21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me….25 He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon….31 ¶Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
After Jesus gives the sop to
Judas and Judas leaves, Jesus says some interesting things about being
glorified. There are five
instances of the word “glorify” or variants. These verses have always seemed odd to me because Jesus was
not yet resurrected. If He wasn’t
resurrected it seems odd that He would say, “now is the Son of man glorified.” So of course I have to think of explanations for it. (Doesn’t mean that I’ll be right, but
at least I can try, yes?)
Explanation #1: Jesus spoke
of his glorified resurrection as if it were already an accomplished fact. This would certainly testify to His
ability to focus on the positive and how great things would come out of His
tragic betrayal and the pain and anguish of the atonement. If we could only have that same faith,
think how full of spiritual power we could be! We could say like Paul in Romans 8:18, “I reckon that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed in us.”
Explanation #2: Jesus spoke
of the glory He felt inside as He took the brave step of revealing who would
betray Him. Perhaps He felt He had
set events in motion for His mission to be accomplished and felt a huge
satisfaction from that? After all,
His sacrifice had to be completely voluntary, so He would have to move toward
it Himself, and those movements would be attended by the approval of Heavenly
Father and the Holy Ghost. Perhaps
Jesus felt His spirit growing brighter and stronger because of His choice. (I know when I have an internal
struggle and then make a good choice, I feel braver and stronger for it.) If this was the case, we can also
expect that our righteous and sacrificial choices will glorify God and add
glory to our spirits.
Explanation #3: Being
glorified means to be lifted up, which could also refer to Jesus’
crucifixion. This most completely
squares with Jesus’ most challenging doctrines. He would definitely see His most painful and challenging
hours as the most glorious of His mortal life. I know when I look back over my life, I remember the hard
times when I choose to be faithful as some of the most satisfying.
Do you have anything to add?
0 comments:
Post a Comment