A Sermon by James Stewart
John 17:1-5. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.
With exquisite tenderness, Christ had mitigated the sorrow of His disciples, whose deepest feelings had been touched and whose brightest hopes had been destroyed by the announcement of His approaching sufferings and death. He then, in their hearing, offered up this beautiful prayer. It has generally been considered a pattern of the intercession which He now makes for His people in heaven. It consists of earnest supplications to the Father for Himself, as about to “finish the transgression and to make an end of sins”; for His immediate followers, about to be deprived of His personal fellowship and guardianship; and for as many as should believe in His name in the succeeding ages of the world.
In the first five verses, the petitions of Christ refer directly to Himself, who had now reached that part of the work of redemption when He must make “His soul an offering for sin”, when He must endure the mocking of His enemies, have the light of His Father’s countenance withdrawn from Him and taste the bitterness of death. But before quoting the prayer, the Evangelist describes the attitude in which it was presented, “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven”. The minutest particulars recorded about Christ deserve our attention. The devotional attitude which He here describes is beautiful and expressive. As heaven is specially the residence of God, it is the temple of the universe. And as the Jews in their religious worship turned their faces towards Jerusalem, because it was the city of the Great King, and contained the created symbol of His presence, so God’s creatures everywhere, when they address prayer and adoration to Him, naturally look to the place which is honoured by the visible manifestation of the true Shechinah.
The attitude of looking up to heaven signified the wish of Christ to withdraw from human society, in which there was nothing congenial to the perfect purity of His soul, and to behold and admire the transcendent excellence of God. It intimated the earnestness of His prayer, for a greater intensity of desire is often manifested, and a stronger and more effectual appeal to sympathy made, by the wistful, beseeching look of a suppliant than by the power of language. It exhibited His full confidence in the love of His Father and a sense of His own acceptableness, for conscious demerit and guilty fear would have led to conduct similar to that of the publican, who would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner”.
Christ, who is “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” was able, without confusion or shame, to lift up His eyes to heaven, saying, “Abba, Father”. He had previously instructed His disciples to address God as their Father in heaven; what He had enjoined in words, He now taught by example. This indeed is the name by which He almost invariably calls upon God in prayer. “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.” “Father, glorify Thy name.” When He was in the garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, “Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me”. While experiencing the cruelty of His persecutors, He interceded for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. And when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost, He said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit”.
By using the name, “Father“, Christ expressed the relation between Himself and Him whom He addressed; He intimated the reverence, confidence and trust which He felt, and He suggested the obligation under which God was, as His Father, to hear His prayer. The great significance of the name is enough to show Christ’s purpose, not only in using it Himself, but in teaching His people to use it. When believers address God as their Father, they also express the relation into which He has, through Christ, condescended to enter; they intimate the reverence, trust and dependence which they feel; and they suggest the obligation which He has graciously taken on Himself to bless and satisfy them.
When, however, Christ uses the name, it is necessarily understood in an inconceivably higher sense than when adopted by believers. As to His divine nature, Christ is the only-begotten, eternal Son of the Father and is therefore one with Him in essence, and equal with Him in power and glory. Even in His human nature, Christ was the Son of God in a sense altogether exclusive. This is expressly intimated in the words addressed by the angel to Mary: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”. Angels are the sons of God by creation, and men by adoption, but Christ “hath, by inheritance, obtained a more excellent name than they”.
Before presenting His desires to His Father, He gives a short but emphatic statement of the circumstances in which He then was, and by which He was urged to pray: “The hour is come“. The hour that had now come was undoubtedly the short period of His last sufferings which He expressively called “the hour . . . of darkness”. He mentions it as an hour which He had anticipated. This hour, and the momentous transactions which took place in it, were fixed by an eternal decree of the Father. Types and symbols, predictions and promises, had pointed to it from the beginning of the world, and the faith and hope of believers had been divinely directed to it in successive ages. It was the most important hour in time. All that was past looked forward to it, and all that was to come would look back to it. Into it were gathered events which were to fill the universe with gladness and awaken it into praise, and were to be a subject of endless investigation and wonder to angels, and of eternal joy to men.
But while this hour was glorious in its consequences, it was to Christ an hour of intensest agony. While it continued He was subjected to the highest degree of bodily and mental suffering. He had to endure the reviling and mockery of the blinded and infatuated Jews. That one of His disciples should betray Him, that another should deny Him, and that they all should forsake Him, must have inflicted a wound still deeper and more painful. And the hiding of His Father’s countenance, which had eternally beamed on Him with infinite love and complacency, filled to overflowing the bitter cup which was put into His hand. It was decreed that the brightest light should spring out of the deepest darkness, the greatest enjoyment out of the heaviest affliction, the highest exaltation and honour out of the lowest abasement and shame, and hence the necessity and urgency of the prayer, “Glorify Thy Son”.
