The names of the Son of God bring before His people the excellencies that mark Him, and as we consider them it surely bows our hearts before Him in adoration, homage, praise and worship. Isaiah wrote that He would be called Wonderful, and this is indeed the exclamation from the lips of His saints as they follow the steps of Jesus while on earth, and as we are privileged to read of the Spirit’s presentation of Him in the Gospels. Each writer of the Gospels, as is well known, presents Jesus in a distinctive character, the glory of God’s King shining with heavenly lustre in Matthew, the moral glory of God’s Servant and Prophet being portrayed by Mark, Luke bringing out the excellencies of the Son of Man, and John revealing by the Spirit the greatness of the Word become flesh, a divine Person in manhood to make God known.
The Godhead Glory of the Son
The divine glory of the Son though specially brought out in John’s Gospel, is also to be seen in the other Gospels, for as one has put it, the Godhead glory shone through the human veil. When Jesus stilled the waves, and rebuked the wind, the disciples might well say, “What manner of man is this?” for no other than a divine Person could so act. Walking on the water, bringing the ship immediately to land, the cleansing of lepers, the opening of the eyes of the blind, and the raising of the dead, all show the divine glory shining through the veil of Christ’s flesh. Prophets, like Elijah and Elisha had performed miracles, Joshua had commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, but they acted simply as servants of Jehovah whose power they were permitted to use for Him. With Jesus it was altogether different, for although He had come as the Servant of the Godhead, the very manner of His use of His divine power manifested who He was.
There were also the words of the Lord Jesus that proclaimed His divine glory. To His disciples He said, “no man knows the Son, but the Father” (Matt. 11:27), and to the Jews He said, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). When Jesus spoke of Himself as God’s “Only begotten Son,” He was claiming for Himself His eternal relationship with the Father as eternal Son, a divine glory that bows the hearts of those who love Him. Not only in the words of His testimony to men, but as He spoke to the Father in holy intimacy, as recorded in John 17, there is the most powerful evidence of who Jesus is, the Son of the Father, a divine Person as Man in this world.
Jesus had not come to bear witness to Himself, but to the Father who sent Him, yet His witness was true, for He knew from whence He came, and whither He was bound, and the Father also bore witness to Him in His words and works (John 5:31; 8:14–18). When Jesus was baptised, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, the Father’s voice from heaven bore witness to the divine glory of His Son, and to this the Lord referred in John 5, where He said, “the Father Himself, which has sent me, has borne witness of me” (verse 37). The voice of the Father was also heard on the holy mount, and again when He replied to the Son in John 12:27–30.
The works of the Father also testified to the glory of the divine Son. They were the Father’s works, yet they bore witness to the greatness of the Person who was carrying out the Father’s will. It was not a great man, or to an angel, that the Father had entrusted the mission that He gave to His Son, for neither man nor angel could reveal the Father or make God known in the fulness of His love and grace. When Jesus turned the water into wine, the comment of the Holy Spirit was, “This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory” (John 2:11), the divine glory that was in evidence in all the signs given to us in John’s Gospel. Who but a divine Person could bring a dead man out of death and corruption as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus?
The Glory...Full of Grace and Truth
The glory of the Only begotten Son belonged to eternity, and the bosom of the Father as His unique place before the Son came in flesh, and was not given up while here in Manhood’s form. This is one of the great mysteries connected with the Son of God, that while a Babe in the manger, and a Man of Sorrows in this world with no place to lay His head, He was yet in the bosom of the Father, God’s Only begotten Son. There is however the remarkable statement of John 1:14, that the Son was here on earth with “a glory as of an only-begotten with a Father,” and in this glory He was “The Word become flesh,” dwelling among men, “full of grace and truth.”
Jesus was not only in eternal relationship with His Father as His Son, but in a peculiar relationship as Son to the Father in Manhood. As born in to the world this same relationship is also seen, as prophesied in Psalm 2, and as mentioned by the angel in Luke 1:32. Whether in eternity, at His birth, at His baptism, as in testimony for God in grace, in resurrection, in His present place on high, in His coming kingdom, or in the coming eternity, Jesus is made known to us as Son in relationship with His Father. John does not write of Jesus as born into the world, but of the Word become flesh, and as having become flesh His glory is seen in His mission of grace and truth.
