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Scripture Reading: Heb. 1:3; John 17:5; 1:4, 21-24; Phil. 2:15-16; 1:20-21; Col. 1:27
We have seen the surpassingness and transcendence of Christ, and now we come to see the glory of Christ. The term glory has a special meaning in the Bible, a meaning that is hard to explain clearly with human language. Some Chinese people think that when someone has obtained a high position, has become rich, and lives in a luxurious house, he is “glorified.” This kind of usage, however, is not according to the biblical meaning, and it is not even according to the meaning of the Chinese words rong yao. If you look at these two Chinese characters, you will see that the first character rong contains two radicals for fire, while the second character yao contains the radical for light. When two fires burn brightly and give forth light, that is rong yao, or glory.
The glory spoken of in the Bible, however, refers to God Himself, the expression of God’s radiance, the expression of God Himself. God is hidden and invisible, but when He shines forth in His radiance, He is visible. We can use electricity as an illustration. Electricity is very hidden. Strictly speaking, up to this day no one has ever seen electricity. Although electricity is invisible, electric lights can shine forth the brightness of electricity. The light that shines forth from electric lamps is the brilliance of electricity, and the brilliance of electricity is the glory of the electricity. In other words, when the electric lamps shine forth with light, the electricity is glorified. Today we are accustomed to using electric lights and do not feel that electricity is very marvelous. However, if we have never used an electric light before and see one suddenly turned on in a dark room, we will say that the room is certainly full of glory. Within the electricity there is a hidden light, and when this hidden light is expressed, it is glory. The glory of God is the expression of God. When God is not expressed, He is hidden; when He is expressed, there is glory. Genesis 12 in the Old Testament is a record of God’s appearing to Abraham and speaking to him. This matter is referred to in the New Testament in the book of Acts as the appearing of the God of glory to Abraham (7:2).
According to the biblical definition, glory is not our attaining to a high position and making a great amount of money, but it is God being manifested in us. For example, I may go to a couple’s home for fellowship, and while I am standing at the door ready to knock, I may hear the husband and the wife arguing inside; then when the husband opens the door, I may see the wife crying. This kind of situation is not glory. It is a shattered light bulb that no longer shines. Suppose, however, that when the husband opens the door, the wife is praying with her head covered, and I sense that the husband also has a spirit of prayer with him. Although this situation does not have an outward, visible kind of brilliance, it is full of the Lord’s radiance. Inwardly, I would say, “This is really glorious!” because I can see God expressed in that couple.
Hebrews 1:3 is very difficult to expound. It says that Christ is the effulgence of God’s glory. We can use an example to explain this: In the daylight we see the sun in the sky, but strictly speaking, what we see is not the sun itself but the brilliance of the sun. Christ being the effulgence of God’s glory means that we cannot see God Himself, just as we cannot see the sun itself, but we can see the effulgence of God’s glory, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the effulgence of God’s glory. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, people marveled at the words He spoke. They asked, “Where did this man come from? How can He speak such things?” Also while He was on the earth, He did many marvelous things that were difficult for people to understand. People saw a little Galilean, Jesus, and wondered how He could do such great and marvelous things; they wondered who He really was. The Bible, however, says explicitly that He is the effulgence of God’s glory.
I have studied the Bible and am convinced that according to Isaiah’s prophecy, this Jesus grew up like a tender plant before God and like a root out of dry ground. He had no attracting form or majesty, and He had no beautiful appearance that people would desire Him. He was despised and forsaken of men; His visage and form were marred. Yet, within this man the glory of God was concealed. He lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. One time He took Peter, James, and John to a high mountain. Suddenly, He was transfigured before them, His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as the light. In other words, His entire being was shining radiantly; this means that the glory which was concealed within Him was now expressed outwardly.
The three disciples saw Jesus the Nazarene appearing in God’s glory. God’s glory was completely expressed through Him. Therefore, Peter tells us in his second Epistle that on the mountain they were eyewitnesses of His glory (1:16-18). In his Gospel, John also says, “In the beginning was the Word,...and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality” (1:1, 14).
When the worldly people encounter difficulties, they have a sad look and become depressed. However, when we believers suffer persecutions and encounter difficulties, we can still joyfully say Hallelujah! This is because we not only love the Lord, but we are also filled with the Lord. When we are filled with the Lord, He overflows from within us. This overflow is glory.
