GOD GLORIFIED

Will McKillop

John 13: 31, 32; 15: 7, 8; 2 Corinthians 1: 8-22; 1 Peter 4: 7-11

It is on my heart, beloved brethren, to say a word with the Lord’s help about God being glorified. It would be clear to us as instructed believers that ultimately God will be glorified eternally in His universe. The great final thought will be glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages (see Eph 3: 21). This wondrous passage in John 13 should touch our hearts. The Lord is speaking about Himself. Here we have the moral foundation of the universe of God in eternity. Indeed it is the moral foundation of the operations of God in the present universe. It touches the heart to think of the Lord referring to Himself as the Son of man. He came, a blessed Man, into a sinless condition of flesh and blood, out of heaven into a scene where the first man had dishonoured God in the presence of the universe. He came to glorify God through suffering in the presence of the universe. When Judas goes out, the Lord is free to speak of Himself as the Son of man. That title brings out, in a way, the reality of the Lord’s humanity as perhaps no other title does. He came into the same condition of flesh and blood as we are in, sin apart, and He came to deal with the whole matter of the dishonouring of God by the first man. It might seem strange to say that the first man dishonoured God in the presence of the universe, but the fact is that the whole angelic family was looking on. It was an angel, a fallen angel, who seduced the first man from obedience and led him into disobedience. By this act, God was dishonoured by His creature in the presence of the universe. The Son of man came to deal with that matter, to glorify God through love and obedience, and to glorify Him in respect of His majesty, His holy nature and His moral attributes. So He says, “Now is the Son of man glorified”. The Lord is really speaking anticipatively because He had yet to take up the wondrous work of redemption, He had yet to deal with the matter of sin in the universe of God, but the Lord is looking on to the fact that He would be glorified and that God would be glorified. So He says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”. God was dishonoured in Adam; that was been the history of the first man; God has been dishonoured. But this blessed Man came into this scene to glorify God and to deal with the whole serious matter of what had come in to affront the majesty of God. So He says, “God is glorified in him”; that would allude especially to the cross; God was glorified by a Man in love and obedience even unto death. We can, in a little, understand how the Lord’s feelings would be so deep and intense as He spoke about this, being free to do so as Judas had gone out. He says, “If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself”. God was glorified in the Son of man: His majesty, His nature, His moral attributes were all glorified in Christ as He suffered on the cross and as He went into the grave. He says, “God also shall glorify him in himself”. There is hardly anything that so touches the heart as the fact that God came down in love and grace in a Man into the scene where He had been dishonoured, and this blessed Person, the Son of man, so glorified God that He glorified the Son of man in Himself. We might say God came down in grace and now man has gone up in righteousness and is in the glory of God. A wonderful matter for our contemplation, wonderful food for our souls, that God came down in love and grace; the Son of man in love and obedience glorified God in respect of all that had taken place, and now God has glorified Him in Himself. The Son of man is at the right hand of God in the glory of God. Stephen saw Him there; “he saw the glory of God, and Jesus”, Acts 7: 55. Then the Lord adds “and shall glorify him immediately”. The Lord has not had to wait for His public vindication (that time is coming when He shall be revealed in His glory and we shall be with Him, blessed be His Name!) but in the meantime He is glorified immediately for He is crowned with glory and honour. What should be so appealing to us is that the immediate sphere down here of His glorification is the assembly. It is not only that He is in the glory of God, and crowned with glory and honour in heaven, but He is being glorified here by the Holy Spirit in persons, the kind of persons we have been speaking about – washed, sanctified, justified and available to God.

