We can appreciate the significance of Christianity only when we are thoroughly embued with a sense of Christ’s glory. If we should lose this personal sense, our preaching and discussions about the meaning and importance of Christianity in the world would be worthless. Perhaps nowhere more than in the Fourth Gospel is the glory of Christ more wonderfully revealed. This article will suggest ways in which the message of the glory of our Incarnate Lord comes to us in this Gospel.
ILLUMINATED BY GLORY
Students of John’s Gospel have usually agreed that the special quality of John’s message lies in his witness to the doxa, or the glory that shines through the life and work of Jesus Christ. Other Gospel writers, too, present the glory of the Lord, but in John this glory comes to expression in a specially impressive way. John is concerned with the glory of the Word become flesh. He speaks not only of the glory that comes to Christ after the resurrection, but of the glory that is his during his life on earth. John knows with Paul, of course, that Christ was taken up into glory (1 Tim. 3:16). And he speaks of Christ’s life on earth as the time when the Spirit had not yet come because Jesus was not yet glorified. Still, he sees the entire life of Jesus illuminated by beams of glory. The beams are not merely dim reflections of future glory. Our Lord’s glory was manifest in the very humiliation that he suffered while on earth. “We beheld his glory,” John writes. But this is a vision which calls for a special kind of perception. The Jews saw him without seeing his glory, and they were offended in him. But the glory was nonetheless manifest. It was apparent, for instance, in the account of the wedding at Cana where Jesus performed the first of the miracles in which his glory was revealed.
When the Greeks came to see Jesus, our Lord said: “The hour is come that the Son of man must be glorified.” The way in which glory is revealed is the way of the dying grain of wheat. Recall also what Jesus said to the Jews: “When you shall see the Son of man lifted up.” Or, again, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die” (John 12:32, 33). The physical and local elevation of our Lord to the cross is thus associated with his glorification. It is the same with the reference in John 3:14 to the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness. As the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of man must be lifted up in order that everyone who believes may have eternal life. The beams of glory shine through the very death of the Saviour, yea, even in the death of the cross. Of this John was a special witness.
PARADOX BUT NOT CONTRADICTION
We may speak of the paradox of John’s vision of glory in Christ’s humiliation, but we would go wrong if we spoke of a contradiction in it. He is telling us that the life of Christ does not end in a tragic fatality, that his life is not climaxed by disappointment to which the Resurrection is added by way of unexpected happy appendage. The mystery lies in the nature of the humiliation itself; the paradox lies in this life which is so wholly characterized by self-humiliation. The glory that illuminates the humiliation does not remove anything from the profundity of the humiliation; it shines through the deep debasement of Christ and is recognized for what it is only by faith and is confessed only in fellowship with Christ.
Many different and sometimes critical conclusions have been drawn from John’s association of glory with the humiliation of our Lord. Some scholars have said that it is a post-Easter injection, a theology created by the Church and set back into the life of Christ which gives it a color that did not originally belong to it. When this is the interpretation, a sharp contrast is usually drawn between the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel in order to prove the point. We are reminded of the Synoptic account of the transfiguration, or glorification, of Jesus on the Mount. Here the Synoptics present a visible metamorphosis. Our Lord’s face is transfigured before the very eyes of the disciples. His eyes shine as the sun and his clothing becomes as white as light. John, we are told, does not present this kind of story. From John we get no stories of a visible glorification, nor change in Christ’s face or clothing. John relates only one kind of glorification, the glory of a Man of Sorrows on the via dolorosa. The Fourth Gospel portrays nothing spectacular except the glory of which Jesus himself speaks after his warning to Judas: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and now is God glorified in Him.”
I consider it unjust to construe this as a contradiction between the Synoptics (with their visible transfiguration story) and the Gospel of John. It is striking that the glorification visible to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration is directly connected with the message that Jesus receives from Moses and Elijah, the message about his forthcoming journey of suffering to Jerusalem. It is equally striking that John does not mention this physically discernible glorification and that he does on the other hand often speak of the glorification of Jesus in his sacrifice and death. He speaks, in other words, of a glorification discernible only to faith. John is surely aware of a glorification that is to come later. He remembers that the Spirit would come later to bring all things to their remembrance. But John is also impressed with the glory of Christ in the midst of the profound darkness toward which He is persistently heading. He observes that many do not believe, even though many signs were done in their midst. He knows that Christ’s glory is not apparent to all in the same way that street signs are visible to all with open eyes. But when men do not see the glory in the Saviour’s suffering, it is, according to John, because of the hardness of their hearts. Even Isaiah, who prophesied of the Man of Sorrows, saw his glory (Isa. 6:1).
