WE TURN NOW to another “in Him” passage, and a very important one: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified” (John 13:31). In Him God is glorified. This is important, for this is unlike the Hindu system where you pick out the god you choose, your ishtadeva, your chosen deity, and let the rest go. In Him you do not let God go and concentrate on Jesus. When you concentrate on Jesus God is glorified—you find God when you find Jesus. The more you know of Jesus the more you know of God. Jesus doesn’t rival or push out God. By actual experience, if Jesus is dimmed God is dimmed, and conversely, where Jesus is emphasized God is the more real. It is a strange phenomenon—but it is a fact.
A member of a Unitarian group came to me and said: “Won’t you come to our national convention and help us to get God back. We are drifting into a humanism.” That was strange—Unitarianism which concentrated on God was losing Him, and I who concentrated on Jesus had found God—and had found Him to the degree that I concentrated on Jesus. The fact is that apart from Jesus we know very little about God, and what we know is usually wrong. When you deepen the Christ-consciousness, you deepen the God-consciousness. I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins in my experience.
Another amazing thing is this: God was glorified in Jesus at the moment when the cross began to loom before Him. “When he [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified.’” The emphasis is on “now.” God was glorified in Jesus as Jesus chose the cross. God approved of the cross and was glorified in it, for it was the revelation of the character of God as sacrificial love. There is no higher glory than that—none whatever.
O Father, I’m grateful that Your glory is not particularly in the stars or in the manifestations of Your might, but in Your self-giving at a cross. Such a God can have my heart, and can have it without qualification, for at the cross I see the heart of my Father, and I’m satisfied. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The cross lights up the nature of God as love.
