When therefore he was gone out Jesus says, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
The betrayer has just walked out into the night, and the first thing Jesus says after the door closes is about glory. How can the darkest act in history be the moment when the Son of Man and God are glorified?
Jesus says this the moment Judas is gone, not before. One writer draws out the shock of that.
What a contrast! What a sentence! "When he was gone out"! The blackest deed Satan ever did was now accomplished — morally accomplished, that is. So says the unburdened mind of the Lord: unburdened as He passes through the crisis, showing what it was, dwelling on it, and grasping the divine glory in it all — "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him."
"Now" does not mean the cross has already happened. The Lord speaks of it as settled.
The Lord felt the gravity of the moment, and saw the way and end from the beginning. All the wonderful and everlasting consequences of His death were stretched out before Him. Now that Judas is gone, He gives free expression to the truth in divinely perfect words... His own cross is fully in view, and it laid the basis for all true and lasting glory — not for God only, though certainly for God, since there can be none at all unless He is first — but for man also in the person of the Lord, the Son of Man.
The word does not point to honours handed to Him. It points to a display.
The first great truth is, "Now is the Son of Man glorified."... The reference is to the suffering of the Son of Man at the Cross. The statement is that in those sufferings the Son of Man is glorified. To be glorified is to have all the qualities that exalt a person brought into display. At the Cross all the infinite perfections of the Son of Man were displayed in the highest degree.
Nothing about the scene itself looked glorious, which is exactly the point.
"Now is the Son of Man glorified." No ray of glory shone upon Him: all was deepest darkness, deepest humiliation; yet in the cross the Son of Man was glorified... Who but He could have borne the awful trial of the fire of divine holiness, searching out all that was within? Who else, in that place, could have been only a sweet savour to an absolutely holy God?
One writer sets two kinds of glory side by side.
Here the glory of the Son of Man is seen in going into death. Power over death displays the glory of the Son of God, submission to death the glory of the Son of Man.
There is also a coming glory of reign, and the writers rank the two.
The glory of His earthly throne is exceeded by the glory of His shameful Cross. The Kingdom will display His official glories, the Cross witnesses to His moral glories.
The second half of the verse says something creation could never say.
All others had dishonoured God. At last One is found — the Son of Man, Himself morally perfect, able to undertake a work which glorifies God. But to glorify God He must be made sin, and go into the place of death. "The heavens declare the glory of God" as Creator, with infinite wisdom and power, but cannot declare the glory of His moral Being. For this the Son of Man must suffer, so that by those sufferings every attribute of God may receive its highest expression. The Cross vindicates the majesty of God, upholds His truth, and shows His righteousness in the judgment of sin. The holiness that demanded such a sacrifice, and the love that gave it, shine in their brightest lustre.
What made it possible was not the visible agony but something underneath it.
We learn from this what the hinge of our Lord's standing in this work really was. It was not the outward sufferings, true and telling as they were to man, but the moral submission to God... In man, God had been permanently dishonoured. Now, in the infinite riches and unspeakable display of grace, in Man — in Jesus — He was to be glorified.
One writer sets the second Man against the first.
The first man was an object of shame and judgment through sin. The second Man, Jesus Christ the righteous, was glorified, and God was glorified in Him... Blessed Saviour! What a thought — and now a fact and a truth! This truth is made known to us, so that we might know not merely God come to us, but ourselves brought to God. And this in peace and joy, because man is glorified in the Person of Christ, and God is glorified in Him, a Man, the man Christ Jesus.
- Now — the betrayer's exit sets the clock running; the Lord speaks of His cross as finished the moment it is certain.
- Glorified — the word means every perfection put on display. Here the display comes in darkness, in submission to death.
- Deeper — this moral glory outshines the glory of the coming kingdom. The throne shows His official honours; the cross shows what He is.
- God — creation shows God's power, not His moral being. At the cross His majesty, truth, righteousness, holiness and love reach their highest expression.
