JESUS CHRIST IS GLORIFIED

Jesus faced persistent and ever-increasing opposition throughout His life and ministry. On many occasions His life was in danger. Although fickle crowds hung on His words and marveled at His miracles, there was very little that hinted of good times ahead for Jesus.

Evil men relentlessly encircled Him to question Him, trying to trap Him in His answers, to challenge His authority and impugn His character and motives. Finally they closed in for the kill to rid themselves of the threat they perceived Him to be. From His wilderness temptation until He lay dead in the tomb, evil relentlessly pursued Jesus in an effort to bring Him down and assure that he had an ignoble end. Evil saw Jesus rejected, betrayed, denied, and condemned, and then shamefully and painfully crucified, dead and buried. Yet, as Jesus looked forward and saw these horrendous events approaching, rather then being horrified He announced, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (John 12:23) “Glorified?” How could that be?

J.R.R. Tolkien, a friend of C.S. Lewis, and the one who led Lewis in his conversion from Atheism to faith in Jesus Christ, is best known to this generation as the author of The Lord of The Rings. He served as a soldier in WWI, and as Britain struggled against the Axis powers in WWII he wrote to his son:

“I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human
misery all over the world at the present moment: And the products
of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historic
vision is, of course, not the only one. All things have a value in them-
selves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects.’”

Then Tolkien added:
“No man can estimate what is really happening in the light of eternity. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labors with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.”

Tolkien was right. Time has shown and eternity will prove that evil is hopelessly destined to advance the will of God in spite of its most doggedly persistent and most demonic efforts to oppose God. “The sprouting of unexpected good out of evil’s belabored soil” is a profound and eternal law of life, written into the universal order of things by the very finger of God.

We see this law at work in the life of Joseph. He was sold into Egyptian slavery by his brothers who would later have to come to him seeking food for their starving family. Joseph removed their fear of his revenge by saying to them,

“Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you,
you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order
to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
(Genesis 50:19-20, NKJV)

The most potent example of this law at work is seen in the events of Jesus’ life, especially during that period we now observe as Holy Week, which ends with His crucifixion on Good Friday and His resurrection on Easter morning. As Jesus saw these events approaching He declared, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And what glory it is.

Someone will suggest that if evil is destined to serve the will of God by preparing the soil for God’s will to sprout and grow in, why then resist evil? Why not participate fully in evil in order that the will of God be done? God forbid!

To paraphrase Paul in Romans 6:1-7,12
"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on doing evil so that God’s will may be done? By no means! We died to evil; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of evil might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to evil — because anyone who has died has been freed from evil....Therefore do not let evil reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.”

Evil, by definition, is in opposition to and contrary to God’s will. Evil always labors for its own selfish ends and will not, indeed cannot, will one will with God. To willfully cooperate and collaborate with God in the accomplishment of His Divine will is by definition holiness and righteousness, the opposite of evil. Evil’s desired ends are always frustrated by the resulting good. Thus evil never rejoices in the good, nor enjoys the benefits of the bountiful yield God’s will provides.

So with evil closing in all around Him, Jesus knew that all authority had been given to Him by His Father and that He was firmly in control. Given the magnitude of evil’s schemes He saw coming together at that time, Jesus easily recognized that the hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified.