I am on a quest to live in the reality of the Father glorifying the Son in me and through me so the Son may glorify the Father in me and through me. It comes from attaching to Jesus’ prayer, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you”.[1] There is no doubt that this is the Father’s will, so there is no doubt that he will hear and answer such a prayer!
I am overwhelmed with wonder at how many
things about Jesus’ relationship to the Father tell us why it must be like this,
that Jesus must be glorified in order for the Father to be glorified. It all
comes down to Jesus being “the image of the invisible God,”[2]
and so we must see the image of God first in order for the Father to be
glorified.
This is why Jesus would say, “Whoever
has seen me has seen the Father.”[3] It
wasn’t because Jesus IS the Father, but that he is the image of the Father, and
so, if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father.
Here is another way this Father/Son
relationship is expressed that delighted my heart when I found it: “For all
the promises of God find their Yes in him.”[4]
God the
Father has made promises to us. These promises are rich and glorious, full of
mercy and grace, and absolutely secure to all who receive Christ.
At the
same time, our WoLVeS[5]
HATE the promises of God! What God has spoken is the “hope of eternal life,
which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began”,[6] and the world, our flesh and the
devil do not want us to attach to such realities. They want to keep us “separated from Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of
promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”[7]And if they can’t keep us in that
state, they will work to keep us in that mindset.
God’s Word
and word want to help us “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who
promised is faithful.”[8] If we believe that the God who
promised us eternal life is faithful, we will live in that hope and give glory
to God.
On the
other hand, if our WoLVeS convince us that the promises of God are somehow void
to us, we will live in the stereotypical experience of worthlessness and
hopelessness that keep us from enjoying our hope even while all the promises
are still true no matter what we believe about them (how sad is that!).
Perhaps
you can see why Paul wants us to see Jesus as the “Yes” that fulfills the Father’s promises in our lives. He is the Word that
makes real in our lives what the Father has spoken.[9]
As I was
praying further in II Corinthians 1 (where Paul speaks of Jesus as the “Yes” of God), the effect that Jesus had
on Paul is stretching me into viewpoints of the Beatitudinal Valley[10]
that confront my poverty of spirit in knowing Jesus the way Paul described and
being as real as Paul because of that relationship.
Facing
my poverty in experiencing Christ like this leads me to mourn how miserably
deficient I am. This settles me quickly into that familiar meekness that knows
I can’t fix me. The awareness that I cannot fix myself creates an intense and
hopeful hunger and thirst for the righteousness of being my real self in Jesus Christ.
This
longing to be my real self in Christ takes me back to the reality that, in
creation, I was made in the image of Jesus Christ as Jesus is the image of the
Father;[11]
in salvation I am being restored to the image and likeness of the Son,[12]
and in the coming glorification I will be just like him as originally intended.[13]
And Jesus is the “Yes” who is making it all happen just
as the Father determined and promised.
I often
hear people talk about prayer as if it is something that works or doesn’t work.
It may be pointed out that prayer always works, but sometimes the answer is “no”,
like when Amy Carmichael asked God to give her blue eyes.[14]
However,
while God may say “no” to a prayer because it is not in line with his will, he
will NEVER say “no” to a promise he has made because “all the promises of God
find their Yes in Christ.”
And that
is why I am feeling so much hope about focusing on PRAYING that God the Father
would glorify the Son in my life so that Jesus could then glorify the Father through
my life. The fulfillment of this prayer is not dependent on me making it
happen, but my involvement in the answer does require my faith to attach to
such a grace as this, that I could enjoy the experience of God answering my
prayer.
It is in
the praying of this prayer that we abide in Christ so that the Father can
answer this petition, and Jesus will then be the “Yes” of God in doing it!
© 2021 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1] John 17:1
[2] Colossians 1:15
[3] John 14:9
[4] II Corinthians 1:20
[5] WoLVeS is an acronym
for Wounds, Lies, Vows and Strongholds, which is simply a way to understand how
childhood wounds turn into issues of bondage and habitual sin. My thanks to
Marcus Warner of Deeper Walk International for the initial list of WLVS. Our
home church added some vowels to expand the word picture.
[6] Titus 1:2
[7] Ephesians 2:12
[8] Hebrews 10:23
[9] This is why John gives
us such a beautiful word-picture of Jesus as the Word of God in John 1:1-5.
[10] This is a metaphor for
experiencing the blessings of the Beatitudes as Jesus taught them in Matthew
5:1-12.
[11] Genesis 1:26-27
[12] II Corinthians 3:18
[13] I John 3:1-2 (this
must be seen in parallel to Romans 8:28-30 where Paul gives the golden chain of
God foreknowing me, predestining me to adoption as his son, calling me with the
gospel, justifying me by grace through faith, and one day glorifying me with a
full restoration to the image and likeness of Jesus the Christ).
[14] Here is a short
version of Amy Carmichael’s story, including a note about her wanting blues
eyes instead of brown, and how God’s “no” to that prayer helped her fit right
in with the people she spent most of her life helping. https://answersingenesis.org/kids/bible/world-missions/amy-carmichael/
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