We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

GloryGod

What Is God’s Glory?

In John 12 we find a view of God’s glory that challenges many modern notions of what the glory of God means. In this passage, we find that Jesus was “troubled” by the cross that lay ahead to such an extent that he wanted to cry out, “Father, save me.” But Jesus quickly expresses his resolve to go forward by saying, “No, it was for this very reason that I have come to this hour.” Then, with a view towards his crucifixion, Jesus exclaims: “Father, glorify your name,” at which point the voice of the Father thunders from the sky: “I have gloried it, and will glorify it again.” Jesus then goes on to declare: “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” And just to make sure readers did not miss the point, John adds: “He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die” (12:27-8, 31-3).

This passage unambiguously identifies Jesus’ crucifixion as the “hour” when he will “glorify” the Father’s “name.” In ancient Jewish culture, to speak of a person’s “name” was to speak about their character and reputation. So, Jesus and the Father are both indicating that the Father’s character would most clearly shine forth—be “glorified”—when Jesus was crucified. While Jesus reflects the Father’s cruciform character throughout his ministry, the Father is “most glorified through the…‘lifting-up’… of the Son,” as Andrew Moody notes. Similarly, Gary Burge observes that, while God was of course glorified in Jesus’ miracles, it is only “on the cross that the mysterious, unfathomable glory of God is to be found.”

Colin Gunton argued that “[The glory of Christ is] lived up on the cross, and only through the trial of death is elevated to the glory that is reigning with the Father… if it is true that those who have seen him have seen the Father, then it is the Father who is revealed in the incarnate humanity of this man glorified through humbling.”

On top of this, Jesus tells us that it was “for this very reason” that he came into the world. As N.T. Wright puts it, the supreme glorification of the Father on the cross was “the climax and purpose of his whole work.” For, as Wright goes on to note, “in being thus ‘lifted up’…Jesus will draw all people to himself. How could it not be so, if indeed his cross is the true revelation of the true God, and if what we see in that revelation is the face of love?”

Now, if the crucifixion is the “climax and purpose of Jesus’ work,” we should understand everything else Jesus taught and did from this vantage point. To put it differently, since the cross was the supreme glorification of the Father, then the many other lesser ways Jesus glorified the Father should be understood as anticipating, and pointing toward, this event.

Let’s think about this another way. If Jesus is the center to which all Scripture points, then the cruciform glory of God that was supremely revealed on the cross must be regarded as the epicenter of this center. On this note, it’s significant that, when the resurrected Jesus “explained… all Scriptures concerning himself” to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, it was primarily to demonstrate that “the Messiah [had] to suffer these things,” which the disciples themselves had witnessed (Lk 24:26-7). And later, when Jesus “opened” the “minds” of the apostles “so they could understand the Scriptures,” it was primarily so they could see that it declared that “[t]he Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day” (vv.45-6).

What a strange glory!

—Adapted from Cross Vision, pages 37-38

Related Reading

The Revelation of God in the Cross

The cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection, just as the resurrection can never be understood apart from the cross. They are two sides of the same coin. If you consider the cross apart from the resurrection, then the crucified Christ becomes nothing more than one of the many thousands of people who were…

Jesus and Nationalistic Violence

Throughout the Old Testament, we find Israel spoken of as God’s “chosen nation.” The Israelites were to be a nation of priests whom God wanted to use to unite the world under him (Ex 19:6). Since nationalism and violence inevitably go hand in hand, as Jacque Ellul and others have noted, the covenant God made…

When the Last Few Moments Changes Everything

One of the central things ReKnew wants to accomplish is to challenge followers of Jesus to accept that the self-sacrificial love Jesus revealed on the cross is the definitive, and even the exhaustive, revelation of God’s character. Everything about God, we believe, should be understood through the lens of the cross. For most Christians, Jesus…

What I Am, and Am Not, Doing In These Blog Posts

In this post I’d like to try to help some potentially frustrated readers by explaining what I am, and am not, trying to accomplish in this series on the violent portraits of God in the OT. First let me explain something. My forthcoming book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, fleshes out and defends a…

Reflections on the Supremacy of Christ (Part 2)

Whereas most Christians place the revelation of God in Christ alongside of other portraits of God and end up with an amalgamated image of God, we at ReKnew encourage believers to base their understanding of God completely on Christ, and especially on Christ crucified. And we encourage disciples to work to reinterpret through the lens…

The Cross as a Trinitarian Event

On Calvary, the all-holy God fully identified with sinners, suffering the consequences of our sin as though he himself were guilty. While God is never culpable for the evil he allows, he nevertheless assumes responsibility for it by fully identifying with those free agents who are in fact culpable. While the Son alone suffered as…