Read His Words Before Ours!
John 13:31-35
John 17
Genesis 15 
The concept of the Trinity, the 3-in-1 Godhead, is so completely beyond our understanding as finite humans, and that’s okay. Isn’t it a great thing that we clearly know it’s impossible for us to comprehend aspects of God? If we could wrap our minds entirely around Him, He wouldn’t be that incredible of a Creator God, would He? (we are studying the Trinity coming up in a few weeks when we Journey into “Creed” – if you’d like to register, click here!)
For as much as we don’t know about Him, there are some very clear things that we do know and a critical component is fleshed out here as we see Jesus once more, lift up His eyes. This time, unlike all the ones we’ve looked at previously in this Journey Theme, Jesus lifts His eyes to God the Father.
Slow down, don’t miss it, look closely at the language here. Jesus is hours before His great sacrifice to reconcile humanity to Himself through His death and later resurrection. And the first thing He does as He enters into this time of deep prayer, is connect, relate, be intimate, eye to eye, with the threefold Godhead; He lifts His eyes.
Soon, His relationship with Father and Spirit will be severed. Their unity, their oneness, their community will be broken as Jesus will bear the weight of the world’s sin in His body on the cross.
But for now, as He prepares to intercede for the people He’s come to restore, He raises His eyes to delight in the intimacy savored by the Trinity.
“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify You.”
The unity here is incredible! Let’s slow our pace as we walk through these words!
Father –> Here it isn’t our Father, as He taught the disciples to pray, it’s simply “Father”. The depth of intimacy in that one, profound title of love, respect, and submission is amazing.
The hour has come –> The hour hadn’t always been right. Self-righteous protestors had been trying to kill Jesus ever since His ministry began (John 7:6, 7:30). No, even before that, since his birth as the coming King (Matthew 2:16-18). History itself had been waiting for this moment. Timing is extremely important to the Godhead; nothing is random or purposeless.
For at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
It wasn’t random here, and His coming return to rescue His Bride, that timing is exact as well. (Matthew 24:36, Acts 1:7)
Glorify Your Son –> This glorification thing was a full community work. Each person of the Trinity had a role to play in God, as a whole, being glorified. Each was working for the good of the other; each person submitting to each other to glorify the other.
It’s an incredible picture of how God designed unity in the church to be!
Unity.
It’s why Jesus came and why He offered Himself as a sacrifice. Jesus is praying that God the Father would glorify Him, that the Spirit could come after and bring hearts into relationship with Him by convicting them of their sin. Look at John 7:39:
“Now this He (Jesus) said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Here, John’s words reveal that there is mutual submission within the Trinity. At the time when Jesus was still walking on the earth, the Holy Spirit had neither been given nor received by true believers. Jesus was still physically with them doing His work. The Spirit would come after Him to do His work of pointing people towards Jesus.
That the Son may glorify You –> The goal of God’s whole redemptive plan from beginning to end is glorification of God that the world would see and know Him and choose to be restored in relationship with Him. (as an interesting deeper study, search the Scriptures for every instance of God performing actions in order that “you will know that I am the Lord”)
God acts in our lives to point us back to Him.
He uses the good and the beautiful,
the brokenness and the hurt,
to lift our eyes to His,
that He might bring us restoration and unity with Himself,
just as He exists in unity among the three persons of the Trinity!
In just this one short passage, we see the Holy Spirit submit to Jesus the Son, while He waits for Christ’s work on earth to be completed.
We see Jesus submitting to God the Father when He prays, “I (Son) glorified You (Father) on earth, having accomplished the work that You (Father) gave me to do.”
And we see the circle be completed as the Father submits to the Son and glorifies the Son, just as Jesus asks Him to do.
Earlier in John, Jesus tells His disciples that the Father is glorified when the Father glorifies the Son. Each person of the Trinity exists to glorify the other and bring complete, perfect, unified glory as one whole Being.
God is completely satisfied by submission and unity within the persons of the Trinity.
What’s even more staggering than trying to comprehend the three-fold persons of God, is realizing that we are invited in to delight in that same unity!
Us.
Our messiness, brokenness, shame, sin, illness, financial ruin, our exhaustion, our loneliness, our grief, our chaotic discord.
God, and His fullness, invites us in to unity with Himself, as well as with members of His Bride, the Church.
Are you leaning in?
Is your gaze fixed on His?
Are you ready to lift your eyes to see beyond yourself to all that He has for you?
Look up, Sister, there is much to see!
Ready for more? Dig Deeper!
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Thanks for joining us today as we journeyed into Borders Week Three! Don’t miss out on the discussion below – we’d love to hear your thoughts!
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