Colossians 1:27 says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The Christ within us is glory, but this glory is concealed. The first line of the first stanza of Hymns, #403 says, “Live Thyself, Lord Jesus, through me.” The second stanza says,
This hymn tells us that Christ is concealed within us, waiting to be manifested.
Even though Christ is concealed within us, this hidden glory cannot always remain covered and sometimes becomes manifest openly. I know that some parents are against their children becoming Christians, especially in the Chinese families that accept the ideologies of Confucius and Mencius. Such parents always think that when their children believe in Jesus, they are believing in a foreign religion, which is not a glory but a shame to their ancestors for three generations. This is why these parents oppose their children’s believing in the Lord Jesus. Among the brothers and sisters here today, there is one who believed in the Lord and was saved under such a circumstance. This brother was saved in junior high school. Before he was saved, he was a naughty teenager, but after getting saved, his living changed completely. When people scolded him, he remained pleasant. His parents would beat him for believing in the Lord, but he would go meekly into his bedroom to kneel by his bed and pray to the Lord. Time after time, day after day the Lord Jesus would manifest His glory in this previously naughty teenager. His parents were so touched that eventually they also believed in the Lord. Many parents oppose when their children first believe in the Lord, but eventually they end up believing in the Lord also. Hallelujah! It is hard to find a family in which the parents do not follow their children to believe in the Lord. Everyone who is genuinely saved has the glory of the Lord Jesus manifested in him; this means that the invisible God is expressed through him.
John 17:5 says, “Now, glorify Me along with Yourself, Father, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” This tells us that in eternity past the Lord Jesus had the same glory as God. This is difficult to explain because we were not there and do not know what it was like. We all know that John 17 is the Lord Jesus’ final prayer before being crucified. After He prayed this, He went to the Garden of Gethsemane and was betrayed, arrested, and judged in that same night; the following day He was condemned and put to death on the cross. Therefore, this prayer is critical and profound. Even if you read it many times, I am afraid that you will not be able to understand its implications. That is because this prayer was prayed by the Lord Jesus directly to God, and it did not matter to Him whether or not we would understand it. He said, “Glorify Me along with Yourself, Father.” He did not say, “Grant Me to have glory along with Yourself, Father.” It is not a matter of having or not having the glory but a matter of gaining and enjoying it. The Lord Jesus was not without this glory. When He prayed, He already had this glory, but He was not enjoying this glory. Before the world was, before the beginning of time, the Lord Jesus had this glory along with the Father. Also when He was living on the earth, He had this glory, but He did not yet enjoy the glory. This is why He prayed in John 17, “Glorify Me along with Yourself, Father.” It is as if He were saying, “Now the hour has come that You want Me to enjoy this glory.”
What does it mean for the Lord Jesus to have the glory of God? How was He glorified along with the Father? These are questions that are not easy to answer. We must consider this based upon the context of John 17:5. The first part of the Lord’s prayer in verse 1 says, “Father,...glorify Your Son,” and the second part says, “That the Son may glorify You.” It does not say here that the Lord Jesus asked the Father to uplift Him to the throne so that He might have an exalted position and thus be glorified. Instead, it says, “Glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” The Father glorified the Son, and in this glory the Son glorified the Father. Verse 2 says, “Even as You have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him.” This verse in the Bible is very precious. The Father gave the Lord Jesus authority over all flesh. The Lord Jesus is the Lord over all things and over mankind. He governs every person for only one purpose, that is, to give eternal life to all those who have been given to Him by God the Father — those who were predestinated and chosen in eternity. Hallelujah! All of us who believe in the Lord are those whom God has given to the Lord Jesus. God has given each one of us to the Lord. Then the Lord gives eternal life to us.
Verse 3 says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ.” This is a footnote that the Lord Jesus added to His prayer, telling us what eternal life is. This is eternal life, that we know the only true God and Him whom He has sent, Jesus Christ. Today whether or not you have eternal life hinges on whether or not you know the only true God and Him whom He has sent, Jesus Christ. If you say, “Praise and thank the Lord, I know the only true God, and I know Jesus Christ, whom He has sent,” then you have eternal life within you. We can all testify to this. When we believed in this only true God and in Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, we received something that is living into us, and we were made alive from within. This living thing is eternal life.
Verse 4 says, “I have glorified You on earth, finishing the work which You have given Me to do.” This is the key to open these verses. What is the work that God gave His Son, the Lord Jesus, to do? There is only one thing: God wanted the Lord Jesus to live out God Himself on this earth. No one had ever seen God; the only begotten Son of God came among men and declared God to them. To declare God is to glorify God. Declaring God is the definition of glorifying God. To glorify God is to express God.
