Devotional 3-28-09

John 12: 20-23

SUFFERING AND GLORY

The important role which the above-stated verses of John's Gospel play in the human dynamics of our Lord's Passion cannot be overstated. Chronologically, these verses arise between the time of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper. In Verse 23, Jesus says "the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.” He observes that a grain of wheat serves its purpose when it falls to earth and dies: only then can it bear fruit. He is telling us that, while His death is eminent, it is not final. Human death will be conquered by eternal life. But, first, He must die willingly, and His thoughts about that reality are troublesome. .. "what shall I say, Father save me from this hour? No, it is for this purpose that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name". At verse 28, God Himself says out loud, "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.”

What is actually being reported here by Saint John? Why would Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity, only be glorified in His suffering and death, and why would God glorify His name in those events? Wouldn't God Incarnate already be crowned with glory upon His birth into this world, or at a minimum, during the course of His adult ministry? How can it be said, therefore, that Jesus is only now being glorified upon the simultaneous arrival of the time for His suffering and death? The exegesis of Verse 23 is difficult, in my opinion, but the answers to all of the above questions come to us in two parts.

The first part is to be found in our understanding or His humanity. Robert Wilken, in his book entitled The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, tells us that during the 1st through the 5th centuries, the early church was hopelessly mired in disagreement about the doctrine of incarnation. The docetists, one Christian sect for example, believed that Jesus was so absolutely divine that He only seemed to be human and, therefore, not really human at all while others, such as the Ebonites, denied His divinity but affirmed the prophetic nature of His teachings. By the time of the second Counsel of Nicaea in 787 AD, the central tradition of Christian thought affirmed that Christ was fully divine and fully human, but this outcome only occurred because, in the 5th century, a genuine effort was made by churchmen to clarity the relation between the divine and the human within the person of Jesus. Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, was one of the most persuasive theologians who advocated the fully divine/fully human composition of Jesus. By the 5th century, Cyril was writing that the fully human side of Jesus' identity is best understood when we realize that suffering was not an unfortunate interlude in the life of Jesus. Rather, it was and remains an integral part of God's plan and was necessary to fulfill the Incarnation. Cyril further writes that Verse 23 of John's 12th Chapter means that after Jesus had done all He could to bring humankind to faith, He sought to lead us to the crowning point of hope, namely the destruction of death. This result could only be achieved by life undergoing death to be followed by the ability to live again. For Cyril, Jesus' cross of suffering was the BEGINNING of His glorification upon earth.

For modern Christians like you and me, the power of Cyril's thinking and of Jesus' suffering really becomes meaningful when we consider the second part of the analysis: Jesus' humanity in our contemporary world. Simply put, you and I would have no problem accepting that God could have easily endured the beating and crucifixion which Jesus had to endure. The omnipotent cannot be constrained or even impacted by such human restrictions. So, for the divine to suffer as Jesus suffered is not a transforming event. But for a man to willingly endure cross and crucifixion is an altogether different issue. I could not do it. Likely you could not either. But the man Jesus could do it, and did do it. In His suffering, therefore, He and God are glorified for the first time... exalted in a manner never before achieved until Jesus, the man, willingly climbed upon the cross. Christ's glory is, for all time, inextricably bound to His suffering.

Tom Craig

Mission Response and Prayer focus
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