All religions worship and glorify their god or gods, and most stress the transcendent and powerful character of their gods and the huge distance there is between them and a human being. What differentiates the Way of Jesus' followers is scandalous to that kind of religious thinking. We carry this revelation in our lives: that God's purpose is to welcome us into His intimate presence, no longer as servants but as sons and daughters. We are to rejoin His family. Jesus will share everything He is and has with us. Our relationship to the Father is to be the same as Christ's. The very Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit - is expanding to include all redeemed humanity. Isaiah and Matthew named Jesus "Immanuel, which means God with us" (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23); Jesus completed this revelation by saying: "I will take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:3). Where we are to be is in eternal communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. St Paul describes this as a mystery, in other words a truth kept hidden: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).
Jesus taught this mystery over and over again, in parables to crowds and more plainly to His disciples. The parable of the prodigal son has the wayward son returning with the conventional religious attitude of humility and self-abasement: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men"; which his father cuts short and orders the utmost honour and status to be given him: "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate" (Luke 15:11-32). On the eve of His passion and death, Jesus spoke at length to His disciples, preparing their hearts and minds for these future spiritual realities: "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:19). Perfect communion.
The Son has His Being in unending glory with the Father and Holy Spirit - forever and ever, world without end, amen. But He left that behind to become one of us: "He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Colossians 2:7). As a son of man, the glory He was crowned with through His passion, was only ever to be a means to this end: to bring us into the selfsame glory.
In Jesus' great prayer in John 17, He says this to the Father: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me" (John 17:22). A more fitting title for this chapter, so near the end of Piper's book, might have been: 'So that We Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour'.
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