Glorified

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

GLORIFIED

John 12:27-33

27 "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!" Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again." 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. 30 Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."  33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

NIV

At first glance, it would appear Jesus is praying that God would find another way other than the horrible pain and suffering Jesus was going to have to endure. But that is not what is happening. Jesus is simply confessing he in his humanity is not looking forward to what he must go through in order to redeem mankind. His heart is troubled, which shows his humanity, although he is divine and as such omniscient. He knows what lies before him, it was determined at the beginning, it was the plan all along, the reason he came to earth in the first place. As one of the three persons of the trinity, it was his plan as well as it was the Father’s. But lest we forget the human side of Jesus, here we are shown it. This could also show us the abhorrent distaste of death which drives a man to do everything and anything he can to stall that inevitable event.   Jesus is asking or questioning himself really, “What shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’?” but he concludes that is not what he should say. He answers his own question about what he should say. “No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour”. So he is not going to say “Father, save me from this hour”, instead he asks the Father to glorify the Father’s own name. Jesus shows us the task at which he came to do, was for the purpose to bring glory to the Father, not to himself. At the same time, Jesus knew that this was the way in which the justice of God would be satisfied, for man could never do such, for man is incapable of satisfying God’s justice. No amount of sacrifice is good enough, no amount of deeds are good enough. It is only God, himself who can and did through this hour Jesus now is about to face. So Jesus asks the Father to glorify his own name, and the Father speaks once more from heaven. Just a thought, not that it is a mandate, or judgment, or the gospel truth, but just thinking why, just maybe the reason we do not hear from heaven is we are not looking to glorify the name of God, but more interested in the glory of our own name. Just the sheer fact we like titles, or definer of who we are, shows our need for acknowledgment and that might well be a form of wanting some form of glory. Our use of resumes may also be evidence of our need to list all our accomplishments. Even in our modern media wave in which we live, Facebook has become a place for brag posts, more than anything else. That might also be said of other forms such as Instagram and Twitter or others. It seems if we sneeze, we have to post it so the world knows. It appears everything is about self, about our name, our life, our comings, and goings, but have we, as believers, left God behind, left bringing glory to his name? The Father responds to Jesus, he speaks from heaven, “I have gloried my name and I will glorify it again”. Surely he was referring to Jesus going to the cross. The death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus brought full and magnificent glory to the name of the Father. Our death, burial, resurrection, and ascension will also bring glory to God. So knowing that, should not our lives be for that same purpose? Should our lives not be centered on bringing glory to God? How that looks in the practical day to day living may need some consideration.