At no period did the necessity so manifestly appear for the Father to vindicate the honour and glory of His Son as in the hour which had now come. Then He was subjected to every indignity which the most inventive ingenuity could contrive and was exposed to every cruelty which the darkest revenge could inflict. He was apparently condemned by the ordinary laws by which human society is regulated and was put to death as a criminal. He had not concealed His title to the sceptre which had already departed from Judah, and to the obedience which was due to the King of the Jews. He had claimed a higher descent than from the most illustrious of Israel’s sovereigns — a descent which constituted Him, not only David’s son, but also David’s Lord. But His countrymen treated His claims with mockery and derision and complained that the title affixed to His cross was a national insult.
There were some who believed that it was He whose reign and triumphs had been foretold by the prophets, and who waited for the time when He should “restore the kingdom to Israel”. But their faith could scarcely be sustained even by the multiplicity of miracles He performed; and their hopes, after being long deferred, were in danger of being buried in His tomb. They no doubt supposed that a contest and a triumph would precede His reign, but they did not know that the contest consisted in rendering perfect obedience to the divine law, in the midst of sufferings needful to expiate His people’s guilt, and that the Redeemer’s victory must come out of His previous humiliation and seeming defeat. Human ingenuity was unable to reconcile with royalty the meanness of His outward condition. It was difficult for the human mind to comprehend how the enemies of Israel were to be discomfited by the endurance of an ignominious death — how the external marks of defeat were compatible with a glorious and final triumph.
It was therefore indispensably necessary to the vindication both of His regal character and His moral integrity that the Father should manifestly interpose. Such an interposition was granted. Not only did the Roman judge repeatedly affirm that he could find no fault in Jesus and the Roman centurion declare that truly He was a righteous man, but the veil of the temple was miraculously rent, the sun was darkened, the dead were raised and the rocks were broken by an earthquake.
Also they who derided Him and put Him to death suffered a national punishment which emphatically declared their awful criminality. Because they denied the supremacy and rejected the claims of the Messiah, God spoke to them in His wrath and vexed them in His sore displeasure. Because of their disloyal exclamation, “We have no king but Caesar”, their city was desolated; their temple was levelled with the ground and ploughed over like a field; they fell before the sword, the famine and the pestilence; they were driven from their own land and left to the mercy of a world which everywhere hated and oppressed them; they were shattered in pieces like the wreck of a vessel in a storm, and scattered over the earth like fragments on the waters. By their sufferings they were made to bear witness to the regal dignity and glory of Christ, though in words and deeds they denied it.
But the prayer, “Glorify Thy Son“, was answered in a sense still higher at His resurrection, for He was then “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness”. It received a more striking fulfilment when He “ascended on high”, leading “captivity captive”, when the proclamation was made, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in – when “He sat down at the right hand of God the Father in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come”.
Christ was glorified by the Father when He was put in possession of His mediatorial kingdom. The commandment has gone forth, “Let all the angels of God worship Him”, and He shall be glorified by His people when they have been gathered from the successive generations and the scattered tribes of men, and when they join with the other inhabitants of heaven in ascribing “blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever”. Notwithstanding the indignities that a rebellious and ungodly world heap upon Him, He shall be eternally acknowledged as the Son of God and the King of Israel.
But in offering up this prayer, the views and desires of Christ do not terminate on Himself. He asks the Father to glorify Him, in order that He may in turn glorify the Father. “Glorify Thy Son that Thy Son also may glorify Thee.” Christ here discloses His motive in undertaking and perfecting the salvation of man. It was to glorify the Father that “He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man”. It was to accomplish this end that He submitted with meekness and patience to that accumulation of suffering which rendered Him pre-eminently “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. And it is from the same pure and exalted motive that He now prays to have His regal dignity and prerogative vindicated before men – to be raised from the degradation and imprisonment of the grave, to be invested with His mediatorial government and authority, and to be worshipped and obeyed equally with the Father.
That Christ anxiously sought to glorify God is manifest from the whole tenor of His history. “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” was the question by which He replied to His mother when she chided Him for staying behind at Jerusalem. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work”, He told His disciples when they pressed Him saying, “Master, eat”. “Father, glorify Thy name,” was the prayer in which He breathed forth His filial love and holy zeal. “I honour My Father . . . and I seek not Mine own glory”, was part of His reply to the Jews when they said, in contempt and blasphemy, that He was a Samaritan and had a devil. And now, in the immediate prospect of unparalleled sufferings, He showed that the same motive still predominated in His breast when He said, “Glorify Thy Son that Thy Son also may glorify Thee”.
