus is the eternal Word who was with God and was God. He is the divine Son who ‘dwells in his Father’s bosom’, an image of the intimate affection between the Father and the Son. Yet in this place of heavenly nearness and repose a momentous event occurs; the Word became flesh and lived among men (1:14). Or in the words of Jesus, the Son, ‘I came from the Father and have come into the world’ (Jn 16:28). In one sense of course he still lived in the Father’s bosom – the intimacy was not destroyed by distance, yet, nevertheless, he had come from the Father into the world. He came with the express purpose of revealing God as Father.
In Ch 1, John writes of this divine incarnation of the Son,
‘we beheld his glory, the glory of the only Son of a Father’.
We normally admire a person when we see the virtues they possess in action. Sons, in the C1, normally had a close relationship with their fathers. They were often employed in their father’s business. Their respect in the community came from their father and they in turn represented him in the community undertaking his business. The glory of Christ, the divine Son is revealed in his commitment to the Father’s will; he does his Father’s works, speaks his Father’s words and reveals his Father’s name (Jn 14:10,111). Jesus is the divine Son who images his Father. The Father has committed his interests entirely to his Son. God’s identity and intentions are revealed in all Jesus says and does. His glory is the glory of God for in this Father?Son relationship the Son is the perfect Son who mirrors and ministers his Father. John and the other disciples saw these divine excellences daily as they accompanied Christ in his mission to make his Father known.
In Ch 2, when his public mission commences with the miracle of turning water into wine, we read.
‘This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory’.
The public mission of Christ is making public the divine glory of the Father residing in him. He had come to bring God’s blessing of new wine to the world and revealed his divine power to do so as he turned water into wine. For those with eyes to see the divine glory was embodied in all that Jesus was, said and did; the glory of the only Son of his Father.
In Ch 12, as his public ministry draws to a close, we are made privy to an exchange between the Father and the Son. Jesus says,
‘Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again’.
Jesus had come that his Father may be honoured and his splendour revealed. Here he requests that in his impending death that this would be the case..
The Father’s response signals a kind of dividing line in Jesus’ service. The Son, brought him glory in his three years of public mission and will now bring him glory in his death. The Son is given the Father’s assurance that he will bring glory to God in death as in life. Indeed it seems this climax of his mission brings the greatest glory.
In Ch 13, Jesus says,
‘Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him’.
His impending suffering has a definitive glory about it. Jesus clearly sees his coming passion as the climactic convergence and conveyance of his own glory and the glory of the Father. His death and all that surrounds it will bring honour to God.
John 17, begins with similar words,
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.
These words are spoken by Jesus just prior to his arrest and crucifixion. They are the opening words of his revealed prayer to his Father in John’s gospel (17:1). Events have all been heading to this hour. Jesus prays that, both Father and Son will receive honour in the events about to take place; he desires that the divine splendour may be seen; it is why he has come. The ‘hour’ probably includes his resurrection and ascension (Jn 13:1) but focusses principally upon his arrest, cross and death (Jn 12:23,24). It is the nature of both Father and Son to seek the glory of the other (7:18; 8:50) . At the cross, in the work of redemption, the Father honours the Son and the Son honours the Father as the Son completes the work he has been given to do.
It seems a strange thing to view crucifixion as an occasion of glory. We think of a crucifixion as the last place to behold glory. The cross is an instrument of suffering and shame. It epitomises needless brutality. It is stamped with defeat, debasement and derision for those crucified. But John sees the cross from another perspective; from God’s perspective and from the perspective of faith. The cross is uniquely the place of maximum glory for both Father and Son (Cf. Isa 49:3). There their persons are most perfectly expressed. . The cross is where who they are shines out in its fullness.
Jesus hinted earlier that the cross would be a place of glory. He spoke of being ‘lifted up’(3:14, 12:28, 12: 27-34). There is a wordplay in this expression. On the one hand he will be lifted up on a cross but this is also another kind of ‘lifting up’. He will be exalted. The cross will be for him a place of exaltation, of glory. In Jn 12, Jesus says that if he is lifted up he will draw all draw all men to himself. We might think that this refers to his exaltation to heaven but the ‘lifting up’ is a reference to the cross (Jn 12:32). It is in the ‘exaltation’ of the cross that Jesus wins the cosmic victory and renown that will save Israel and attract the nations to himself and to his Father (Isa 49:6,7).
