What a Prayer!

Before Jesus left the Upper Room on the night of the Last Supper, he prayed this: “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). We sometimes get a fleeting glance of God’s glory in a beautiful sunset or a beautiful majestic mountain vista; but, really we have no idea what God’s glory looks like in its totality.

Jesus was the explanation of God. We have never seen God; no one has, but all we have to do is look at Jesus, and we will see what the Father looks like having never seen him. In the last hours with his disciples, Christ prayed that he and his Father would be glorified on the cross. It was a request that Jesus would faithfully fulfill his mission. Jesus had already glorified the Father by completing the work the Father gave him, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4). But now the ultimate glory would be manifest as God demonstrated his unlimited and unconditional love as he poured his wrath on his beloved son for our sin.

Ultimately, we see God’s love for us in the extravagant cost he paid for our redemption.

If Jesus had stopped short of the cross, that would have shown there was a place to which God was not prepared to go for us. The cross demonstrates that there is no limit to God’s love.

We would not have known this without the cross! God, who created the universe, saw his son hanging on the cross, covered with the disdain of those who put him there. The ugliness of the cross comes from the fact that the world’s sins were placed upon him.

Jesus prayed this prayer because he was going to war—war against sin—our sin! John the Baptist had prophesied this moment: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).