We have already mentioned that John 14, 15, and 16 are a message given to the disciples by the Lord on the night of His betrayal after His supper was established. Then in John 17 the Lord offered a prayer to conclude the message. I believe that after the previous messages you brothers and sisters are very clear that in these three chapters—John 14, 15, and 16—the emphasis of the Lord’s message is to show us how He would die to solve the problems between us and God and open a way for us to be connected to God, enter into God, and abide in Him. Furthermore, He would resurrect from death to impart His life to us that we may live as He lives, causing us to be able to abide in Him and He in us. In brief, the subject of His message is that He would bring man into God so that God and man would be fully built together to become one entity.
After He finished speaking the message, the Lord offered a prayer as a conclusion. We all have had such an experience. The concluding prayer we offer when we have finished speaking a message is often the central thought of the message. It is the same with the Lord’s prayer on that occasion. In His prayer He brought the central thought of the message before God, asking God to fulfill it. If we know this, then this prayer can be more easily understood.
Now we will read this prayer. John 17:1 says, “These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” This is the subject of the prayer. The subject of this prayer is that God would glorify His Son that His Son may also glorify Him. What is glory? We confess that even today we do not fully understand it. All the Bible expositors and those who pursue spiritual experience admit that glory is very difficult to explain. We have said before that glory is the manifestation, the expression, of God. God manifested and expressed is glory. This explanation is relatively simple and accurate. For example, when electricity shines forth and is manifested from within a light bulb, the shining is the glory of electricity. The fluorescent lamps here are the electricity shining forth. This shining is the glory of the electricity, which is also the manifestation, the expression, of electricity. This is a little illustration to help us to comprehend the meaning of glory. What is God’s glory? God’s glory is God’s manifestation, God’s expression. Whoever bears the expression of God has the glory of God. If you sense that a meeting is full of God’s presence, then the meeting is full of God’s glory.
Therefore, it is not difficult for us to understand what the Lord meant when He said, “Glorify Your Son.” We need to keep in mind that the Lord’s becoming flesh was God’s entering into man. God Himself is glorious, but we human beings are not glorious; we are lowly and base. Therefore, the glory of God was concealed in the man whom God had become. In the tabernacle in the Old Testament, God’s glory, or we may say God Himself, was concealed within a veil in the Holy of Holies. Hebrews 10 says that the veil typifies the flesh the Lord put on in His incarnation (v. 20). When the Lord became flesh, His flesh, His humanity, was a veil that concealed God’s glory. Although the incarnated Lord was inwardly God Himself and absolutely glorious, He appeared before men outwardly as a lowly man. While He was in the flesh, in His dealings with men, His glory was not perceived, because it was hidden within Him. What people felt and touched in Him was a lowly man. Philippians 2 tells us that He humbled Himself, lowered Himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men (v. 7). Therefore, when He appeared before men, He had no attracting form nor majesty that they should desire Him (Isa. 53:2). In man’s eyes He was merely a man whose visage and form were marred. His glory was fully concealed, veiled, within His flesh.
Recall the time when the Lord Jesus went up the mountain with three disciples and was transfigured before their eyes. That was the release of the glory from within Him. His flesh as a veil seemed to have become transparent, letting out the glory within Him. However, that was only for a short while; afterward, His glory was concealed again, and the lowly form reappeared. In His thirty-three and a half years on the earth, what was expressed was His lowly form, not His glory.
Now in John 17 the Lord offered a prayer before God, saying, “Glorify Your Son.” It is not difficult for us to understand the meaning of this word, which was to ask God to bring His Son fully into glory that His Son may fully manifest and express God’s nature and God’s glory. This was concerning His resurrection. When He was on the earth, He was the Son of God and had God within Him, but people always saw Him as a lowly man. However, He was not the same after resurrection. Once He resurrected, the glory within Him was manifested. Once He resurrected, the God within Him, the life of the Son of God within, was expressed. When He resurrected, His flesh was transfigured from a lowly form to a glorious form. Therefore, Luke 24 tells us that the Lord’s resurrection was His entering into glory (v. 26).
Brothers and sisters, for God to become flesh and enter into man was to be made lowly; for man to enter into God was to be glorified. It was lowliness for the Lord Jesus to become flesh and bring God into man, but it was glory for the Lord Jesus to be resurrected and bring man into God. Now the Lord would go and die; that is, He would go through death and resurrection, so He offered a prayer, asking God to glorify Him, to cause Him to be glorified. This means that He asked God to cause all that was hidden within Him—God’s life, God’s nature, and all that God is—to be manifested and expressed. In Him was all the fullness of the Godhead, the very God Himself. When He was in the flesh, the fullness of the Godhead was concealed within Him. His humanity and His body, as a veil, concealed and confined all the fullness of God. Now His going to die was to split open the veil. After He died, He would be resurrected, causing the “veil” to be transfigured. By the splitting and the transfiguration of the veil, He would fully shine forth all the fullness of the Godhead that was previously hidden in Him. The result would be His glorification. Therefore, when He prayed to the Father, “Glorify Your Son,” what He meant was, “May You cause all the fullness of the Godhead to be manifested and expressed from within Your Son.”
Once you understand this phrase, you will understand the following clause: “That Your Son may glorify You.” This is to say, “If You glorify Your Son in this way, Your Son will also glorify You. Since all that You are and have are in Your Son, if this veil of flesh is not broken, not transfigured, then Your glory will be confined within it. Now glorify Your Son that all of Your fullness may shine out from within Your Son. In this way You will glorify Your Son, and Your Son will also glorify You because all of Your fullness will be expressed through Your Son.”