Living with Christ in heaven and eternity will be a life of glorifying him, as his glory will fill eternity and be the joy of Christians.

Source: The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, 2011. 1 pages.

Being with the Glorious Christ in Eternity

Jesus is just hours away from being crucified, yet His mind is focused not on Himself but on those for whom He will lay down His life. In His high priestly prayer recorded in John 17, Jesus presents several petitions to His Father on their behalf, the last one in verse 24: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”

Our Savior here intercedes for those whom the Father had given Him, the elect chosen in Him before the foun­dation of the world. Some of these chosen ones are with Him: the twelve disciples minus one (v. 12). But He is not thinking of them alone. Included in His petition are countless others who would later believe in Him (v. 20).

Jesus would soon return to heaven to receive His Father’s reward upon a mission fully accomplished. Great honor and glory await Him, and He is looking forward to receiving them. However, He does not wish to revel in those glories alone. He is eager to share them with His people. So He prays, “Father, I will that they also ... may behold my glory which thou hast given me.”

What exactly constitutes Christ’s glory? It is the glory the Father had bestowed on His Son as Mediator, not the glory He already possesses as the eternal Son of God. It is the glory of the God-man, the Immanuel, God with us, that believers will behold upon entering heaven.

The word behold means more than just to see or observe. It denotes seeing which affects and transforms the beholder. Paul speaks of our beholding the glory of the Lord and being changed into His image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). This implies that those who will behold Christ’s glory in heaven have already seen that glory on earth. Indeed, as John Owen says, “No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter, who doth not in some measure behold it by faith here in this world” (quoted by John Brown, The Intercessory Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ, p. 188). It is the Spirit’s work to glorify Christ and to make Him appear glorious to those whom He leads to faith in Him (John 16:14). “Whom having not seen,” Peter says, “ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

Although believers are granted wonderful views of their Savior on earth, they will be granted greater visions of Christ’s glory when they die and open their eyes in heaven. But even there the vision is not complete. The full manifestation of Christ’s glory will take place at His glorious return, at which time our lowly bodies will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body (Phil. 3:21). In our glorified bodies, freed from every sin and imperfec­tion, “we shall be like him,” the apostle says, “for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Will your eyes behold the glory of Christ? Not if they stay focused on the pleasures of sin and the world; not if your religion, orthodox and sound as it may be, is an outward affair. But if Christ has become precious to you so that you look to Him as your Savior, trusting in His righteousness alone for acceptance with God, you will behold His glory in an ever increasing way. Here you may get occasional glimpses of His glory by faith, looking in a glass darkly. But one day you will see His glory face to face. That will be so glorious that words fail to explain it adequately.

May the prospect of being with our glorious Christ in eternity motivate us to live as strangers and pilgrims in the earth, eagerly awaiting His return from heaven (1 Thess. 1:10). May the Lord enable us to say with David, “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (Ps. 17:15).

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