Glory of Jesus

— “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” John 17:5

The glory of Jesus is Jesus Christ’s own divine glory as the eternal Son, the same glory he had with the Father “before the world existed” (John 17:5). Scripture presents this glory as ordinarily hidden in Christ’s earthly life yet disclosed at particular moments: his signs (John 2:11), his transfiguration, and his crucifixion, where “Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory” (John 12:41).¹ At the incarnation the Word “became flesh” without ceasing to be God, and the apostles could say, “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14).

Confessional Witness

The Nicene Creed confesses the Son as “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”² “Light of Light” is itself glory-language: the Son’s splendor is not a reflection borrowed from outside the Godhead but the very brightness of the Father’s own being, eternally begotten rather than created. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession restates the same content in its own chapter on the Trinity, confessing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as “of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided.”³

The confession has no chapter or paragraph devoted to Christ’s glory as its own topic. Its chapter on Christ the Mediator does state his present exalted condition, “the same body in which he had suffered, with which he also ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of his Father.”⁴

Biblical Basis

John’s Gospel names Jesus’ glory as something he possessed with the Father “before the world existed” (John 17:5) and asks the Father that his disciples “may see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).⁵ That glory is disclosed within his earthly ministry at particular points: his first sign at Cana, where he “manifested his glory” and his disciples believed in him (John 2:11); his transfiguration before Peter, James, and John; and his crucifixion, which John presents as the same glory Isaiah saw in the temple vision of Isaiah 6 and in the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.¹ The author of Hebrews identifies the Son as “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” even as he “became partaker in our flesh and blood” (Heb. 1:3; 2:14).⁶ Paul likewise speaks of “the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” shining in the hearts of believers (2 Cor. 4:6).⁷

Doctrinal Significance

Christ’s appeal to the glory he had with the Father “before the world existed” is itself an argument for his full deity and aseity: only one who shares the Father’s own eternal life and glory, not a creature however exalted, could make such a claim.⁵ The same glory that grounds Christ’s deity also grounds his jealousy for it. When Jesus drives the money-changers from the temple, his zeal for his Father’s house (John 2:13-17, citing Ps. 69:9) is, on Barrett’s reading, an expression of the same “pricelessness of this divine glory” that moves him to refuse “glory from people” (John 5:41) and to insist “it is my Father who glorifies me” (John 8:54).⁸

Peter’s own eyewitness account of the transfiguration functions, in Parkison’s reading of 2 Peter 1:16-21, not as an end in itself but as confirmation of “the prophetic word,” so that believers who did not see Christ’s glory on the mountain can still see “the light of Christ’s glory” wherever Christ is proclaimed from Scripture.⁷ The glory Peter saw in part, and that Paul says shines in the hearts of believers through the gospel (2 Cor. 4:6), is glory believers are promised to see in full: Christ’s own prayer, “I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24), points forward to the church’s final, unveiled sight of him.⁸

Opposing Views

Kenotic Christology, associated with nineteenth-century Lutheran theologians and revived in a different form by Jürgen Moltmann, argues that the incarnation itself changed God: on this view “the human history of Jesus enters God’s being and thus determines Trinity,” so that the assumption of human nature entails some real alteration or limitation of the Son’s own divine glory and attributes, not merely their veiling.¹ Chalcedonian Christology holds instead that the incarnation added a human nature to the person of the Son without any change to the divine nature itself: “the Person of the Son, the Logos, became flesh, took on human nature, and not deity as such.”¹ See Kenosis for the fuller treatment of this dispute.

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Philippians 2:7 mean Christ set aside his divine glory at the incarnation? Paul writes that Christ, “though he was in the form of God,” “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:6-7). Bavinck reads the “emptying” as the assumption of a human nature and condition, not the loss of any divine attribute or any change in the divine nature itself: “Monophysitism and Kenoticism in all their varieties are unacceptable because they are at odds with the immutability of God and with the nature of a finite being.”⁶ Christ’s glory, on this reading, was veiled during his earthly humiliation rather than surrendered, which is exactly why Scripture can still describe it breaking through at the transfiguration, in his signs, and at the cross.¹

Related Doctrines

References

Samuel G. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty: Beholding Triune Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021), chap. 3, “Mediated Beauty,” §”The Incarnation of the Immutable Son of God,” 147-159: “Christ reveals this divine glory in far more places in His life and ministry than the crucifixion. Indeed, the transfiguration, the benevolent life and miraculous works of Christ, and the ascension all prove to be fruitful events for theological contemplation of divine glory.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel”: “from eternity the Son is ‘God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,’ as the Nicene symbol has it.” ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 4. ↩
Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 4, “Does God Depend on You? Aseity”: “Jesus can appeal, just prior to the cross, to the glory he experienced with the Father in eternity.” ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father”: “He who was the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being has become partaker in our flesh and blood and like us in all things… . Monophysitism and Kenoticism in all their varieties are unacceptable because they are at odds with the immutability of God and with the nature of a finite being.” ↩ ↩²
Samuel G. Parkison, To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), chap. 2, “Biblical Foundations for the Beatific Vision,” 21-59: “If Peter’s readers wish to see the light of Christ’s glory, the very same light that he saw on the holy mountain, he assures them that they can… . this light is found, Peter assures his readers, in the Scriptures.” ↩ ↩²
Barrett, chap. 12, “Should God Be Jealous for His Own Glory? Jealousy and Glory”: “The pricelessness of this divine glory is what moves Jesus to be jealous whenever he sees that glory dragged through the mud.” ↩ ↩²