More glory

Glory. We see it in creation . . . the craggy mountains of Nepal and the rolling hills of Tennessee, the hummingbird and the macaw, the Milky Way and the blade of grass. It's hard to escape, unless our eyes are distracted by lesser things.

But do we see glory in the broken body of God's Son? For this is where glory truly resides. In Jesus' prayer at the Last Supper, he asked God to glorify Him: Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. (John 17) What does he mean by that? How can his coming last hours possibly glorify him? They were the most wretched hours in his life and in the history of the world . . . God Himself crushed to death on the cross. Glory? Hardly the word most of us would use.

Listen to what Jesus says in John 12 about that very hour: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. So glory comes in death. Why? Because of the fruit that is born.

And we, sisters, are that fruit. It was His death that was "his greatest glory, his greatest triumph, the most wonderful display of his eternal nature as the God of love. . . The cross reveals Christ's essential nature as One who loves so deeply that he will sacrifice himself completely for those he loves." (Jerram Barrs)

Because at that death, God's wrath against us and all of our sin was poured out on Jesus Christ, who bore it willingly, even gladly, and we are free. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Glory indeed!

He became our sin, took it on, clothed himself in it. What, then, of us? More glory tomorrow.