Monday, January 11

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, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.  - John 17:1-5

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.  - John 17:22

You really cannot study John 17 without addressing the subject of glory. The word glory and its variations is used eight times in Jesus‟ prayer, five times in the first section where Jesus prays for himself.

This word glory can be confusing. Jesus said, “Glorify you Son” (v. 2); “I have glorified You on earth” (v. 4); “I have been glorified in them” (v. 10); “they will see My glory” (v. 24). Sometimes the word is used as a noun and sometimes as a verb. What does it all mean? The basic meaning of the Hebrew word kabod translated glory is heavy in weight. The noun glory means the weighty importance and shining majesty which accompany God‟s presence. The verb glorified means to give weight to or to give honor to. “To give glory” is to praise, to recognize the importance of another. The Greek word is doxa, which, by the way, is where we get the term doxology. As it relates to God, it means to recognize the essential nature of his divine glory that gives him ultimate importance and weight in relationships to us humans. When we glorify someone we display their dignity, their worth, their importance, their fame.

Jesus prays that he would glorify the Father (v. 1). Simply stated, Jesus lived to glorify his Father. He lived that God would be famous, that people would recognize the importance of his Father. Did you notice in the definition of glory the word weight? We often say of some people who think they are important that they are throwing their weight around. If anyone could have thrown their weight around it would have been Jesus. But instead he sought to show the importance of God. He wanted people to understand and recognize the weighty importance of God in their lives. He lived his life so that God would be glorified (v. 4).

Do we pray and live so that people see the importance, the weight, of God? The sole purpose of our lives is to live in such a way that God is made known, that people see his importance. We answer Jesus‟ prayer by extending the influence of God in the world.

Jesus prays that he might receive glory (v. 5). This is not a self-serving request; he‟s simply asking to receive back what was his to begin with. Remember Jesus gave up his rights as God and became a human, in fact, a slave, and then died on a cross (Phil. 2:6-8). Jesus laid aside his preincarnate glory with the Father when he came to earth to be born, to serve, to suffer, and to die. Since his work on earth is finished, he is asking that his glory be given to him again. The reason is that the Son might glorify the Father in heaven.

If anyone could “bask in the glory” for what they had done it would be Jesus. But Jesus chooses not to bask in his glory but rather reflect that glory back to God.

Question: Do we live and pray so that so God can bask in glory? The chief end of many people, believers included, is to glorify themselves rather than God. Glorifying God is not their objective; their real goal is glorifying themselves.

In John 17:22, Jesus prays that we will receive glory. Jesus is asking that the same glory that God gave him will be given to us his disciples. He is praying that we will have the same kind of weight, importance, fame. That‟s an amazing thought isn‟t it? We possess the glory of God within us. There is a weight, an importance, to our beings. Not because of what we are but because of whose we are.  As believers in Christ we don‟t have to muster up our importance, we are important because we possess the divine nature of God himself!

Do we live and pray understanding that we possess the nature of God? The end result of our lives is to have the nature of God so inundate our being that people see Jesus in us. Then, and only then, do we become the answer to Jesus‟ prayer.

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.   - John 17:6-10

Pastor Jeff Frazier