Isaiah says of the servant of Yahweh, a messianic figure, “Behold, my servant shall act wisely: he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted” (52:13). One writer says, ‘What is surprising is how he will be exalted. He will be exalted by having no majesty or beauty, being despised and rejected, being smitten and stricken by God, and being pierced and crushed for our sins’. Certainly, in John, Jesus’ exaltation begins at the cross.
Crucifixion was a dreadful death. It was monstrous. Ignominious. It was feared by all. It was for Jesus the occasion of immense suffering of body and mind and it was compounded by his imponderable suffering as sin-bearer (Cf Ps 22).. The crucifixion of Jesus was humanity’s darkest and most damning moment. It was the moment when we killed the author of life and chose a murderer. The judicial murder of Jesus was nothing less than deicide – the murder of our Maker, of God. The sin that inhabits the human heart erupted in pathological violent hatred; human nature under the influence of Satan was exposed fully at the cross. Men would not have Christ to reign over them. It takes a special kind of person to love those whose hearts are filled with murderous hatred towards them. Yet this is the story of the cross. At the cross, divine love reaches out in the face of naked human hatred. God had the power to destroy just as twelve legions could have delivered Christ. The cross which was the occasion of humanity’s most heinous sin is also the occasion of its greatest hope for through the darkness of human hate divine life-giving, forgiving love shone in full redeeming glory. While we were enemies of God,Christ died for us (Roms 5:10).
It is in this ungodly place of cruelty and depravity that the glory of God and Jesus, of Father and Son shines. There the divine excellence of Father and Son is refracted in all its constituent part. At the cross God is revealed as nowhere else. All his attributes blend to express him as he really is in his perfection. Part of the reason it is so wrong to tamper with the cross is that we tamper with divine majesty, with the very core of who God is.
God is love (i Jn 4:7,8). If we can speak of God’s essence then his essence is love. It does not surprise us then that the cross perfectly exhibits the love of God revealed in the Father and the Son. There are other glories of Jesus revealed at the cross but perhaps supremely we see Jesus’ love in his self-giving, self-humbling, self-abnegating sacrifice.
The Cross and the glory of Jesus
Jesus’ mission was driven by love. Love for his Father (Jn 14:31), love for his own (Jn 15:9-17; 1 Jn 3:16) and love for the world (Matt 14:14, 23:37-39; Jn 3:16, 12:32). At the cross the Christ’s love flows to all three.
Firstly, Jesus’ love for his Father is displayed at the cross. We should always remember that Jesus’ first concern was to bring glory to his Father. This was a proper filial response. It was this loving commitment that led him to obediently accompany the Father up the hill of sacrifice and submit to being bound to the altar (Gen 22). It was love for his Father that led him to drink the frothing cup of judgement that lay at the foot of the cross. He may ask for the cup to be removed as he contemplates what lies ahead but he knows this is not to be. His words of filial love are: the cup that his Father gave me to drink will I not drink it? Drinking meant the mockery of arrest, the demeaning and deadly scourging, the cauldron of crucifixion and into the far country of God-forsakenness. It led him to be made sin. Jesus’ love for his Father led him into the darkness and the extremities in obedience (Phil 2). It was the task that the Father had given him to do.
Jesus was the divine Word become flesh; the spoken word became the visible Word, the vulnerable Word, and the vicarious Word. It is in human flesh, the flesh of Jesus, that God speaks and is glorified. Universal flesh that rebelled is countered and condemned by flesh that obeys. God is glorified by the devoted obedience of the one human being who perfectly acknowledges God is God. Flesh, as it ought to be, glorifies God and proclaims him. It is human flesh, frail but not fallen, which lies submissively on the altar as a burnt offering sacrifice, a human life sacrificed in total devotion to God and for humanity. Jesus glorifies God in his body as he offers himself without spot to God. It is the moment of his greatest humiliation is also the moment of his greatest exaltation.
