Intro
Christ is risen! Peace to you!
I have prepared for you this reflection from the Gospel of St. John which I have entitled Glorified Through Self-Emptying. Today’s passage comes on the night of the Passover, where all of the disciples are in the upper room with Jesus. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet and predicts that Judas would betray him. Satan enters Judas, Jesus says to him “What you’re doing, do quickly,” then Judas leaves.
Now, be encouraged by the reading of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ our Risen Lord from John 13:31-35 (CSB):
31 When [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so now I tell you: ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Thanks be to God for His life-giving words.
Who is Jesus?
From this passage, perhaps you could answer the question, “Who is Jesus” in several different ways. I want to narrow our scope and help us see that Christ is the great victor!
Notice in verse 31, our Lord declares that the Son of Man is glorified. Note that He doesn’t say, “I will be glorified later”, rather, He says, “I am glorified”. How can this be true? Judas had just left to spin the wheels of betrayal, and Christ had not yet been betrayed, arrested, beaten, crucified, buried, resurrected, or ascended. And yet our Lord says “I am glorified”.
His glorification isn’t something happening to Him, but rather, it is manifesting through Him, according to the divine plan of the triune God that they are sovereignly carrying out!
It is important for us to remember, dear friends, that Christ is at no point a victim! Though He is fully man, he never ceases to be fully God (Phil 2:6-8); and in the Gospel narrative, His sovereignty is on glorious display. When the baby, King Jesus, is born by the blessed ever-virgin and mother of God, and they don’t have room in the inn, Jesus is not a victim (Luke 2:7). When the tyrannical ruler decrees to kill the lord and the holy family flees as refugees to Egypt, Christ is not a victim (Matt 2:13-15). When the son of man has nowhere to lay his head, he is not a victim (Matt 8:20). When our Lord is betrayed, arrested, beaten, spit on, crucified, and dies, at no point is he a victim.
One of the most key and glorious truths of the holy gospel is that, as Jesus says, no one takes His life from Him, but He chooses to lay it down (John 10:18). We see this perhaps most clearly in the multiple separate accounts where the crowds were angry at the Lord and they wish to take His life by stoning Him, and he mysteriously denies them of their attempt (John 8:59, 10:39).
And then, of course, while on the cross, the gospel tells us that though he died, he was not killed. Christ says, “Father, into Your hands I entrust my spirit” (Luke 23:46), which demonstrates that he actively, voluntarily gave up His Spirit when it was the right time.
My dear friends, when we think of Jesus, may we be in absolute awe of Him. For from conception to ascension and for all time, our Lord is victor! Alleluia, amen!
How does Jesus encourage us?
Now that we’ve answered “Who is Jesus,” let us look to Him to find encouragement. How does Jesus encourage us?
Many of us are worn down by life’s struggles. Ever since the fall (Gen 3:17-19), we are a people well acquainted with not only hardship, but with toiling, grief, and tears. I could list some examples, but perhaps I don’t need to. You are likely already thinking about how this has applied to you, and if you’re not, I encourage you to reflect and bring these things into the light of Christ so that He can begin healing them.
In Christ, we see that true power and true victory is not through the tyrannical squashing of the thumb. Jesus leaves His throne in glory to trade it for a crown of thorns (Phil 2:5-8), and we see that Christ is glorified not through oppressive might, but through self-emptying, sacrifice, and suffering. As we’ve just considered, it was through suffering that Christ was glorified.
Encouragement for the weary pilgrim is, just as Christ became glorified through humiliation and suffering, He now calls all people to mirror His example and to walk His path (1 Pet 2:21). When we look to Christ in faith, we call out to Him as humble and needy sinners in need of great mercy and refreshment, and He is eager to revive and to heal. And we see that, like the many stations of Christ’s passion, our own sorrows, when offered to Christ in faith, become stepping stones to union with Him. We come to Christ weary and heavy laden, and He longs to give us rest (Matt 11:28), and part of the rest that He gives us is the inheritance that He has earned for us. When we share together with Him in His glory, and through our weakness His strength is perfected (2 Cor 12:9), and as He holds up our arms, we can earnestly say, by God’s grace, we are more than conquerors (Rom 8:37).
My friends, this is true. And we can have hope and confidence in it because Christ is the victor. He was always the victor, and He will always be.
Will you come to Him? And will you take off your broken, heavy yoke, and will you join to His yoke where the burden is light (Matt 11:30)?
How can we follow Jesus?
Well, I’ve asked you to come to Jesus. There are many ways that we can come to Jesus, perhaps the surest way is through obedience to His commands (John 14:15).
In today’s passage, Christ gives a new command: Love one another. How? In the same way that Jesus loved us, we are to love one another.
Personally, it has been very helpful to recall time and time again the definition of agape love, which is the way that God loves us (1 John 4:8). This is self-giving, sacrificial, and steadfast. Christ is self-giving, sacrificial, and steadfast. We, then, like Him, must be self-giving, sacrificial, and steadfast.
When it comes to sacrificial love, all bets are off. From the cross, Jesus offered forgiveness to the very ones who were, out of ignorance, assaulting Him (Luke 23:34). Jesus predicted that Judas would betray Him, and just moments before, He washed His feet (John 13:1-17).
We must be a people who see every single person across from us as greater than ourselves (Phil 2:3). We must be eager to be last, eager to lay down our pride, egos, preferences, status, riches, privilege. And not to lay these things down for the sake of laying them down, but rather, laying them down to the advantage of one another. We decrease so that Christ may increase (John 3:30), and Christ may increase when we abandon our own lives for one another.
This is how we mirror Christ, who though He was equal with God, He did not consider it as something to be exploited, but rather took on the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-7). If you want to be great, you must be last (Mark 9:35). If you want to follow Jesus, this is the way. The narrow way.
As we seek to empty ourselves as our Lord has emptied Himself, may God have mercy on us and help us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.