In the words of the Lord Jesus at the synagogue of Nazareth, His grace was the cause of wonder, and throughout His mission the wondrous grace of God, in its riches especially, was told out to men. Yet there was also truth in all the words spoken by Jesus, and in the Word made flesh grace and truth combined in making known God in all His goodness for the blessing of men.
When Jesus spoke with Nicodemus there was the manifestation of divine grace in making known to him the heavenly things that had been hidden hitherto, but these hidden things were truth from God. Nicodemus ought to have known about new birth for it was spoken of in the Old Testament Scriptures, but the truth of eternal life as made known in and by the Son of God was something entirely new, for it brought to men the knowledge of the Father, and of Jesus Christ His sent One.
The same grace and truth are to be seen in the Lord’s dealings with the woman of Sychar. In richest grace He dealt so kindly and yet so faithfully with the poor sinner, revealing her to herself, then revealing to her the truth as to His mission, for He had come to seek worshippers for the Father, such as would worship Him in spirit and in truth. There was not only the truth that enabled her to realise that He was the Christ of God as revealed to her.
How rich was the grace spoken to the sinner of John 8, a woman taken in sin, and that the scribes and Pharisees had brought to Jesus. Jesus well knew their object in bringing the sinner to Him, they were tempting Him, seeking to accuse Him. His rich grace was revealed to the woman in the words, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more;” and truth exposed the state of her accusers when the Lord said to them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Sovereign grace in Jesus intervened to open the eyes of the blind man in John 9, for he did not ask Jesus to open his eyes, as did the blind man of Jericho. Acting from His own heart of deep compassion, and making known the “grace upon grace” Jesus not only opened the natural eyes of the poor beggar, but opened the eyes of his heart to perceive who had come to bless him. It was a wonderful day for the blind man when he saw natural light for the first time through the grace of Jesus, but what made that day yet more wonderful was the revelation to him of the truth that Jesus was the Son of God.
The Moral Glory of Jesus
We have seen a few of the rays of the divine glory of Jesus, the glory that caused Simon Peter to say, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” for we well know that only to a divine Person would Simon Peter make such a confession, for only One who was divine could expose any man so thoroughly to himself. Then we considered something of the glory connected with the making known of grace and truth in the Word become flesh, the glory that shone in the testimony of the Son of God in this world. There is another glory that came out in Jesus here below, the moral glory belonging to His nature and character as Man in this world.
In the prophetic word of the Old Testament we learn much of the moral glory of Jesus, for in Him there was manifested perfectly the blessed man of Psalm 1, and the dependent man of Psalm 16. There is too the prophecy of Psalm 40, “Lo, I come…I delight to do Thy will, O my God, Thy law is within my heart.” All that was spoken of Him in the Psalms, and other prophecies, in relation to His sojourn here as a Man of sorrows, has been perfectly fulfilled.
The moral glory of the Son’s delight in His Father’s will is found early in the life of Jesus on earth, when He said to His parents, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” When tempted by Satan, Jesus had nothing to say but what God had written in the Scriptures, nor would He allow Satan, through Simon Peter, to turn Him from the path of obedience, suffering and death that God’s will required (Matt. 16:21–23).
Moses was spoken of by Jehovah as the meekest man in all the earth, and Jehovah took pleasure in this trait manifested by His faithful servant. Yet the meekness of Moses is not to be compared with that of Him who said, “Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matt. 11:29). How gentle Jesus was as He took the little children into His arms, and how “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” even while receiving sinners and eating with them.
With the cross before Him, Jesus said to His disciples, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him” (John 13:31). In every step of His pathway God had been glorified in the obedience and perfections of His Son, but on the cross that holy obedience in submission to the will of God, even unto death, shone out in a unique way. Truly the moral glory of Jesus, the Son of Man, shone with peculiar splendour as He took all from the hand of God, even as recorded in Psalm 22, where He said, “Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”
How brightly the moral glory of the Son of God shone amidst the darkness of man’s wickedness and rebellion against God as He stood before Pilate, Herod and the leaders of Israel. Led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before her shearers, He opened not His mouth. What patience, long-suffering and lowliness are seen as He is reviled, spat upon, assailed and taunted by those who professed to represent God before men! There will be an answer to all that the Son endured at the hands of men, for in His “majesty (He will) ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness” (Psalm 45:4), but we shall never forget, and shall delight for all eternity in, the moral glory manifested in Jesus here below, and in a special way in relation to the sufferings of the cross.
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