"When God Glorifies Man God is Glorified"

(It glorifies God to glorify man.)

Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him.”  (Jn.13:31)

What Jesus said here refers directly to Himself. He is the Son of Man He is talking about here. He often called Himself by that title. Ironically, He was not the son of a man, because He was born of a virgin! He was human, but He got His humanity from Mary, His mother. She is not the mother of God, as Catholics like to call her. Jesus had no human father, so He was not the Son of Man in that sense. Then why does He call Himself the Son of Man? He uses this as a title the prophet Daniel gave Him to identify the Messiah as being human. This is hugely significant. Christ had to become human to be our Kinsman-Redeemer. Son of Man means He is one of us! He is human. When Jesus was glorified, so was God. This didn’t just happen after his ascension, after He went back to heaven. In John 1:14 the apostle wrote, “The Word was made flesh (at His birth) and we beheld His glory.” Jesus always glorified God, especially in the gospel: His death, burial, and resurrection, which was about to happen “immediately.”

The point is – Jesus is one of us. He is human. He was and is fully man. Someone has put it this way: “The Son of God became the Son of Man that the sons of men might become sons of God.” So, we will also look at this verse as referring to the redeemed sons of man. The purpose of God in our creation and salvation is to make us like Jesus, the Son of Man (Gen.1:26-27; Rm.8:29; 2Cor.3:8; 1Jn.3:2).

When man is glorified by God, God is glorified. It’s not when man glorifies himself, God is glorified; it’s when God glorifies man, God is glorified. First, when Jesus (His human name) is glorified, God is glorified. Then when redeemed man is glorified, God is glorified.

To see the scope of salvation we must not look at fallen man first. That would be like beginning to watch a movie in the middle of it. We begin with the original creation of man. God glorified man in Eden by making Him in His likeness. He was the Governor of the Garden, the Lord of the Land, the Emperor of Eden. Being in the likeness of God, a son of God, He could have fellowship with Him. When man sinned that image and likeness to God was marred and man’s glory was gone. His name became Ichabod. His spirit, soul, and body died to God and began to decay. The image and dominion God gave him was not what it once was and he became what has been called “glorious ruins.” We became “by nature children of wrath.” (Eph.2:3) Man no longer glorified God but became sinful. Satan became “the ruler of this world.” (Jn.16:11)

Christ came to restore God’s image and dominion to fallen man. Jesus was and is the perfect man, the second man, the exact image of God: He was good and shining like God.

But it wasn’t enough that He be that by birth and a sinless life as a man. He was on a mission to restore the rest of mankind. For that it would take His seed being planted in the earth through His death and burial; and then reproduced by His resurrection and all His elect with Him.

Jesus was glorified ultimately in His death and resurrection as the Head of a new race of people. The glory that man lost in the Garden was restored by Jesus through His gospel.  First Jesus, the Head of this new race, as the Son of Man glorified God and was glorified by God (Phil.2:5-11). Then by His death and resurrection and ascension, the body of Christ, the sons of man and of God, were glorified by God and glorified God. That is what Jesus is talking about in Jn.13:31. Not only was Jesus glorified by His death, resurrection, and ascension, but the Father was as well. Consider the last phrase in Philippians 2:5-11. When Jesus glorified the Father, the Father glorified Him, and all those who are in Him. It glorified God to glorify Christ and it glorifies God to glorify Christians.

The glorification of man is done by God, not by us. It glorifies God to glorify man. That might sound like heresy until you closely examine what is being said. It sounds like heresy if we are talking about glorifying ourselves. But it’s not if we are talking about God glorifying us. God “highly exalted Jesus” and He glorifies all who are in Him.

At this point I want us to look at the whole spectrum of salvation.

1.     In the Old Testament God did things for man. When man called on His name He answered them and showed them great and mighty things (Jere.33:3). When man repented, God healed their land (2Chron.7:14).

2.     In the gospels God did things with man. Emmanuel means “God with us” and He being with us in the flesh met all the needs of man by teaching and performing miracles. “Until now you have asked the Father nothing…” (Jn.16:24) Jesus showed us what it was like when God was with us.

3.     After Pentecost we see what God did through man because He was in man.  God does everything by the power that is in us. Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”

Check out Romans 8:30 where it talks about God already having glorified all those whom He has called and justified. There is no future tense here. It’s all past tense. It’s not that God is speaking about the future as though it was in His mind as already been accomplished, like in the glorification of our bodies at His coming. The whole context of this passage is about what God is doing (Rm.8:28) and what He has already done (v.29-30). He has already glorified us! All because we are “In Christ.”

Then in John 17:22 Jesus said, “And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me…” None of this is future tense. “The glory which You gave Me, I have given them.” This is the glorification of man by God. 

What would happen if we fully realized this truth? If we truly believed? We would be like Jesus. And if we were like Jesus, we would be doing the works of Jesus (Jn.14:12). We are not Jesus, but like Jesus. Was Jesus ever sick? No! Was He ever demon-oppressed and needed to be delivered? No. Was he ever depressed? No. Did He ever break even the least of God’s commandments? No. Did He ever sin? No! Was He always doing good to others? Yes!

More than that, He went about healing the sick. He went about casting out demons and performing miracles. He was full of wisdom and “We have the mind of Christ,” Paul wrote (1Cor.2:16).

We become more and more like Jesus by God making us more like Jessus, by God transforming us into His likeness and glory. 2Cor.3:18 states, “We all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This is a process: “from glory to glory.”  It happens the way 2Cor.4:16-18 says it happens. “Our light affliction is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”

This is the New Covenant, where God is making us like Jesus, the Son of Man. This takes the sacrifice of holy blood, supplied by only our Lord Jesus Christ, and our faith in Him.  And it takes the resurrection of a new creation. The New Covenant was sealed by the blood of Jesus, secured by His glorious resurrection, and supplied to us by His Holy Spirit through the new birth and fullness of the Spirit.

None of this glory mentioned here is future tense! It has already been accomplished by the gospel of Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and consequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The hope of our calling is based on what He has already done in us. Paul prayed that God would “give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you might know what is the hope of His calling, what is the riches of His inheritance in the saints.” (Eph.1:17-18) I say again, the hope of our calling is based on what He has already done in us. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col.1:27) 

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