But Jesus’ suffering is not for sufferings sake. Such suffering would never bring glory to God or Christ. He is suffering vicariously for others. The cross displays his love and the love of his Father for their own. These are those belonging to the Father who he given to his Son out of the world. (Jn 10:29, 17:6, 9,10). Those the Spirit draws by the drawing power of the cross to Christ; ‘I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men to me’ (Jn 12:32). Jesus says to his disciples, ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you’ (Jn 15:9). He goes on to say, ‘Greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends…’(15:13). John says, having loved his own he loved them to the very end (Jn 13:1). The love that led their master to take a towel and wash their feet would go on to show them the full extent of his love as he became sin on their behalf. His love for his own moved him to became their substitute. He would be their champion, the divine warrior who fights on their behalf. He would bear their sins, die their death, endure their wrath-soaked punishment and rescue them from the powers of darkness. His wounds would be their healing. He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, the Son of God who loved his own and gave himself for them.
Which brings us to the third expression of love displayed at the cross – his love for the world. If there is a particularity to the atonement in that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, there is also a universality. The Father gave the Son to be the Saviour of the world (1 Jn 4:14). The divine love revealed at the cross has a cosmic dimension. Jesus, as John the Baptist proclaims, is the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world. He is the propitiation for the sins of his own and also for the world (1 John 2:2). If God so loved the world that he gave his Son, then the Son, sharing his Father’s heart, so loved the world that he gave himself. If he had compassion on the multitudes healing them as he did and wept over a city that rejected him then on the cross his arms are open to welcome all who come. And any who come he will not cast out. He gives himself for the world as he says,
‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.‘ (Jn 6:51).
Jesus love is displayed in its full glory at the cross. At the cross the love, obedience, endurance, courage, grace, mercy and faith of Christ and no doubt many other virtues are tested to the extreme yet these qualities never falter instead under the pressure of suffering they shine firm in all their glory; Christ’s glory lights up the world from the darkness of the cross; and perhaps supremely among his glories there revealed is the glory of his love.
The Cross and the glory of God
If at the cross the glory of Christ’s love is revealed then it is also there the glory of God’s love is on full display. The cross is where paradoxically the character of God is revealed supremely. For example, the paradox that a brutal Roman execution stake should be the place of divine glory is what we may expect of God; it is part of the glory of his wisdom which is so often contrary to human wisdom – the wisdom that will deliver the world and bring in everlasting righteousness is not that of Greek philosophy but Jesus crucified on a Roman cross. He is the solution to the world’s evils. It is at the cross the power and wisdom of God is displayed. How will God deliver the world from all the evil forces that destroy it? By Jesus impaled on a Roman stake.. The place least likely to be the source of divine glory is precisely where it is displayed.
It is supremely at the cross that God’s glories shine out. In one sense of course that glory shines out through Christ for Christ is God (Jn 1:1). The Son of God is glorified and God is glorified in him (Ch 13). However, there is a sense in which God’s glory is revealed in Christ crucified in a distinct sense. The cross is where the many aspects of God’s character are exhibited as they really are. Perhaps we can say they shine within the context of love: divine love, holy love, righteous love, gracious love, forbearing love, painful love and sovereign love is displayed at Calvary. Even God’s wrath is seen in the context of love for it is wrath against his Son that we might live.
It is the love of God revealed at the cross that I want primarily to focus on for a moment.
God commends his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiatory sacrifice for our sins.”
Again three foci of his love seem clear.
The cross reveals his love for his Son. We are told he gave his ‘only son’ (Jn 3:16). The expression ‘only son’ suggests the personal cost involved in our redemption. More of this later. We may wonder how the cross expresses God’s love for his Son. Yet it is the constant testimony of Jesus that he is the loved son. He says, ‘the Father loves the Son and shows him all he is doing’ (Jn 5:20). He brings the Son into his plans and projects. Indeed, Father and Son work together (Jn 5:17); not only does the Son see what the Father is doing but he becomes involved in it. In fact, Jesus says, ‘the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand’ (Jn 3:35). That is, the Father entrusts to the Son he loves the execution of all his plans; this is deep love-born trust. God’s plan was to make a redeemed new creation over which Christ would rule. This is the gift of his love, his inheritance for his Son. The universe was God’s gift to his Son. It was an inheritance realised through death.; a gift so great that it merited the terrible cost. And so Jesus, fully approving the plan becomes his Father’s instrument in its execution. The plan was one which Father and Son work in unison to achieve. Since the texts above come from the lips of Jesus it is clear he lives deeply conscious of his Father’s love. His death on the cross, far from making him doubt his Father’s love points to its increase. Jesus says, ‘For this reason my Father loves me because I lay down my life’. How could a father do other than love a son who obeys him at such a personal cost and by revealing such courageous faith?
