(Audio)
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
Eternal life means knowing the Father and the Son. It means seeing in the resurrection the Father's action of glorifying the Son. In turn, it means seeing in the Son's offering back to the Father his chosen people, now filled with the Son's own glory, the Son glorifying the Father.
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
From all eternity the Father and the Son glorify one another in their love for one another, the love who is himself the Holy Spirit. But Jesus came to open this hidden reality to us so that we ourselves could know it, by knowing it share it, and by sharing it possess eternal life.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
Counterintuitively it is this prayer for the revelation of the glory that is his that initiates the movement toward the cross. The cross is not the fulfillment of the prayer, yet it is the path, and somehow already a revelation itself. Even in the very midst of his agony the glory of the LORD already began to be made manifest.
When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (see Matthew 27:54).
And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (see Luke 23:42).
The centurion and the good thief already began to see the truth of who Jesus was. In seeing that they realized the necessity that the Father would respond to this offering, that the cross would not be the end, that God would not abandon his Son to the grave. It was impossible that the grave should hold him.
God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (see Acts 2:24).
In this Easter season we celebrate the revelation of the fullness of the glory of God in Jesus Christ. And while their ought to be many good feelings about this, much affection, and exuberant praise, it is more than any of this. If we let it, it can become the knowledge which is itself eternal life. It was precisely this knowledge that the good thief showed in his final moments. If we truly share it our own lives can be transformed as well.
Paul knew the only true God, and the one whom he sent, Jesus Christ. This knowledge, which is itself eternal life, allowed Paul to go forward even when it seemed to mean that his temporal life would come to an end.
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.
He wanted Jesus to be glorified in him so that through him the Father would be glorified. His own life had already begun to enter into the same dynamic sharing of glory between the Father and the Son about which Jesus prayed. And that dynamic was a power like dynamite. It was more than the world could match. And it is meant for us as well.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
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