Jesus Came To Show God's Glory

Jesus came to show God’s glory.

And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. –John 1:14b

If you had been one of Jesus’ disciples, how would you have described the glory of Jesus? Would you have talked about the healing of the leper, the restoration of the sight to the blind, the feeding of the hungry, the resurrection of the dead? Without doubt, all of those things would be on your list! How could they not be? But it’s instructive that when John comes to speak of the glory of Christ, the only Son from the Father, he turns to the ideas of grace and truth. Undoubtedly, here John is looking ahead in his Gospel account and looking back in his own mind, to that day on which the glory of God was most fully manifested at Calvary.

To put it differently, in the end it wasn’t a halo that tipped off the disciples that Jesus was the glorious, incarnate Son of God—it was the crown of thorns upon His head and the cross upon which he died. There the glory was revealed most clearly; and there love was conveyed most passionately. At the cross the fullness of truth—that God hates sin—and the fullness of grace—that God loves sinners—was fully and finally displayed. Joshua Harris puts it this way: “The world takes us to a silver screen on which flickering images of passion and romance play, and as we watch, the world says, ‘This is love.’ God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, ‘This is love.’” One, the movie, seems glorious; the other, the cross, is glorious.

As we celebrate Christmas, we do so with an eye toward Good Friday and Easter, where God’s glory was fully displayed. And, consequently, as we celebrate Christmas, we do so with hearts full of thanksgiving, awe, and praise:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

And with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing in His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

Our full homage to demand.