The Apostle Peter tells us that the Spirit of Christ in the prophets of the Old Testament spoke of “the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11). In the New Testament we learn much of the glory that belongs to Christ, risen from the dead, after having passed through all His sufferings to secure the glory of God and our eternal blessing. Christ will be publicly displayed in glory in the coming day, but He is glorified now at God’s right hand in heaven, and the Holy Spirit has come down from heaven to make known to us the glories of the Son of God, even as Jesus said to His disciples while He was upon earth, “He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it to you” (John 16:14).
John 17.
There was gladness in the heart of the Son of God in contemplating that He would be raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and that He would have fulness of joy in His presence, and pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16:9–11). On earth, the Son had glorified the Father, and sought from the Father the place of glory that was His by right, but which He desired as Man, for in becoming Man the Son had taken a place proper to man in subjection to the Father’s will and constant obedience. Yet the desire of the Son for His place of glory at the Father’s right hand was not for Himself, but rather that from that place He might glorify the Father (verse 1). In communicating eternal life to the men the Father had given Him out of the world the Son would glorify the Father. How very wonderful it is that there should be a company on earth with the knowledge of the Father and His Sent One. All around are those under the influence of the god of this world, but the Father has a company who respond to His love made known in the Son of His bosom. This surely brings glory to the Father.
Surely the glory given to the Son, as desired in verse 1, is the answer of the Father to all that the Son was for Him while on earth, and the answer to all that the Son accomplished for the Father through His work upon the cross, as also God’s answer to all the reproach and shame meted out by sinful men to the darling of His heart. Another glory is asked for by the Son in verse 5, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” The glory of the eternal Son that was His in the past eternity is now His as Man in heaven above, and it is this glory that the Son desires that His own shall see when they are with Him in the Father’s house (verse 24).
The Acts
While Jesus walked with His two disciples on the way to Emmaus, and they spoke to Him of what had taken place at Jerusalem, He said to them, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). They should have known from the prophets of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. In the beginning of the Acts, the disciples were privileged to see Jesus enter into His glory, just as Elisha had seen Elijah taken up to heaven. With the natural eye the disciples saw Jesus taken up, and the bright cloud, the symbol of the divine glory, that “received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).
The natural eye looked till Jesus was received out of their sight, but the eye of faith followed Jesus to the right hand of God, and this came out in the testimony of Simon Peter, when he said on the day of Pentecost, “For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he says himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thy foes Thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:34–36).
Stephen was specially privileged to see Jesus in His place of glory, for “being filled with the Holy Ghost, (he) looked stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing o the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). To Jesus in glory, Stephen bore witness, and manifested the spirit and character of the heavenly Christ as he died for his testimony, and, like his Master, interceded for those who took his life.
Another who saw Jesus in His glory was Saul of Tarsus, even as Ananias said to him, “The God of our fathers has chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of His mouth. For thou shalt be His witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (Acts 22:14-15). The glory of the heavenly Christ was faithfully testified by Paul, for His glory dimmed for him all that hitherto attracted him in this world.
Second Corinthians
When Paul first visited Corinth, in making known God’s testimony, he spoke of the cross of Christ, and when he wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians he also emphasised the truth of the cross. Men who naturally valued the wisdom of this world had to learn that in God’s sight the wisdom of the world is foolishness, and that Christ crucified is the wisdom of God and the power of God. Having learned that his first epistle had produced the effect he desired on the assembly at Corinth, Paul, in his second epistle to them, wrote something of the glory of Christ.
In chapter 3 of the Second Epistle, Paul brought out the divine glory seen in the new covenant, showing how the glory of God’s grace in the new covenant dimmed by its excellence the glory of the old covenant. This glory that excels is to be found in the face of Jesus in the presence of God, and as we are occupied with Jesus in the glory there will be a transforming effect on us, we shall be changed “into the same image from glory to glory, even by the Lord the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
Recalling his preaching of the Gospel at Corinth, Paul wrote “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul wrote of another aspect of the Gospel the Lord gave him to proclaim, “the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (verse 4). The god of this world sought to keep the light of this blessed Gospel from men, for once it penetrated the veil he had drawn over their hearts and minds, they were delivered from his authority.
Adam was created in the image of God, and in His likeness, but when he sinned the likeness was gone, and the image was disfigured. How different it is with Christ, the Second Man, the Last Adam. In Him there is the perfect setting forth of what God is, and in Christ in glory there is the expression of what man is in the thoughts of God. Man in Christ shows God’s thoughts of man. In Adam, even unfallen, man was a little lower than the angels, but in Christ glorified, Man is seen as “so much better than the angels.
“The light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is also seen in the face of Jesus at God’s right hand, and there is no knowledge of God and His glory apart from Jesus, the Son of God. Yet this divine knowledge is the portion of those who look by faith, and in the Spirit power, at Jesus where He is above, and we carry about with us in our bodies this most wonderful knowledge of God and His glory. In the face of Jesus we learn what God is as a Saviour God, for the glory of the redemption secured by Jesus for God, shines in His unveiled face.
