John 1:14  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

When we hear the word glory, we might think of beauty and power, majesty and might. We might think of Jesus walking on water. Jesus feeding the five thousand. Jesus raising Lazarus. Christ's glory must mean that He walked just an inch above the ground, that He was surrounded by angels and archangels, that He emitted a glowing, heavenly light. Right? Wrong.

In JOhn's Gospel, Christ's supreme and ultimate glory is His suffering and death. On Palm Sunday, Jesus says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" (John 12:23). Right after Judas Iscariot leaves to betray Him, Jesus says, "Now is the Son of Man glorified" (John 13:31). Just before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son" (John 17:1). Christ's glory in John's Gospel is His bitter passion and God-forsaken death.

Christ's greatest glory, then, is to love us, forgive us, and come to us right where we are. He is the Jesus of the dying marriage. The Jesus of the divorced and the desperate. He is the Jesus of the bitterly broken. The Jesus of the soiled and the shamed. He is the Jesus of those who are sickened by what they see going on in their life. Do you see Him? Do you see His glory? He did it all for you.
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