If my thesis is correct, if history really is God’s story of His glory, then we should expect Jesus to declare this truth. We should expect Jesus to state that the purpose of His incarnation and His death on the cross was for the display and exaltation of the glory of God. And this is exactly what we do hear Jesus saying.
And Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. "Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven: "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not mine. (John 12:23-30 ESV)
The incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus was all about the glory of the triune God. As Jesus prepares to go to the cross, He declares that it is time for Him to be glorified. It’s time for man to see His glory put on display. But the path to this display of glory is not what we would expect. The path is death. Jesus is saying that His death will produce life. Just as a seed must be buried in the ground to produce fruit, so He must die to produce life. It is through His death on the cross, that we receive life.
Don’t miss the hugely significant personal application Jesus states here for you and me. What is true for Him, is true for us. As long as we try to hold on to our lives we are really missing life. It is only when we totally surrender sovereignty and control of our lives to God that we truly know life. It is only then that our lives can produce the fruit that we were created to produce.
Turning back to His purpose for the Incarnation and sacrifice, Jesus states that He will not seek to avoid the Cross because this is why He came. Now, we tend to stop there and say with self affirming delight, "See, Jesus came to sacrifice His life for us. He loved us so much that He was willing to die for us." And we make the incarnation and the Cross all about us. We make it totally man-centered. It is not.
Look what Jesus says about His purpose in coming to "this hour." He immediately draws attention to the real and ultimate purpose of the incarnation and the Cross. "Father, glorify your name."
Jesus viewed the Cross as an act in which God was going to get glory for His name. Jesus saw the Cross as God-centered. We could paraphrase Jesus’ statements, "I came to die so that through my death, life would be produced. I’m not going to ask the Father to avoid this. This is why I came. So Father, through my death, show your glory. Get glory for yourself."
The Father responds, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The Father reaffirms and states with clarity what this is all about. He has been glorifying His name and He will continue to do so. The life of Jesus here on earth from the incarnation to the Cross, to the ascension is about the glory of God.
Notice, that God said this audibly so everyone could hear it. Jesus explained that the Father didn’t do this for His sake but for theirs. Its like God is saying, "Let’s be clear about this. I’m going to say this out loud . . . loud and clear so everyone can get the message. This is all about Me. It is all about the exaltation of My glory."
Why would God need to do this? Because man is man-centered. We think it is all about us. We think the incarnation and the Cross is all about us. We need to hear God say to us, loud and clear that it is not about us. It is about the exaltation of His glory. We need to recognize that Jesus came to display the glory of God. We need to recognize that Jesus died on the Cross as a display of God’s glory. Jesus died so we could have life – a life lived for this very same purpose, the exaltation of the glory of God.
Soli Deo Gloria
Next: Reciprocal & Shared Glory
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