Ephesians
All the divine and spiritual blessings that God has given to His saints is “in Christ” before the face of God and the Father. Christ is the Man of God’s purpose, the One who has already secured His glory through His death on the cross, and who is working even now for the Father’s glory where He is above. At the close of Ephesians 1 we are told something of the glory of Christ as the Head over all things to the church. It is not yet manifested that Christ is the Head over all things, but this is His place in heaven now, according to the purpose of God. The unsearchable riches of the Christ belong to Him as the Man of God’s purpose in heaven now (Eph. 3:8).
The glory of Christ is seen in His ascending “up far above all heavens that He might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). How great He must be to have gone down into the lower parts of the earth, and there to overthrow all the power of the enemy, then in resurrection to lead captivity captive. Having thus manifested to the unseen world His great power, the risen Son of God, the Head of the body, the assembly, gave gifts to men to accomplish the will of God in the blessing of men.
Colossians
What a wonderful presentation there is in Colossians 1 of Christ, the Son of the Father’s love. His divine glories shine in the majesty of the place He has taken as being His by right. Only One in relationship with the Father could fill such a place, yea, and the One who has accomplished the redemption that shines in glory in His face, and through whom, and in whom we have the forgiveness of sins.
As the image of the invisible God we learn all that God is in Him, for in Him God is perfectly revealed. Coming into His own creation, the Son, the Creator must have the chiefest place as Firstborn, and this is the place the Son occupies now on the throne above. He takes a place “before all things,” for He was before all things, and He not only created all things, but all things are held together by Him in the universe that is for Him as also through Him, for He is the source of creation, the agent in creation, and the object of the creation.
This One who is so great and pre-eminent is the Head of the body, the church, in whom “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Jesus, the Son of the Father’s love is also “the Head of every principality and authority” (verse 10), from whom all the saints of God are supplied, being complete in Him. All the resources of the Godhead being in Christ, His church is entirely independent of men and of what proceeds from the minds and hearts of men.
Hebrews
Like Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 brings before us the glory of Jesus as the Son. As Son, Jesus is the established Heir of all things, and He is worthy of this place being the One by whom God made the worlds. God’s glory shines out in the Son in all its brightness, being the expression of God in all that He is, for there is no knowledge of God or of His glory except in the Son. Whether it be the glory of God in creation, or His glory in redemption, all is to be found in the Son.
God’s Son, who created the universe, the physical creation, holds all together by the word of His own power. When we think of the millions of stars that are visible through the telescopes of men, and consider something of their size, their distances from each other, and the speeds at which they move, the mind learns something of the greatness of Him who holds all together. It is this same blessed Person who by Himself purged our sins, and has taken His place “on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” This is the Son’s rightful place, and He sat down there because He had the right to be there.
Of old, on the day of atonement, Israel’s high priest, passed through the court of the tabernacle and the holy place to enter the holiest to sprinkle the blood of the sin offerings on the mercy seat and before it. Jesus, our great High Priest, “is passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14) to enter the presence of God, where He is “A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man” (Heb. 8:1-2). Jesus has His place at God’s right hand in the greatness of His Person, the greatness of His priesthood (8:1), and in the greatness of His accomplished work (10:12).
Revelation
Something of the present glory of Jesus is brought to our attention in the opening of the Book of Revelation. In verse 5 of chapter 1, Jesus is seen as “the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth.” If the church has been, and is, an unfaithful witness for God, Jesus is presented to us as the Faithful Witness, for this marked Him in His life on earth, and is still true of Him in heaven above, for all that God has given Him to do is being faithfully carried out from the place He now occupies. As we have seen in Colossians 1 He has come out of death, and in the resurrection sphere He takes the chief place, as He has also taken in relation to the creation. Jesus is not yet owned by the nations of the world as the Prince of the kings of the earth, but this is the distinction God has given to Him, and soon all shall own Him as King of kings and Lord of lords.
From verse 13 of chapter 1 the Lord Jesus is viewed by John as “one like unto the Son of Man,” in glory that brings the seer down at His feet as dead. John had lain in His bosom when the Son of God was on earth, but the outshining of His glory brought him down at His feet. Here the Lord is seen in a glory suited to His surveying the church in responsibility, where His eye discerns all that marks the Christian profession. His judicial glory brings home to us that the Lord cannot allow anything in the church that is inconsistent with His holiness and faithfulness, for He is not only the Son of Man, but the Holy, the True, and the Faithful and True Witness.
It is a solemn yet salutary exercise to trace the present glories of God’s Christ, to see Him in His divine glory, in the glory connected with His care for His saints and for His church, and to see Him in the glory that maintains for God the holiness and righteousness connected with His Name in that which professes to be His in this world.
R. 5.12.70