⬇ EPUB

THE MORAL GLORY OF THE LORD JESUS

James Mather

We were considering on Lord's day, in a general way, the glory of the Lord Jesus. I would like to speak now about His moral glory.

First, to put it in its proper setting, it might be well to cover what has been taught previously: that the glory of the Lord Jesus may be distinguished in three settings. There is His personal glory as implied in the verse read from John 17; there is His moral glory which we can discuss from the verses in John 6; there is His official glory as seen in Acts 2.

The Lord's personal glory is the glory He has because of who He is. That is what comes into this verse in John 17 where He, as in manhood, is asking the Father to glorify Him along with Himself with the glory which He had along with Him before the world was. It is an amazing thing that, as in manhood, He should ask for that. It is the glory that appertains to Deity which was innately and eternally and intrinsically His. Yet He left the circumstances of Deity where it was His only and ever to command and came into circumstances of flesh and blood where it was His to obey. That does not alter the truth of who was here. God was here - amazing truth! The Man who was here was God. 'Never ceasing to be who He was by reason of what He became' are well known words, beloved, but it does our souls good, I believe, to ponder them. How often we have spoken of them in the preaching of the gospel - the Person who was here - veiling that glory because man could not bear it, it was so great. His personal glory was so great that only on relatively few occasions was the veil drawn aside for a moment of time. Remember when He was about to be taken He said: "I am" (John 18: 6) and they went away backward and fell to the ground. At that time of His deepest humiliation, when He was submitting Himself to man and, indeed, to what the devil could do to Him, just for a moment the Spirit of God in the record moves the veil aside and lets us see the intrinsic glory of the One who was going to die to take away sin. He was not captured, beloved, He gave Himself up.

His moral glory was not so much who was here but, I think, it was what was here in Jesus, how He did things. We read that passage in John 6. It might seem an unusual one to illustrate the moral glory of our Lord Jesus but it is extremely interesting. Peter, when questioned, answered: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God". It seems evident to me that the twelve, attendants on the Word, sympathetic hearers, sympathetic viewers of what Jesus said and did, must have spoken with one another about these things. Peter and John must have spoken together and worked out in their own souls the impact of what was happening in their midst. There never was a moment in the annals of human history like the time when Jesus was here. There never has been a time like that absolutely stupendous time when the Son of God was here. There were a few - at least eleven of those twelve men - who allowed the impact of Jesus and the way He did things to affect their souls, so that Peter (not John) speaking for them all comes to this conclusion - for that is what it is: "we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God". This is not a revelation as in Matthew; this is what they had come to themselves by watching Jesus.

Now, as I have said, the moral glory of the Lord Jesus has to do with what He did and how He did it. He did the same things that other people did. He was baptised, for example, and other people were baptised at the same time, but you remember that in Luke's gospel it says: "all the people having been baptised, and Jesus having been baptised and praying", chap 3: 21. There was the difference. The moral glory of the Lord Jesus shone out at that moment: not who He was exactly, but what He was. He was there for the pleasure of the Father. It all culminates in the garden, where He says "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee: take away this cup from me; but not what I will, but what thou wilt" Mark 14: 36. What a prayer! There has never been a prayer like that one: the moral glory of the Lord Jesus, not only what He did but how He did it.

That moral glory of Jesus extended towards man also, to His saints. You recall the occasion when He washed His disciples' feet. Their feet would have been washed many times, as was the custom in the East, usually by a servant or slave, more rarely by the householder maybe, but think of the glory as it says: "Jesus ... rises from supper and lays aside his garments, and having taken a linen towel he girded himself: then he pours water into the wash-hand basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the linen towel with which he was girded", John 13: 4,5. They had never had their feet washed like that; they had never had their feet dried like that. In a way I can understand Peter, although he was wrong, saying: "Thou shalt never wash my feet". That testimony of Peter's gives us some realisation of the impact of the moral glory of the Lord Jesus on Peter's soul. He had to learn, of course, and have not we all as we have experienced the personal service of Christ? Although He is not now in the circumstances in which He then was, He has His own way of doing things, not by virtue of His Person, nor by virtue of His office, but just by what He is - as the word says: "full of grace and truth", John 1: 14. How fine to experience that! There is no one like Jesus. I am not now talking of His capabilities in His many offices, but just of the kind of Person He is and how He does things. "Full of grace and truth": Peter had seen that, and allowing it to affect his soul he says: "thou art the holy one of God", and "to whom shall we go?" Jesus was indispensable to Peter, and to them all.

Now there is a further glory, spoken of in the Acts - His official glory. "Both Lord and Christ" is His present position but it does us good to dig a little deeper. He was Lord when He was here, and He was Christ when He was here, although not officially so. When the woman in John 4 commented on the Christ, He said: "I who speak to thee am he" (v 26). Then there is the Man of John 9. He was both of these things while He was here, in all the essential substance that these titles imply, but He was not them officially and publicly. When He went to heaven He was glorified officially and installed in these offices but His moral glory underlies that. With God you never find an official office without the Person being morally qualified to fill the office, although you often find that among men. These things have been given to the Lord Jesus officially. It is good to dwell on that for a moment: the moral background that there was to the present position that Jesus occupies as Lord and Christ. He is first in the universe - both Lord and Christ. Not two persons as Moses and Aaron but one Man has been found able and chosen of God to fill this dual office, which He now fills so fully and so feelingly. These things are very precious as they apply to the Lord Jesus and I would like to comment on their application to ourselves.

As to the first glory, we have no personal glory. We would all understand that we had no pre-incarnate existence and no life before we were born. There is nothing that is personally glorious about us. We recognise the One who is unique and we worship Him.

When it comes to moral glory, the saints have moral glory and as to official glory we shall have that - bodies of glory like His own. Have we ever considered our right to those bodies of glory? There will be a moral basis for it. When first you put your faith in the blood of Christ you entered on a new moral pathway, the end of which would be that you, and I and each one of us, would have a body of glory like Christ's. That is where it began for us. It was on a moral line; we were justified through faith in His blood, going on until finally we share with Him, with bodies like His own. The present time by the Spirit is when moral glory is being wrought out in us. We have no personal glory and it is not the time for our official glory; it is the time for moral glory and this is taken on, I believe, largely through suffering and certainly through exercise and desire.

What moral glory there is when a soul kneels down at the bedside to pray! I would encourage the young people especially, to find the time and privacy to pray yourself - to kneel down and pray. There is great moral glory in that action. It is one of the moral glories that was seen in Jesus which had such an impact on the disciples that when He rose up from prayer one of them said: "Lord, teach us to pray", Luke 11: 1. Oh, the impact of the life and actions of Jesus, beloved, how He did things! The Spirit brings these things to us now so that moral glories might be developed in us.

May we enjoy these things as they were seen in Jesus! Men did enjoy them, I know some hated Him but, oh, there have been many, many more who enjoyed Jesus. Moses longed to see Jesus when he said: "Let me ... see thy glory", Exod 33: 18. What he really wanted to see was Jesus and he was not allowed to, at that time, except in type. But there have been men, women and children, who were deeply indebted to Jesus, who enjoyed Him, enjoying what He did and especially how he did it. May we belong to that company, beloved!

DUNDEE

4 July 1989

← Previous 4 of 5 Next →