Glorified With Jesus

"Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." (John xvii. 24 R.V.)

It is important to note that this high-priestly prayer was made only a few days before Jesus would ascend from the sepulcher to the throne of the universe. In his forecast of that hour he saw there would be one drawback to his supreme happiness, one void which all the hosts of heaven casting their crowns at his feet could not fill. The angels and archangels, the seraphim and cherubim cannot on that coronation day compensate for the absence of his human spiritual kindred who have suffered with him on the earth. They must be glorified with him. The redeemed ones, formerly the objects of his compassion, but now the objects of his complacent love and delight, must be near him, not on distant thrones made vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious host, but close to his side. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."

This tallest promise in God's book is a monument to the love of Christ to believers too high for my poor intellect to climb. The very thought makes my head swim. Whenever I read this promise I am inclined to say "O blessed Master, this honor is too great for me." It is indeed a "weight of glory" so heavy as almost to stagger my faith. Is there not some various reading of the manuscripts or some error in the English version? Are not these words a gloss, a marginal penciling of some enthusiastic monk of the Middle Ages, which has accidentally been copied by some honest transcriber? Did not the correct reading omit the words "he shall sit on my throne" and have instead "he shall kiss my feet"? I ransack my library and search all the critical editions of the Greek testament and the Variorum Bible and find no various reading or rendering. I will no longer doubt, but will accept with tears of joy this greatest promise ever sounded in the ears of mortals, or ever written in human language.

There is no hint in the Bible that any other order of spiritual intelligences are invited to share the throne of universal empire. This honor is reserved for the royal family, his human disciples, alone. Nevertheless there is a wonderful fitness and congruity in this consummation of their honor and happiness. It is appropriate that the blood relatives should share the dignity and glory when one of the family is inaugurated as a supreme ruler.

The mothers of two at least of our recent Presidents, Garfield and McKinley, were with them when their sons were inducted into the highest office on the earth. Brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, cousins and more distant kindred, fellow soldiers and schoolmates are not out of place as favored spectators in such a scene. Jesus Christ is a real man, not a semblance, a phantom, but a perfect man having a human soul and a material body. He is my brother, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. His glorification has refined and sublimated his body, not destroyed it. Son of man he was born; son of man he died; son of man he arose and ascended; son of man he will come in his glory to raise the dead, both the just and the unjust. Paul is careful to state to the astonished Athenians on Mars Hill that God will judge the world by a man, "that man whom he hath ordained." A man will forever sway the scepter of universal dominion.

— edited from Jesus Exultant (1899) Chapter 4.

Among Those For Whom Jesus Prayed

"Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world" (John xvii. 24 R.V.)

Our text is a part of the high-priestly prayer of Jesus. It is its tenderest strain, revealing the human heart of the Son of God which he has carried with him "into the heavens," a heart magnetic with human sympathy and love. It always touches my heart; it dips a bucket into the deep fountain of my tears. Whenever I read this text it raises in me a flood of mingled emotions — astonishment at the condescending love of Christ for me, then love responsive to his self-sacrificing love, followed by an adoring gratitude to my divine benefactor.

Faith Includes Obedience

The fact that genuine faith always includes obedience is a sufficient answer to the sceptic's objection that salvation is made to hinge upon a bare intellectual act, without reference to the character of the agent. It is just the opposite. It is an act of submission to the highest authority in the universe — an act which tends to conserve its moral order, by enthroning the moral law in universal supremacy. A singular confirmation of the truth of these remarks is found in the Greek Testament, where ἀπείθεια, unbelief, is frequently used to signify disobedience and obstinacy. The unbelief for which men are to be everlastingly condemned lies in the rebellious attitude of the will toward Jesus Christ, and not in any supposed innocent intellectual inability to believe the truth of God's word.

The practical bearing of all this upon those who are seeking to be lifted into the higher regions of Christian experience is, that the faith which is the required condition of such a spiritual uplift is possible only to a soul whose obedience has reached the point of entire surrender to the will of God, where there is a willingness to walk to Calvary with the fainting Christ, and to be crucified with Him. Then, and then only, will the Christ-life take the place of the old self-life, enabling the believer to adopt St. Paul's words: "I have been crucified with Christ; alive no longer am I, but alive is Christ within me." [Meyer] Let no one accuse Luther of boasting, when through "the obedience of faith" he reached that deadness to sin, and that conscious fullness of the divine life, which enabled him to say: "If any man knocks at the door of my breast, and says, Who lives here? my answer is, Jesus Christ lives here, not Martin Luther." The great reformer did not stumble into this Christian experience. To reach it he was often closeted with God three hours a day, studying the divine promises, and wrestling with the Lord, as Jacob with the angel. Says Spurgeon: "There is a point in grace as much above the ordinary Christian as the ordinary Christian is above the worldling." Of such he says: "Their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft. They are rejoicing Christians, holy and devout men, doing service for the Master all over the world, and everywhere conquerors through Him that loved them." The mountain-top is a position men do not slide into but climb up to. Thus these mountain-top saints climbed up the ascent by the stairway of the gospel promises, with the sunlit summit in full view as a definite aim.

Their faith made their obedience spontaneous, free, and gladsome; while their conscious obedience reacted on their faith, making it strong and tenacious of the promise of Jesus: "If ye love Me, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever."

"The perfect way is hard to flesh;
It is not hard to love;
If thou wert sick for want of God,
How swiftly wouldst thou move!

"Then keep thy conscience sensitive;
No inward token miss:
And go where grace entices thee: —
PERFECTION LIES IN THIS." 

— Milestone Papers (1878) Part 1, Chapter 9.