We might think (and some do) that to make such a demand on one’s son is callous and unfeeling? Jesus clearly didn’t think so. If the cost of being made sin was difficult for Jesus, it was difficult for his Father too. As far back as Genesis God had indicated his pain in sacrificing his son. Abraham the father of faith is instructed to take ‘his son, his only son, the son he loves’ and offer him as a sacrifice on a mountain God would reveal (Gen 22). In calling upon Abraham to sacrifice his son God was revealing to Abraham, and to us, the terrible cost to a father that slaying his son as a human sacrifice entailed. To cut the story short, for it’s familiar to us, Abraham’s son was not sacrificed; he was spared. God provided an alternative sacrifice. He was not a pagan God. But while Abraham’s Son was spared God’s son was not spared. God did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all (Roms 8). God’s sacrifice of his son, his only son, the son he loved, was not cosmic child abuse (blasphemous suggestion) but costly self-sacrifice. Jesus, who no doubt meditated on Genesis 22 understood the pain his Father felt as he accompanied his Son to his death carrying the knife with which he would slay him. The glory of God is revealed in his giving that which he loved most dearly-, his son.
The measure of God’s love for the world is his sacrifice of his Son. If he spared not his own son will he not freely give us all things? There was but one reason why God gave the Son that he loved to the death of the cross – his love for mankind who did not love him. God’s plan was for a new world populated by sons and daughters redeemed from the old. He was making a family, a nation, a bride for Christ.
Like the love of the Son there is a particularity and also a universality to this love. We read in John of that particularity: those who belonged to the Father he gives to the son.
‘I have manifested your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me’ (Jn 17:6, 9, 10).
The electing love of God lies behind such words. All that are the Father’s are the Son’s and all that are the Son’s are the Father’s (17:10). In the OT God said to Israel,
But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Jesus says, ‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— and he who comes I will by no means cast out (Jn 6:15). Again, ‘those he foreknew (fore-loved and chose) he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son’ (Roms 8:27-30). Paul speaks of Rufus as, ‘chosen in the Lord’ (Roms 16:7). God has a specially chosen people who are the special object of his love. It is that love that led him to give his Son up to death and it is glorious.
Yet God’s love is also for the world. God so loved ‘the world’ that he gave his only Son (Jn 3:16). Notice the intensity and passion of this love conveyed by the adverb ‘so’. There is nothing pale and aenemic about God’s love. In John, the world is the world of men who love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. God’s heart reaches out to men he has made even when they oppose him and crucify his son. His heart is large. God desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). ‘The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance’ (2 Pet 3:9). The sacrifice of Christ was for his own but it was also for the world. ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him’ (Jn 3:17). Of course, there are different views about the extent of the atonement but it is better not to tamper with the word ‘world’ and give it the breadth it naturally suggests. Paul wires in 2 Corinthians,
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again (2 Cor 5:14,15).
The ‘all’ here is probably universal. If Christ died for all, then all must be dead (in trespasses and sins). Those who live are a subset of all who are dead. They are those who believe.
There is always a universal ‘whoever’ to the gospel for God’s love embraces a fallen world steeped in sin and welcomes all who come. The cross reveals God active in the midst of sin and his glory is all the more enhanced by being contrasted with the human response. Love is revealed in the midst of hate. Holiness that judges sin in the midst of depravity. Grace to a graceless world.
It is these glories we proclaim when we preach the gospel and through the strange glory of the crucified Son people from every tribe and nation are drawn to Christ and to God. And that is God’s plan. In Isaiah God says,
Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isa. 43:6–7).
Cave Adullam 