4 June 2019 - that glorious word

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is glorified by fulfilling his Father's plan. He wants us to know the glory that he shares with the Father. Jesus revealed his glory to us through this plan for our salvation. He died and rose again and ascended in glory. Now because of the revelation accomplished through this plan about the truth of the claims made by Jesus it is possible for us to know both him and, through him, the Father. This knowledge that gives eternal life required that the Father glorify the Son. It is a knowledge marked by glory. Natural analogies fail. Even the most glorious sunrise is nothing compared to the glory of revealed in the resurrection of Jesus.

and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,

It is the glory that the Gospel reveals that makes it so compelling. It makes it impossible to ignore. It calls us to proclaim it in season and out of season, and to never be ashamed of it. No other stories or ideas have this aspect. Neither Aristotle, nor Plato, nor Cicero nor Shakespeare, though they may have been smarter or more skilled writers, conveyed anything comparable to this glory in their works.

Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God's grace.

The revelation of the Gospel has genuine power to transform us and to completely relativize things that used to matter to us, surplanting them with the all surpassing worth of knowing God, and the one he sent, Jesus Christ.

Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.

We sometimes hear the truth of our faith without beholding the glory that underlies it. But that glory is there waiting for us. When we behold it we plug ourselves more fully into eternal life, even here and now. When we do look we are transformed.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (see Second Corinthians 3:18).