THE SON OF MAN GLORIFIED
[p. 46] THE SON OF MAN GLORIFIED
Any believer, if he were asked, would own that Jesus is in glory. But there is more than that stated here. It says, “Now is the Son of man glorified”. Not the Son of God - that is in chapter 11 where Lazarus was raised. What is here is that the Son of man is glorified. Man is put in a position that he never occupied before. In the eye of God there are only two men now - either the lost man or the glorified man. In Romans the apostle, enumerating our blessings, says, “Whom he called .. . he also glorified”. In His eye you are a glorified man. You say, I am not up to it. If you have not found it out you cannot be up to it.
The first thing I will do is to show you how God desires to connect His people with His glory. In keeping with Christ glorified, the Holy Spirit is on the earth. Do not think I am unkind when I say there is nothing as a rule known about it in christendom. Thank God, they know Christ crucified and Christ risen; but I am speaking of Christ glorified. They do not believe the Holy Spirit is down here. It is because you never saw Him exalted there. “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” - not crucified. There is an apprehension that the Holy Spirit is here, but it is feeble, because you do not understand you have a glorified sphere. If you are feeble about His exaltation you are feeble about the correspondence. If He is elevated, the Holy Spirit is here. The power of God in the Person of the Holy Spirit has come down to dwell in the soul in a twofold way - “with you and ... in you”.
Now turn to the Old Testament for a little - Exodus 40: 34. God desired to connect His people with His glory. He came down in a cloud; every child might [p. 47] see it. It is a beautiful sight. I wish I could see it as plainly as that, a person here may say, You have a far finer sight. I turn to another portion, Isaiah 6. I find here the glory is preparing to go. At the sight of it the prophet - a true prophet of God - says, “I am undone”. Not a link whatever with the Lord. Now turn to Ezekiel 1: 26. In Isaiah the prophet was cleared, but he had no link with the glory. The light of it repelled him. In Ezekiel the glory is about to go. But what arrested his attention? The brightest spot - the spot of amber. What did he see? The appearance of a man. It was not merely a man allowed to get in there, but a Man sitting upon a throne. Man’s wickedness was driving away the glory, and yet in the very brightest place in the glory there was a Man - a Man upon a throne.
Now we turn to the New Testament - Luke 2: 9. I hope the Lord will conduct you along this beautiful road. It will have a wonderful effect upon you. The glory never came back from Ezekiel’s time till this moment. Mark how it comes - announcing a Saviour. Now turn to Luke 3: 22 - “And the Holy Spirit descended...”. How far have we got now? The glory has come and announced the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. After thirty years of private life this blessed One is announced from the glory, anointed with the Holy Spirit in power, and in every detail of private life He was entirely pleasing to God. As a babe He never learned anything from man. It was all divinely beautiful. “I was cast upon thee from the womb”.
Now look at Luke 9: 29. I ask you to pay very marked attention to this passage, for here the glory salutes Him, invites Him. The fashion of His countenance became different. They saw His glory. The voice comes out of the excellent glory - “hear him”. Turn to 2 Peter 1: 16. The peculiarity of the Bible is that you can feel yourself one of the company.
[p. 48] That is by the Spirit of God. “We .. . were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory”. There it culminates. What follows? He is now the spotless One, entitled to glory, and from there He comes down to the lowest spot. I do not mean to say He comes down from the highest spot as God, but as a Man. “I love my master .. . I will not go out free”. Now turn to John 12: 24, and you will see what happens. He is alone - He is going to die. Christ never had brethren of His own order till He rose from the dead. It is not, as people say, from the cradle to the cross. You left out that blessed One’s glory culminated on the mount of transfiguration, and that He came down from that wonderful elevation into death. Now, He says in chapter 13, the Son of man is glorified. People talk of Christ’s death as the death of a lamb. It is the Holy One of God going to meet the judgment of man. He was made sin. If you were to get all the adjectives in the Bible together, you could not get any language to describe what it was to be made sin. Two things proved He was the Son of God; He knew the nature of the offence, and He knew what was in the heart of God towards the sinner. He removed the one and cleared the other. It was not you that He was thinking of - it was how He should maintain what was due to His Father. God can now come down to the lowest spot and say, I am glorified here. He is claimed now - raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. What is the course now? A very important thing is that when you have the Holy Spirit come down from a glorified Christ, if you follow the Holy Spirit you will go to a glorified Christ. I know the reluctance to accept that statement. You say, I never knew a glorified Christ. You have never followed the Spirit of God. Acts 7: 55. Stephen, “being full of the Holy Spirit, having fixed his eyes on heaven .. . saw the glory of God, and Jesus...”. He saw a Man in [p. 49] the glory, on the throne there. It is the first time heaven is opened on a man, and it is never closed from that day to this. The believer must go that way. The apostle sends him up the line, “where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”. The Jews were not one bit better in Stephen’s day than in Ezekiel’s day, and with the fulfilment of the Man in the glory they killed the man.
Now turn to Acts 9. I am coming to what very few believers believe in. Oh, you say, we do not doubt Acts 9! Don’t you? I know it is seldom preached. It resolves the whole question. You get the very opposite side to what you get in Acts 7. In chapter 7 it is a saint on earth that finds he can go up all the shining way to where Jesus is in glory. In chapter 9 the Saviour in glory can come down all the shining way to the very lowest spot and to the very worst man that ever was on the earth. How? That is the whole point. Because God was glorified in that spot. 2 Corinthians 4: 3 is a very important verse, because it explains why everyone is not saved. It is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. That made Isaiah tremble. Now that light is the very one that comes down to the lowest spot, not to repel the sinner, but to invite him to the top. The figure is that the light shines out, say, from a mansion upon a very dark mountain where there is a terrible precipice. You are on the verge of it. Satan is placing a screen before you that you may fall. You follow the light, and it leads to the mansion. You are well received at the gate - as in the dream of the divine - better still inside, and ushered into the presence of the sovereign with acclamation. Why? Because you have come to where He came from. The light has come down from the glorified Man to the poor lost man to conduct him up to the very spot where the glorified Man is. Now I turn to 2 Corinthians 3. People when they cannot believe a thing say, Show me the effects. You [p. 50] say you do not believe in electricity; let me try the machine on you. I want to show you the effects of a glorified Christ. You do not believe that God can come in His infinite purity to the lowest spot and conduct a poor wretched sinner from there to the top. It is not like the prodigal son; it is that the light turns him. Everything that is inconsistent with God the light shows. Then love confers. Light is the measure of what is removed - love is the measure of what is conferred. In 2 Corinthians 3: 8 I get the effects, the ministration of the Spirit. I have another thing, I want to look to the Lord to press upon your hearts it is a righteousness from the glory. Not that you are cleared: you are justified. It is the excess (Romans 5: 18 - 20). “Where sin abounded, grace has overabounded”. What the excess is connected with is sin. I have got the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. How could you get divine righteousness imputed? It is the very opposite to Exodus 20. A landlord might say to a tenant, You owe me so much rent, but instead of asking you for it I am going to give you something. In Exodus 20 there was a legal demand; but now you get the ministration of righteousness from the glory. The way I get it is that I have the life of the Person who cleared me. It is the robe that is brought out and put upon the prodigal. No doubt the Lord is our righteousness, but it is how you get it. The old thing is removed, and I have now the life of Christ. That man who was driven out of the paradise of God could not go into the Father’s house. He is now divested of the old thing, clad in all that is new and beautiful, and he comes in. You are at home there. Everything is consistent with God, fit for the glory. I turn to the last verse of 2 Corinthians 3 for the effect - beholding the Lord’s glory - but would first like to refer to Exodus 33: 18. Moses said, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory”. I think there is a very vague idea of what glory is. People say [p. 51] it is a place of light - of moral light. It is the effulgence of what God is in His nature, all expressed. Read verse 19. Not a word about love. The glory is not out yet. “I will make all my goodness pass before thee”, but now God’s nature has come out. He could not show love till righteousness came out. We have now got the full circle - not a brilliant wanting to this wonderful display. The glory is the expression of the divine satisfaction according to all its attributes, resting on a Man. Look at Him - crowned with glory and honour. What is the effect? 2 Corinthians 3: 18. Do you say it is too high - it could not be? Altitude never discouraged anybody - it encourages. When you begin to get indifferent you get discouraged. “Changed into the same image” is moral correspondence with the glory. Nothing can satisfy the love of God but that you must be in keeping with His own Son. As Jesus is at God’s right hand, so you are, sitting on that form. That peculiar love has not reached your heart yet, else you would say, It could not put me in a lower place than He has put His own Son. A man says, The sun is not up yet, we cannot see. When the love is up you will see it. It is not knowledge; when it comes it tells its own wonderful tale. I cannot conceive anything of the kind - brought into moral conformity with the glory! A brother is full of love - he is all one-sided. Here is another - he is all righteousness. He is one-sided. If he were in the glory he would be balanced. The glory balances. I only give you one example, Philippians 4: 6. “Be careful for nothing...”. If you have to do with the Lord, you will be brought into moral correspondence with Him. It is not angels that are sent to teach us. Very often I think a thing is very nice, but when I go to the Lord about it, I do not get much countenance. I go again, three, four, five times - I get no countenance at all. You are to submit everything to that wonderful test, the glory. Will it suit the glory? If [p. 52] you are of the glory you are transformed, metamorphosed, turned into a new thing, as a caterpillar is metamorphosed into a butterfly. What do you do with your cares? I go to God about them, tell them out; sometimes I feel very much relieved, and quite acquiesce in the divine will. My child is ill, or my cow is sick, but I am subject to His will. Well, that is very nice, but that is not what that verse says. I am not trying to lord it over you. I have to ask myself, do I know this verse? I think I have touched the hem of it at times. It is a wonderful thing to say, I have got the peace of God. What a wonderful person you would be! Exactly; you went to God and were brought into moral correspondence. You must first accept, then admire, then adopt. When you come to admire you are pretty safe. Do not merely go through some servant - get to Himself. Well, what did you get? Did your child improve, or your cow get better? No. What had you got? Scripture tells me - moral correspondence with Himself, the most overwhelming sense a creature could get into - not acquiescence, but divine tranquillity.
The Lord grant that every one of us may understand a little better what it is to have a glorified sphere - a Saviour in glory, and that glory our hope. Can anything be more wonderful than to think, I am not only let inside the door, but God has done what the highest potentate in this world could not do. He could not make you of his own glory. Here we are transferred into the same glory - similarity, not equality - by the Spirit.