The Word Became Flesh ( John 1:14 Continued)1:14 So the Word of God became a person, and took up his abode in our being, full of grace and truth; and we looked with our own eyes upon his glory, glory like the glory which an only son receives from a father.A life-time of study and thought could not exhaust the truth of this verse. We have already looked at two of the great theme words in it; now we look at the third-glory. Again and again John uses this word in connection with Jesus Christ. We shall first look at what John says about the glory of Christ, and then we shall go on to see if we can understand a little of what he means.
(i) The life of Jesus Christ was a manifestation of glory. When he performed the miracle of the water and the wine at Cana of Galilee, John says that he manifested forth his glory ( John 2:11 ). To look at Jesus and to experience his power and love was to enter into a new glory.
(ii) The glory which he manifests is the glory of God. It is not from men that he receives it ( John 5:41 ). He seeks not his own glory but the glory of him who sent him ( John 7:18 ). It is his Father who glorifies him ( John 8:50 ; John 8:54 ). It is the glory of God that Martha will see in the raising of Lazarus ( John 11:4 ). The raising of Lazarus is for the glory of God, that the Son may be glorified thereby ( John 11:4 ). The glory that was on Jesus, that clung about him, that shone through him, that acted in him is the glory of God.
(iii) Yet that glory was uniquely his own. At the end he prays that God will glorify him with the glory that he had before the world began ( John 17:5 ). He shines with no borrowed radiance; his glory is his and his by right.
(iv) The glory which is his he has transmitted to his disciples. The glory which God gave him he has given to them ( John 17:22 ). It is as if Jesus shared in the glory of God and the disciple shares in the glory of Christ. The coming of Jesus is the coming of God's glory among men.What does John mean by all this? To answer that we must turn to the Old Testament. To the Jew the idea of the Shechinah was very dear. The Shechinah (compare Hebrew #7931 ) means that which dwells; and it is the word used for the visible presence of God among men. Repeatedly in the Old Testament we come across the idea that there were certain times when God's glory was visible among men. In the desert, before the giving of the manna, the children of Israel "looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud" ( Exodus 16:10 ). Before the giving of the Ten Commandments, "the glory of the Lord settled upon Mount Sinai" ( Exodus 24:16 ). When the Tabernacle had been erected and equipped, "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" ( Exodus 40:34 ). When Solomon's Temple was dedicated the priests could not enter in to minister "for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord" ( 1 Kings 8:11 ). When Isaiah had his vision in the Temple, he heard the angelic choir singing that "the whole earth is full of his glory" ( Isaiah 6:3 ). Ezekiel in his ecstasy saw "the likeness of the glory of the Lord" ( Ezekiel 1:28 ). In the Old Testament the glory of the Lord came at times when God was very close.The glory of the Lord means quite simply the presence of God. John uses a homely illustration. A father gives to his eldest son his own authority, his own honour. The heir apparent to the throne, the king's heir, is invested with all the royal glory of his father. It was so with Jesus. When he came to this earth men saw in him the splendour of God, and at the heart of that splendour was love. When Jesus came to this earth men saw the wonder of God, and the wonder was love. They saw that God's glory and God's love were one and the same thing. The glory of God is not that of a despotic eastern tyrant, but the splendour of love before which we fall not in abject terror but lost in wonder, love and praise.