Having said that, I would like to refer to what I read in John 15 because I believe in that passage we have the Lord’s own feelings, intense feelings, that He might draw us into this current of glory to God. So He says, “In this is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, and ye shall become disciples of mine”. Surely it touches our affections that the Lord would say to us, “In this is my Father glorified”. John 13 is really a question of God and man but John 15 is the Son speaking about His Father whom He loved and in whose affections He lived. So He says, “In this is my Father glorified”. Think of the Lord speaking to us currently about “my Father”, that is, His Father, and saying, “in this is my Father glorified”. The “in this” refers to what follows, “that ye bear much fruit, and ye shall become disciples of mine”. So the Lord would draw us into the holy current of His own affections for His Father. Surely that would appeal to us, beloved, that He is thinking about the glory of His Father, “In this is my Father glorified”. So He says, “That ye bear much fruit”; fruit is, as we know, an extensive matter in Scripture. There is the fruit of righteousness which is by Jesus Christ, there is the fruit of the Spirit and as we have in Romans there is fruit unto holiness; it is an extensive matter and the Lord would say to us as the evidence of life manifests itself in fruit, “My Father is glorified”. This is a matter of deepest import to the Lord Himself. His love for the Father is such that He would not be content to have us other than bearing much fruit. He also says, “and ye shall become disciples of mine”. I suppose this would be a full and mature thought of discipleship. It is not just the initial thought, but it is persons who are wholly attached to Christ. Not only subject to Him and taught by Him, but keeping near to Him because they enjoy His love. John sets it out in the earlier chapter, the disciple whom Jesus loved, (see John 13: 23). And where was he? Leaning on the breast of Jesus and in the bosom of Jesus. The Lord would say that becoming disciples of Mine you will prove My priestly support, you can lean on My breast and you can enjoy the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge, you can be in My bosom, and this leads to Christ’s Father being glorified. That is not a question of what we may say, it is what we are as formed by the love of Christ.

I referred to the passage in 2 Corinthians because the apostle has in view that we should be in this together. He says, “for glory to God by us”; that would be a collective thought and it is the result of the knowledge of the Son of God. It is one of the things that is spoken of in Ephesians 4, “until we all arrive at … the knowledge of the Son of God” (v 13). So the preaching in Corinth by the three, Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, had in mind that the saints should be established unshakeably on this foundation, that they should be immovable as having the knowledge of the Son of God. So he says, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, he who has been preached by us among you … did not become yea and nay, but yea is in him”. The footnote is helpful, it says, ‘the verification of all divine truth is in the Person of Christ’. I would encourage us to go in for this kind of knowledge, to reach this blessed Person and to reach Him in stability and immovability. As we are more on those lines, it is for glory to God by us. Paul says, “whatever promises of God there are”. If we had time, we might refer to the many promises that there are in Scripture. Peter alludes to them, speaking about “the greatest and precious promises”, 2 Peter 1: 4. I would encourage the beloved younger brethren to search them out tonight for themselves because it will fill your hand and your heart with substance for tomorrow. That was the point in one of the earlier readings today, that our hands should be filled. Indeed if we understand the way in which Moses speaks in Deuteronomy, he says, none shall appear before Jehovah empty (see Deut. 16: 6). No one who has come under the influence of the love of Christ would be other than exercised to have something to bring in the way of spiritual substance. Deuteronomy 26 shows that. The man brings the firstfruits of the land in his basket; the basket really refers to himself viewed abstractly as the work of God. We spoke about that in the last reading. It is wonderful to learn to think of yourself apart from your history and your natural connections, to view yourself from the standpoint of the purpose of God. It says in Corinthians, “of him are ye in Christ Jesus”, 1 Cor 1: 30. It is wonderful to regard ourselves, beloved brethren, in that light, that we are of God and in Christ Jesus. So he says, “for glory to God by us”. This great matter is proceeding in the assembly (I suppose if we think of it abstractly) all the time, glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus (see Eph 3: 21). The apostle in speaking of that does not confine it to particular times or places; he is speaking abstractly about what the assembly is from that point of view and what proceeds in it. Then we have this wonderful matter of what God has done, “Now he that establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God”. This matter is so vital that God Himself has taken in hand to establish us together in Christ; “he that establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God”. Think of how God has dignified us. Indeed Romans says, “whom he has justified, these also he has glorified”, Rom. 8: 30. I am speaking about how we are brought into the current of glorifying God, but God would say to us, “I have glorified you”. You might say, how has He done that? It is in the gift of the Spirit, He has anointed us with the holy anointing oil. It touches the heart that the same Spirit with which Jesus was anointed is the Spirit with which we are anointed, it is the same holy anointing oil. God could not dignify us more than by anointing us with what He anointed Christ with. So you see how this liberates us from needing any distinction in the world or on the earth; we do not need it at all because we have heavenly distinction and God Himself has done it. He has sealed us; we referred to that in the reading, that is divine ownership, God never regards us as other than His property. He has given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. Think of God giving us this blessed Person in our heart; that the Spirit who is the earnest might bring the light and joy and power of what is eternal into our hearts. It is not here the earnest of our inheritance, that is another thought, it is the earnest of the Spirit. And where is He? He is in our hearts. God says, “Not only have I dignified you so that you appear in My presence as suited to it in all its glory and majesty, but I have given you the earnest of the Spirit which enables you to enjoy all that has shone out in Christ”. It really means what there is in Christ as Man (in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily) is available to us at the present time.

