Word of Encouragement (4/12/2021)

The final petition Jesus prayed in His High Priestly Prayer is, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24).

In this final petition, Jesus prays for our translation to heaven. By “where I am,” Jesus did not mean the upper room where He was eating the Passover meal with His disciples. We know He was speaking of heaven because He wanted His disciples (and us!) to be “...where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” How appropriate it is that this is the final petition of His High Priestly Prayer! All that He has prayed for in this prayer culminates in this final petition.

This reaffirms where the center of gravity in Christianity lies—not in this world but in the world to come. Should this surprise us? The eternal was there before the temporary came into being: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). God was there already before He created all things. What is spiritual is eternal but what is material is only temporary. As that which is everlasting takes precedence over that which is transient, so does the eternal, heavenly realm of glory and beauty take precedence over this temporary world of change and decay. The temporary will be no more and only the eternal will remain. It is only right, then, that we should be translated to the eternal realm if we are going to be with Jesus forever.

Why does Jesus want us to see His glory in heaven? This implies that His incarnation veiled His divine glory. This must have been true even after His resurrection. As long as He was in this world, His full glory was not shown even as our resurrected Lord. For that, we will have to wait till we are in heaven. What is it about seeing Jesus’ glory that it is presented as if it is the goal of our salvation? There must be something so life-giving and -enriching about beholding Jesus’ glory that Jesus presented it as the goal of our redemption, the goal of being in heaven!

Admittedly, this is hard for us to imagine how that can be the case. It is easy for us to think of heaven just as a wonderful place to be—a place without any suffering or pain or death, a place of eternal joy and peace and love. But is that what makes heaven heaven? By this time, I hope we all know that there are no such things as joy and peace and love and life apart from God, who is the essence and fullness of all that is good and true and beautiful. If so, what would it be like for us to see Him without the veil of creation (natural revelation) and incarnation (that is, Jesus in the weakness of the human body in this fallen world) and our sinful nature?

There is a kind of seeing that is life-affirming and -restoring. Think of seeing your child show up at the door after missing for days. All the fears about your missing child are dispelled instantaneously the moment you see him standing right in front of you. But that is only a faint reflection of another kind of seeing, which dispels all doubts and uncertainties and fears and answers all questions in absolute certainty: seeing Christ in His glory in heaven. This was what Job experienced in a small measure when God confronted him at the end of the Book of Job. Regarding this experience, Job said, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.... I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 5-6). Job had so many questions and grievances throughout the book but one glimpse at the glory of God was sufficient to settle them all.

But when we see Christ in heaven in His full glory, we will see that all that the Bible said was true, only in a far greater measure, because what we will behold will no longer be bound by the limitations of human language—the effulgent glory of our triune God, the abounding riches of our salvation and all that the Bible promises for God’s people—when we finally behold the full consummation of His eternal and gracious will toward His people. That is our destiny in Jesus Christ because that is what He prayed for and His prayer will never go unanswered. How blessed we are that we have such a High Priest, whose prayer is always efficacious because He prays perfectly according to God’s will! Let this be the deepest longing of our hearts.