The glorification of Jesus—The death
CHRISTIANITY AS BHAKTI MARGA
little while ts the light among you.
Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light.
John xii. 23-36.
In explaining the Johannine teaching on the Atonement, Abbot says:
'The metaphors for describing this giving of eternal life through the uplifted Son of Man upon the cross are various.
Life may be regarded negatively as deliverance from sin.
In that aspect, our burden of sin may be described as falling from our shoulders as we kneel before the cross, or as taken. from our shoulders as we kneel before the cross or as taken from us and nailed to it with the crucified one.
But John probably looks at life positively, as a union with Christ, who, when we look to Him with the eye of faith, draws us to, or into, Himself, or passes into us that we may pass into Him.'* If this view of Johannine teaching is correct, is
John the only mystic who thinks thus or are there others?
Does the mystic life inevitably lead to a different understanding of the death of Christ from that which occurs in other types of Christian experience ?
THE GLORIFICATION OF JESUS
According to the Fourth Evangelist, the death of Jesus is His glorification.
The word 'glory' is a ne A. Abbot, Johannine Vocabulary, Cambridge, 1905 ;. p.
45.
FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING
favourite one with him.
He tells us that by making the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus manifested His glory.
The ' sickness' of Lazarus was in order that the Son of God might be glorified.2
But the main occasion for the glorification of Jesus was His passion and death.* It is difficult to understand whether the word 'glory' should be interpretedin a purely moral sense or whether it should be taken to imply any of the external splendour which mystics have seen in their visions of God.
Such light and splendour are, of course, of no value by themselves except that they show in an impressive way the exceeding greatness and purity of God.
We know that the word can be traced back to the days of the ancient Jewish seers, canonical* and uncanonical," who beheld God as light and splendour. Evenif John did not keep in mind any of the external association of the word in mystic literature with light and magnificence, he certainly did not empty it of all its poetic significance.
There seems to vibrate in it a sense of exaltation, beauty, joy and honour.
We are surprised when we hear Jesus applying such a word to describe the pain and agony on the cross.
It seems appropriate when applied to such a miracle as that at the wedding feast in Cana in which with dramatic impressiveness He manifested His power.
It would have appeared still more natural if it had been used to describe Him when He stilled the raging storm or when
He stood on the mount of Transfiguration bathed in 1 John ii. 11.
2 John xi. 4.
3 John vii. 39 ; xii. 16 ; xii. 23 ; xiii. 31, 32 ; xvii. 1, 5, 21.
4 Bxod. xxiv. 16, 17; Deut. v. 24; Isa. ix.
1; Ezek. x. 4.
5 Baruch. iv. 24 ; Eccles. xiii. 16.
CHRISTIANITY AS BHAKTI MARGA
heavenly light.
But in the Fourth Gospel Jesus constantly speaks of the tragic events of His passion as being His glory.
Not that He ignored the pain before Him. In the very passage we are considering we have the pathetic words: 'Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour.'
But Jesus overcomes this rising despondency with the declaration : 'But for this cause came I into this hour.'
The agony in the garden of Gethsamene bears witness — to the deadly struggle in His heart.
But even while shrinking from death, Jesus looks forward to it not merely with calmness but with the conviction that it will be His hour of exaltation.
'When ye have liited up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I speak these things.
And he that sent me is with me.; he hath not left me alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing to him.* ' Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.
No one taketh it away from me; but I lay it down of myself.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again,"
'But now I come to thee ; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."*
The glorification of Jesus, as already noted, applies not merely to His death, but to the whole series .of events which took place at the end of His life.
Till the twelfth chapter of the Gospel 'the hour' is not spoken of as having come.
But from that point it 1 John viii, 28, 29, 2 John x. 17, 18.
2 John xvii, 13,
FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING
has come.
And as the Gospel says that the Spirit was not given before the glorification, we understand that His resurrection was part of His hour of glory.'
Perhaps it was because the resurrection of Jesus _ was indissolubly linked in His mind and in the mind of the Evangelist with His death that both these events were regarded as His glorification.
The death of Jesus, a tragedy taken by itself, is an occasion for glory and exaltation when it is considered in relation to the life which came out of it.
The mystery still remains but it is now emptied of its gloom.
THE DgaTH or JESUS THE PATHWAY TO
Mystic UNION It is evident from the next verse that the connexion between His life and death was always present to the mind of Jesus.
' Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die,. it beareth much fruit.
He that loveth his life loseth it ; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep. it unto life eternal.'
The grain of wheat sinking to the earth apparently dead but sprouting into newness of life is a symbol at once of the historic death of Jesus followed by His renewed manifestation of life, and of the death to sin of the devotee followed by a new spiritual life.
The historic death, followed by life, which took place nineteen hundred years ago is perpetually repeated in. the souls of bhaktas.
Life, with John, is generally the life of fellowship with Christ.
It is this which is of eternal and abiding 1 John vii. 39.