I touched on the passage in Peter because Peter is practical. As we know he is a kingdom man and he takes account, as divinely fitted for it, of divine operations and of how they apply to the saints at the present time. So he says, “But the end of all things is drawn nigh”. We had a touch of that earlier; “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed”, Rom 13: 11. “But the end of all things is drawn nigh: be sober therefore”. You take a look at things from this point of view and you see that they are not going to continue forever. Noah would illustrate this; God said to him, of man in the flesh, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years, which was evidently the length of time it took Noah to build the ark. Noah would have a very sober view as day after day went on. So the apostle is saying to us, have a sober view; be sober and be watchful unto prayers. That is greatly needed because if we are not watchful unto prayers, Satan will soon find a way to insinuate himself into our lives or our households or our localities. “Be watchful unto prayers; but before all things having fervent love among yourselves”. That is a great matter, fervent love. We spoke about the new man in the previous reading and he is a creation; he does not set out love exactly, he sets out the moral attributes of God because he is created after God in righteousness and holiness of the truth. But chapter 5 of Ephesians, which we also referred to, brings us to the nature of God and that involves generation. We are born of God and therefore we have His nature, which is love. That does not come about by creation but by generation. So the apostle really is alluding here to the fact that we are born of God. He does not say it, but were we not born of God we could not have fervent love among ourselves. Because we are born of God, love can be extant among us. Fervent love among ourselves can be dominant in our localities. Peter refers to other things which I will not go into, but then he says, “each according as he has received a gift”. Every one of us has received something from God; in Ephesians 4 it refers to the measure of the gift of the Christ and the gift there is grace, every one of us has received that gift. Here there is another thought that is allied to that, “each according as he has received a gift, ministering it to one another, as good stewards of the various grace of God”. We not only have fervent love among ourselves but we have the means of enriching one another because grace carries with it that thought, that it enriches as it flows among us. “As good stewards” he says, that is, we are careful to add to the supply of what will enrich the saints. Good stewards, not holding back, not finding we have no means, but we are good stewards of the various grace of God. It is all with a view to God in all things being glorified through Jesus Christ. I think that is a wonderfully touching matter, that the normal operation of life in the assembly is God glorified. His nature is active among us, fervent love among ourselves, we are working in the enriching distribution of His grace and it leads to God being glorified, “that God in all things may be glorified”, but “through Jesus Christ”. That is really how God will become glorified in the universe; the foundation is in John 13 where I read, but the Lord will operate until the whole universe becomes active in glorifying God. How great He is that He can do that, and He will do it. He is showing us that already in what He is doing in our localities. No wonder the apostle breaks out into this doxology, “to whom is the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen”. How these wonderful matters would fill our minds and hearts, beloved brethren, as we think now about what is before us, the Lord’s Supper, the holy and precious matter we spoke of earlier today, “This is my body, which is for you”. In that body down here He was the blessed vessel in its infinite fulness of divine grace and the infinite fulness of God’s love came out in the shedding of His blood. That is the blessed Person that we are going to call to mind if He has not come for us in the meantime. But how our hearts flow together in admiration of Christ in His glorious greatness that ultimately He will bring the universe into such a condition that is will be glorifying God. But He is able to do that already with us and He is doing it; our hearts would delight in saying to Him “to whom is the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen”. It is wonderful to finish these two days with our souls just entranced with the glorious greatness of Christ, to find that He is becoming increasingly precious to us, and we are becoming increasingly worshipful as we think of His wondrous ability to bring everything into a condition for the glory of God. May the Lord bless the word.

NEW YORK

October 2000