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John 17:1-5
We are all but at the point of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. And Jesus turns from reassuring the Disciples and preparing them, to praying for Himself, for the Disciples, and for those like us who come to believe in Christ Jesus as a result of their ministry. Not only did Jesus teach about prayer, He also prayed. And so, there are three sections of this prayer. Let’s start today with that first section.
John 17:1-5 (NIV) After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
George Lyons and T. Scott Daniels wrote about and idea they call the “Ironic Glorification” in the New Beacon Bible Commentary: John 13-21 A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition. © 2020 Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City. p49.
Here is what they write.
“Jesus’ final discourse in John 13-17 prepares readers to understand the Passion Narrative that follows in 18-19 as the fulfillment, not the failure, of Jesus’ mission. Throughout the first half of the Gospel, Jesus anticipate the “hour” of His glorification. But in the eyes of the world, the honor he expected was the unimaginable shame of crucifixion. In His ironic glorification, God’s relentless love would prevail over the perverse violence and hostility of human rebellion.”
So it is, that which was supposed to shame and end the ministry of Jesus Christ instead glorified Jesus Christ and brought glory to the Father. Now you understand why they called it His “Ironic Glorification.”
And look at this prayer here. Jesus is praying for Himself, and yet is also praying for the Father to receive the glory. He and the Father are so intertwined, the relationship they have is so intimate I’m not convinced that we will understand it fully until we are in the presence of God.
But get this, Jesus had a mission and even though He had not died and rose again – He had come to the point where He was professing that the mission was finished. Jesus had brought the Father glory by completing the work that the Father had given Him to do on earth.
And when you think about it, He had done what was needed to be done, to that He alone as the second Adam would qualify to be the Messiah. By achieving this qualification, He becomes the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices. But He couldn’t have been sacrificed for all of humanity if He had not first finished the work of the Messiah.
I would contend that the “ironic glorification” is not simply the act of the crucifixion, but is the culmination of everything Jesus did while here on Earth to fulfill the messianic prophecy.
He was Born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, there were healings, raising the dead, and all of the other signs and miracles Jesus did. There was His ministry and teaching, the rejection He suffered from His own people. All of that and much more went into the culmination of time to bring Jesus to this moment where the hour has come to glorify the Son. Not to bring Himself glory, but so that the Father is glorified.
This culmination of His life is everything that has led up to the moment of sacrifice and that has enabled the sacrifice to mean something.
Paul in his letter to the Church in Philippi writes it like this.
Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV) In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Paul ends this passage with the point I want to make today. Everything Jesus did that points us to Him being the Messiah, He did for the glory of God the Father. And that leaves us today asking ourselves – reflecting upon all Jesus did that got Him to the point of becoming the sacrifice that we need, what are we doing to bring glory to Jesus Christ and God the Father?