To this statement about
authority, eternal life, and knowing the Creator God, Jesus reverts once again
to speaking about the glory that will be demonstrated and accomplished by adding
“I glorified You on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do. And
now, Father, glorify Me at Your side with the glory I had with You before the
world was created” (17:4-5). Here, He spoke of His work in terms of His God’s
glory, while also speaking of His own glorification in terms of that same God’s
glory.
In the final use of
“glory” in what has come to be called Jesus’ “high-priestly prayer”, as He
presumably, looks past the grave to the new world and the new age of His
established and eternal kingdom that will come into existence at what He hopes
to be His Resurrection, Jesus goes on to say, “Father, I want those You have
given Me to be with me where I am, so that they can see My glory that You gave
Me before the creation of the world” (17:24).
Finally, after His
Resurrection that was wholly unexpected by His followers, as Jesus appears in
Galilee to His disciples, dining with them and taking the opportunity to
restore one that was heartbroken because of his denial of his Lord, Jesus
speaks to that restored one and says, “I tell you the solemn truth, when you
were young, you tied your clothes around you and went wherever you wanted, but
when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will tie you up and
bring you where you do not want to go” (21:18).
The author informs the
reader that “Jesus said this to indicate clearly by what kind of death Peter
was going to glorify God” (21:19a). This final mention of glory is the
first and only time in this Gospel that the glory of the Creator God is attached
to anybody but Jesus or the Father. Of course, the glory is indirectly
associated with Jesus, because Peter was only going to experience his martyrdom
because of the message of the Gospel of Jesus (He is Lord of all, including
Caesar and all worldly powers) that he was going to preach. He would only
preach that message because of his believing union with Christ, having been
cemented into that trusting allegiance, for life or death, through the mysterious
and inexplicable infusion of faith from the covenant God, via the Spirit, somehow
made possible by the Resurrection.
Yes, it seems that it
can be said that the Creator God is glorified by His martyrs---His
witnesses---in life or in death. The Creator God is glorified when the
Gospel is preached, and people hear a testifying witness that Jesus is King and
Lord of all. Before one is ever able to preach that message, for the
Creator God’s glory, it must be heard, there must be an assent, and in a way
that has the appearance of that which happened to Lazarus (though altogether
different), there must be a raising from death to new life.
Though Jesus’
communication to Peter is in reference to the death that he himself will suffer
at the hands of those who oppose the message of the Christ, through it, Jesus
also communicates a truth concerning His God’s ways. For His glory,
because He is a faithful God that redeems exiles to Himself for His purpose of
carrying out His work through the Spirit that will animate their lives, the
Creator God takes those individuals from their path of doing whatever they
want, He somehow works within them to stretch out their hands to Him, to bind them
to Himself, and to bring them, in some cases, to places that they may never
have wanted to go. By all appearances, He does this, raising them up for
His purposes, so as to give them a life that will glorify Him.
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