When the Lord Jesus prayed this prayer, He knew that it was the last evening of His thirty-three and a half years of living on earth. He would soon be crucified. His crucifixion would be a great suffering and a terrible shame in the eyes of men, but He knew that this death would be like a grain of wheat being sown into the earth. If the grain of wheat does not die by being sown into the earth, it can never bear much fruit. The Lord Jesus had to be buried in the earth and to die as a grain of wheat. Superficially, this death appeared to be a shame and a suffering, but actually it was a glorious release. The life and all the riches of life in the grain of wheat are covered by the outer shell and cannot come forth. Likewise, the physical body of the Lord Jesus was an outer shell that concealed the life and the riches of life. Therefore, this outer shell had to be buried in the earth and die in order that the life within the shell might be released. After a grain of wheat is buried in the earth and dies, it sprouts up a tender shoot and grows a stem and leaves; then it flowers, brings forth the ears, and bears fruit. When it multiplies thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold, that is its glorification.
The Lord Jesus was just like a grain of wheat. His flesh was the outer shell of the seed. Within Him was God, but this God was concealed within the outer shell and could not be expressed. Therefore, the Lord Jesus had to be put into death in order that through death and resurrection He could be released and the God within Him could be expressed and glorified. This is why He prayed in such a way: “Father,...glorify Your Son.” To put it plainly, His prayer here was asking the Father to put Him to death! It is as if a seed was begging its master, “Master! Do not think so highly of me; do not elevate me or put me on a pedestal for exhibition. Please plant me in the earth! Once you plant me in the earth, I will be glorified.” The meaning of this sentence, “Father,...glorify Your Son,” is that the Lord was asking the Father to put Him into the place of death that He might pass through death and be resurrected. After the Son’s death and resurrection, the Father would be manifested, and thus the Son also would be glorified. Moreover, in the glorification of the Son, the Father also would be glorified.
The Father being glorified in the glorification of His Son Jesus is a matter of life. Two thousand years ago, among millions of people, only the Lord Jesus had the divine life and the divine nature within Him. His life and nature were for the expression of God. Concerning life and nature, the emphasis is not on enabling us to do things but on enabling us to live a kind of life that expresses the life within us. If you are a Chinese with the Chinese life and the Chinese nature, you spontaneously will express the Chinese condition. If you are a Japanese with the Japanese life and nature, the Japanese condition will be expressed in you. You express whatever life and nature you have. The Lord Jesus had the life of God and the nature of God, so He did not need to do anything; He simply lived out God and expressed God in His living. However, at that time God was still concealed within the flesh of the Lord Jesus. Therefore, the Lord Jesus had to break this flesh through His death, just like a seed must be planted into the earth to allow the life to break through the outer shell and be released. That is glory. Hence, the Lord Jesus prayed that the Father God would put Him into the ground of death and then raise Him up from the dead. In this way the Father God would be released from within Him, and the life and nature of the Father God would be manifested; this would be the Father glorifying the Son.
Because the divine life and the divine nature are within the Lord Jesus, He can also give this life and nature to those whom God has chosen, predestined, and given to Him. In other words, just as Christ has the life and nature of God for the expression of God, so also we, whom God has chosen and given to the Lord Jesus, have the life and nature of God for the expression of God. Because the Lord Jesus has given us the eternal life that is within Him, we all are those who have God’s life and nature. According to the Bible, the goal of believing in the Lord is not merely the receiving of forgiveness of sins, but even more it is the obtaining of eternal life. The forgiveness of sins is only a procedure; it is not the goal. But it is only by the forgiveness of sins that God can give His eternal life to us. When this eternal life is put into us, we have an organic union with Christ. Nothing can have an organic union with us unless it is something of life; only the living things, the things with life, can have an organic union with us. If a stone were to enter our stomach, it would always remain a stone because a stone does not have life. However, if we eat some organic things, such as fish, meat, and fruit, they will have an organic union with us and will eventually become us.
The Lord Jesus said that He was not only the bread of life but even more the living bread. The living bread means that when this bread is eaten by us, it continues to live in us. The Lord Himself is full of the organic supply, so when we receive Him into us, He lives and moves within us, full of the organic function and operation. This is how the Lord Jesus gives us the eternal life that is within Him.
Christ is living; He is Spirit, and He is in His word. Through our preaching, He is transfused into other people. When He enters into us who have been chosen by God, He infuses eternal life into us. Thus, we become the multiplication and enlargement of Christ. This multiplication and enlargement are glory.