- Man — where the first man dishonoured God, God is glorified in a Man, so that we are not only visited by God but brought to Him.
If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and shall glorify him immediately.
Jesus says this before He goes to the cross, yet He speaks of glory as something already settled. Two questions follow. What does it mean for God to glorify a Man "in Himself"? And why does God do it at once, instead of waiting for the coming kingdom?
The first clause looks back to the cross. Everything else in the verse rests on it. What matters most is where the work happened — in the very place where sin had dishonoured God.
In His death Christ glorified God in all that God is. And He did it where God had been dishonoured, in the very place of sin. Man's hatred, Satan's power, death, and the curse or wrath of God all met there. And He was there in love and obedience, made sin. There His obedience was made complete. God displayed His righteous judgment against sin in full, and Christ endured it when God forsook Him. Yet the same act displayed God's perfect love to sinners.
The glory promised is not a reward handed over from a distance. It is a place inside God's own glory, and it tells us who this Man is.
The Son of Man glorified God in His death on the cross. So God glorifies Him "in Himself." He does not have to wait for the day of His kingdom glory. God glorifies Him "immediately," seating Him at His own right hand. To be glorified "in Himself" brings out at once the glory of the Person of the Son of Man. Only a divine Person could be glorified in this way. Yet it also shows the wonderful place that Man has in Jesus, God's beloved Son. He is now glorified in the presence of God the Father, with a glory that is fully divine.
This glory is of a different order from the public display still to come.
God is glorified in Him, and as a result He is glorified in God Himself. It is a glory and a place enjoyed in Himself. Exalted like this, He shares the infinite delight and excellency of God. However its result may be displayed later, this glory is above and beyond all display. Such is the glory and blessing of the Son of Man!
The words "at once" carry the argument. This is a matter of righteousness. God was not being generous. He was paying a debt.
All this clearly was God's righteousness because of the cross. It was what God owed to Jesus. It was a debt He had to pay, both as God and as Father. And this was because Jesus was the Man who had glorified Him to the very fullest, as no one had ever glorified Him before. He did it even about that very thing, sin, which God hated most of all. He kept back nothing. He endured all things… So God does not wait for the fullness of times, and He does not begin by giving Him the whole earth and all the nations on it. He glorifies Christ in Himself at once.
The glory God gave measures what that work was worth to Him.
So the height to which God has raised the Lord Jesus measures how much He valued the glory Jesus brought Him at Calvary.
Because the exaltation answers the sacrifice, the sight of Christ where He now is settles the question of whether the work was accepted.
If God has been glorified in Christ, God will give an everlasting proof of His satisfaction with what Christ has done. Christ glorified as a Man in the glory is the only adequate answer to His work on the cross, and is the eternal proof of God's satisfaction with that work.
The verse is not only doctrine about Christ. It is meant to lift the eyes of people whose strength is failing.
God did not wait for the kingdom to glorify His Son. His work was too precious to allow a delay, and so God placed Him at His right hand. There we see Jesus now. What an encouragement for every believer. We see Jesus, who is already crowned with glory and honour and who will bring many sons to glory. If our hands are hanging down and our knees are feeble, as was the case with the Hebrew believers, let us look at Him!
- Cause. At the cross Christ glorified God in the very place where sin had dishonoured Him. Sin judged, obedience made complete, love shown — all in one act.
- Answer. God glorifies the Son of Man "in Himself." That is a share in divine glory. Only a divine Person could hold such a place, and now a Man holds it.
- Speed. "At once" means God would not wait for the kingdom. The work was too precious for delay. Righteousness paid the debt at once.
- Proof. Christ seated in glory is God's own estimate of the cross. By that work Christ won a claim on the Father's heart, and God delights to acknowledge it before the whole universe.
- Comfort. When hands hang down and knees are feeble, look at the One already crowned with glory and honour. He brings many sons to glory.