HIS SUFFERING AND HIS GLORY
John sees the same glory, and his vision of the glory does not diminish his awareness of the depths of suffering and sorrow through which the Master went. John includes an account of the Passion of Christ just as do the Synoptics. He has the story of feet washing, the betrayal, the capture, the denial by Peter, the crown of thorns, the robe of mock purple, the crucifixion and burial of our Lord. He describes it all in detail and with moving affection. But in his description he includes both the suffering and the glory, the glory and the suffering. When John says, “We have seen his glory,” he is thinking of more than the disciples’ meeting with the risen Lord. He means the entire life and work of the Master to which he was witness.
No other Gospel has related the meaning of the passio magna with more profundity and richness than John’s. No other Gospel so fully portrayed the meaning of our Lord’s sacrificial death, of his willing sacrifice of life in obedience to the Father, than John’s. John entered into the experience of the Lord’s glory after his death, the glory of the Resurrection when the conflict was over, the terror passed through, the tears dried, and the fear vanquished; but he witnesses especially to the profound glory of the life and death of Jesus. He sees the triumph of the dying grain of wheat, the glory in the horrible elevation to death.
In John’s witness we see the testimony of faith in contrast to the offense of the incarnate, humiliated Lord. John does not try to demonstrate his point logically, and he knows that the majority of viewers did not see the glory. Still he witnessed the glory of the humiliated Son of God. It does not surprise us that Luther, impressed as he was with the theologia crucis, the theology of the Cross, was also profoundly influenced by John’s Gospel. For Luther John’s Gospel was “the truly tender Gospel.” It has been said that Luther had more of a hold on Paul than he did on John; that, in fact, he read John through the spectacles of Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians. He read, it is said, Paul’s doctrine of justification into John. There is perhaps some truth to this, but it does not remove the fact that Luther nonetheless was profoundly influenced by the Fourth Gospel. The Reformer put great emphasis on the humiliation of Christ, and yet was unembarrassed by John’s vision of the weight of glory. He realized that John was not balancing off the elements of glory against the elements of humiliation in Christ’s life. He knew John got at the meaning of our Lord’s humiliation—the significance of the shame of the Cross. That John’s Gospel was one of comfort for Luther is probably the reason he cited it commonly in the decisive phase of his life and struggle in 1618.
WHAT BULTMANN OBSCURES
Rudolph Bultmann has said that the Atonement played no role in John’s thought, and the resurrection of Christ was not a specially significant event for John. In John’s thought, the Cross itself was the victory over the world. This, according to Bultmann, is why we do not find John citing Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection as we do in the Synoptics. Christ became the Lord of the cosmic powers through the Cross; the rest of the saving events have no really decisive significance after Calvary. Bultmann says that John’s statement about the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin is probably a later Christian gloss, an addition to John’s real words. Professor Bultmann would have us face then a reduction of the Gospel that is radically disturbing. In Bultmann’s reasoning, all of the great meaning that John saw in the Cross, the meaning that gave it rays of glory, is gone.
We cannot follow Bultmann without losing the real significance of John’s witness. But, on the other hand, Bultmann’s exaggeration must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that for John the meaning of Christ’s life is not restricted to the Resurrection. John takes us with him to our Lord’s life-long humiliation and helps us to share his own vision of the glory that illuminates all of that humiliation. He knows very well the revelation that the Resurrection gives of the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. He knows, too, about the cleansing blood. But just because the meaning is thus revealed later, he keeps us awhile looking at the humiliation of our Incarnate Lord and helps us to see the beams of glory there.
We are close to the Passion and Easter phases of the Christian year. In following John, we shall not be tempted to isolate these seasons. The Passion remembrance is not a recollection of a good man’s bitter suffering that fills us with pity and sympathy. The Easter celebration is not a symbolic acceptance of life in which the suffering is overcome and forgotten. The Gospel of John is a judgment on all subjective preaching of the Passion and Easter seasons. For John is a witness of the redemption that took place in Jesus Christ. Someone once said that the origin of John’s Gospel is one of the great mysteries of ancient Christian history. It is then remarkable that this book with its mysteries and unique character has become one of the best loved of all Bible books. It is also remarkable that its message comes through with unusual directness and clarity and points straight to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.
We may be grateful that we need not wait for answers to every question before John’s Gospel speaks to us and in us. For John’s own intent was not that we should understand all things first, but rather that we should find life through him (John 20:31). He achieves his purpose by pointing to the unquenchable light that shines through the awful darkness, to the glory that radiates through the humiliation of our Saviour.
Home Town
From Cana and the miracle of wine
He took the highway to His boyhood home in Nazareth.
The people gave no sign
that they had heard how crippled men and dumb
had been restored beneath His gentle hand.
He was a prophet without honor here—
here, where His boyish feet had flung the sand.
He read the message in the passing leer
and grin—“Who does he think he is, this son
of Joseph?”
Faces stirred with quiet smirks.
He paused beside the home gate, thinking on
the places that had seen His mighty works.
And here in His home town He saw with grief
all miracles stillborn because of unbelief!
LON WOODRUM
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