The prayer in John 17:21-23 is very mysterious with many ins. “You, Father, are in Me,” “I in You,” “that they also may be in Us,” and “I in them.” In the end it is hard for us to discern who is in whom. We who believe in the Lord are all in God and in the Lord Jesus. God is in the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus is also in God, and we are in Them. Verse 22 says, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them.” This glory is simply God’s life and nature for the expression of God. The unbelievers do not have it; only we who believe in Christ have this glory. Because the Lord Jesus has the divine life and the divine nature within Him, when we believe into the Lord Jesus, He dispenses His life and nature into us; hence, we all have this glory. Verse 23 says, “I in them, and You in Me.” Notice that the order is different here. Previously, it was the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father that the believers might all be in the Father and the Son. Then the Lord said that He has given to the believers the glory which the Father has given Him; that is, He has dispensed the Father’s life and nature into them, and the result is that He is in them. After this, the Lord finally said that He is in us, and the Father is in Him.
Verse 24 says, “Father, concerning that which You have given Me, I desire that they also may be with Me where I am.” What does where refer to? The traditional explanation given by most Christians is that it refers to heaven. They say that the Lord Jesus died, rose, and ascended to heaven, so He prayed to the Father that all the millions of people given to Him would all be brought into heaven. He is in heaven, so let them all go to heaven. This is the traditional teaching in Christianity. But the where revealed here in the Bible does not refer to heaven; instead, it refers to being in God. Thus, in John 14:6 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the way;...no one comes to the Father except through Me.” He did not say that no one goes to heaven except through Him but that no one comes to the Father except through Him. In John 14—17 He did not have the thought of going to heaven. His heart’s desire was to bring His believers into the Father, just as He was in the Father.
According to the revelation of the Bible, the Lord Jesus’ prayer here was that He was in the Father with the Father’s life and nature to express the Father, and He was praying that the Father would sow Him into the ground of death and then resurrect Him that He might release the Father’s life and enter into those who believe into Him. Once the eternal life and nature get into the believers, they will be in the Father just as He is in the Father. They will be with Him where He is. Where is the Lord? He is in the Father. Where are the believers? They too are in the Father. Originally, we were not in the Father, but now we are. Because the Lord Jesus has put the eternal life and nature into us, we have the life and nature of the Father God within us. This is the Father’s being in us and our being in the Father. In this way just as the Lord Jesus is, so we are also; wherever He is, we are there too. He is in the Father, and we also are in the Father. The Father is in Him, and the Father is also in us. The Lord Jesus has the divine life and nature, and we also have the divine life and nature. Thus, eventually the Lord Jesus said, “That they may behold My glory, which You have given Me” (17:24). The glory that God gave the Lord Jesus is the divine life and nature for the expression of God. Before we were saved, we did not have this. But after we were saved, we obtained the divine life and the divine nature that we may express God. It is in this that we see the glory which the Father has given to the Lord, and we enjoy this glory day by day.
All of us who are saved have the divine life and nature to express God. Furthermore, we are luminous lamps in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, shining as luminaries, holding forth the word of life (Phil. 2:15-16). All of us who have the divine life and nature are children of God without blemish in the midst of this crooked and perverted generation, among whom we shine as luminaries in this dark world, holding forth the word of life. This is the Lord Jesus’ being glorified from within us.
As I have said, many young people after being saved become the Lord Jesus’ luminaries, shining before their parents and relatives, and unconsciously and unintentionally hold forth the word of life — the Lord Jesus Himself. This is Christ being glorified in them.
Paul wrote the book of Philippians while he was in prison, so he said, “According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death. For to me, to live is Christ” (1:20-21). What does it mean for Christ to be magnified in our bodies? Paul did not have Christ merely as his inward life and nature, but even more he had Christ as the outward expression of his living. Therefore, when he was on the verge of being martyred, he could still express the unlimited greatness of Christ, and the glory of God could be shown great in his body. This was Christ’s being magnified in his body.
In Colossians 1:27 Paul says that there is a mystery in us which is Christ. Christ in us is truly a mystery. This is why at the times when people revile us, we are not in the least bit angry; on the contrary, we are joyful and happy. This is truly a story of mystery, and this story is the Lord Jesus as the eternal life. This mystery within us is Jesus Christ as our hope of glory. When Christ returns, He will be in glory, and He will transfigure us and bring us into glory. That will be our being glorified along with Him. “This mystery...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