But this expression also affirmed that the Father, by glorifying Christ, would thereby eventually glorify Himself. It is beyond all controversy that every part of the plan of redemption, and therefore its completion in the glorification of Christ, is fitted to magnify the Father. When the company of angels on the plain of Bethlehem ascribed “glory to God in the highest”, they undoubtedly expressed the leading purpose of the scheme of salvation about to be executed by Him whose birth they had announced. It was purposely fitted in its formation, development and consummation to reveal the distinct persons in the Godhead in their separate offices and operations, and to illustrate the infinite perfections of the divine character. That it was calculated to glorify God is here urged by Christ as a reason why His petition should be granted, for if He was not exalted to the mediatorial kingdom, it must have remained incomplete and could therefore have reflected no honour on the Father. In pressing His request, Christ only adduced an argument by which the Father was moved to bring the universe into being – the manifestation of His own transcendent glory.
The ground on which Christ rested His petition, “Glorify Thy Son”, is fully and clearly stated in the succeeding verse: “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him”. As if He had said, In asking to be glorified by Thee in having My regal dignity vindicated before men, and being put in possession of My mediatorial kingdom, I seek the joy which from eternity was set before Me – the fulfilment of an immutable promise, the execution of an everlasting decree – for I was given, by Thine own ordination, from before the foundation of the world, a sovereign power which would enable Me to bring Thine own elect to the enjoyment of salvation. “Power over all flesh” was part of the mediatorial glory for which He “endured the cross, despising the shame”. That He should eventually be invested with it was a condition of the covenant in which He was a party with the Father. He therefore here requests that it be given to Him now, and that He may be manifested to the universe as really possessing it and exercising it, in bringing His people to honour and immortality.
It is surprising that, in the face of a declaration so clear and explicit as Christ Himself here made, it should be alleged that His kingdom consists only of believers and that it is restricted to the Church. It is true that there is a sense in which Christ is exclusively the King of saints. These He received as a gift from the Father; and though they had renounced their allegiance, they have been again brought under the loved authority of His law. But while these were given Him to be saved, the whole world was given Him to be ruled and governed. “On His vesture and on His thigh is a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.” The Father “hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all”. “God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
From the fact that the Father is here said to have given Christ power over all flesh, it is argued by the enemies of the Saviour’s divinity that He is a mere creature – exalted, through the sovereign will of God and as a reward of His own distinguished merit, to high honour and dignity and influence. But in order to refute such an argument as this, it is only necessary to state that the power, which is here said to have been given to Christ, is not that which is essential to the divine nature, which He possessed as God, but the power He received and now executes as mediator. As the second Person in the blessed Trinity, He possessed from everlasting an almightiness which could not be increased or diminished or changed. But as Mediator, by His meritorious obedience, sufferings and death, He obtained a right to exercise His power for new ends: bestowing salvation and exercising judgement upon sinners as the appointed Head of the kingdom of grace.
The purpose of the Father in conferring, and of the Son in accepting, this regal dominion and authority, was most merciful: “Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him”. This power was not given to qualify Him for making an atonement, or for working out a righteousness for His people, but to enable Him to bring them to the actual possession of a salvation which He had already procured.
It was after His humiliation and suffering had ended, and when He had finished the work which was given Him to do, that He was exalted “a prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins”. It was indispensably necessary that He should receive such sovereign, unlimited power so that He would be able to give eternal life to as many as the Father had given Him. Without it He could not send them the knowledge of the gospel, for to do so implies the entire government of mankind; without it He could not use the ungodly as instruments in their training, for such an agency can be employed only by one who has absolute control over them; without it He could not authoritatively judge His people and acquit them finally, for the function of judgement belongs exclusively to the kingly office. Without it He could not confer on His people the actual possession and enjoyment of eternal life; such a gift suits only the munificence and independence of a king.
Christ exercises the power He possesses as Mediator in giving eternal life only “to as many as the Father hath given Him”. It was only for them that He acted as surety in His obedience, sufferings and death, and therefore the blessings which He purchased are communicated only to them. But as the government of Christ includes the reprobate as well as the elect, if His power is not employed in bringing them to salvation, it must necessarily be exhibited in inflicting deserved punishment on them. This is an aspect of the administration of Christ which is generally neglected. His government of His people is so pleasing that it is generally contemplated to the exclusion of His rule over the rebellious.
Even the openly disobedient find in Christ’s rule an antidote to those fears and apprehensions which are sometimes awakened by conscious guilt. They so magnify His beneficence that they effectually conceal the purity of His holiness and the rigour of His justice – they sink His character as a righteous moral governor in the relation of a Father and a friend; they throw around His whole character and administration a mildness and tenderness altogether incompatible with the least approximation to inflexible justice; they deprive His laws of the sanction of punishments and leave only the sanction of rewards. But while, in virtue of the sovereignty with which He is invested, Christ blesses His people with salvation, by His providence He breaks His enemies “with a rod of iron” and dashes them in pieces “like a potter’s vessel”, and on the day of final judgement He shall pronounce on them an irreversible sentence of condemnation.
^1Taken, with editing, from Remains of Rev James Stewart. Stewart (1813-46) was first minister of Wallacetown, Ayr, and later of the Free South Church in Aberdeen.