“The objects of his love are mine. He hath given them to me in an everlasting covenant. He hath given me the heathen for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. They were mine by the original right of creation; but now they are doubly mine by the superadded claim of redemption. My Father, before the world was, gave me a charter of all the souls I would redeem. I have fulfilled the condition. I have poured out my soul unto death, and sealed the covenant with the blood of my cross. Therefore all believers are mine. I have bought them with a price. I have redeemed them from the bondage of sin and death. Their names are engraven on my hands and my feet. They are written with the soldier’s spear upon my heart. And of all that the Father hath given me, I will lose nothing. I will draw them all to myself; I will raise them up at the last day; and they shall be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory—the glory which I had with the Father before the foundation of the world.”
II. The Father and the Son are equally glorified in the economy of redemption, and the work of the Holy Spirit.
1. The Son glorifies the Father. I hear him praying in the garden:—“Father, I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” I hear him again, amid the supernatural gloom of Calvary, with a voice that rings through the dominions of death and hell, crying—“It is finished!”
What mighty achievement hast thou finished to-day, blessed Jesus? and how have thy unknown agony and shameful death glorified the Father?
“I have glorified the Father, by raising up those precious things which fell in Eden, and were lost in the abyss.
“I have raised up my Father’s law. I found it cast down to the earth, and trampled into the dust. I have magnified and made it honorable. I have vindicated its authority in the sight of men and angels. I have satisfied its demands on behalf of my redeemed, and become the end of the law for righteousness to all who will receive me as their surety.
“I have raised up my Father’s name. I have declared it to my brethren. I have manifested it to the men whom he has given me. I have given a new revelation of his character to the world. I have shown him to sinners, as a just God and a Saviour. I have restored his worship in purity and spirituality upon earth. I have opened a new and living way to his throne of grace. I have written the record of his mercy with my own blood upon the rocks of Calvary.
“I have raised up my Father’s image. I have imprinted it afresh upon human nature, from which it was effaced by sin. I have displayed its excellence in my own character. I have passed through the pollutions of the world, and the territory of death, without tarnishing its lustre, or injuring its symmetry. Though my visage is marred with grief, and my back plowed with scourges, and my hands and feet nailed to the accursed cross, not one trace of my Father’s image has been obliterated from my human soul. It is as perfect and as spotless now as when I lay in the manger. I will carry it unstained with me into heaven. I will give a full description of it in my gospel upon earth. I will change my people into the same image from glory to glory. I will also renovate and transform their vile bodies, and fashion them like unto my own glorious body. I will ransom them from the power of the grave; and because I live, they shall live also—the counterpart of my own immaculate humanity—mirrors to reflect my Father’s glory for ever.”
2. The Father glorifies the Son. He prayed in the garden:—“And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Was the petition granted? Answer, ye Roman sentinels, who watched his sepulchre! Answer, ye men of Galilee, who gazed upon his chariot, as he ascended from the Mount of Olives!
The glorification of the Son by the Father implies all the honors of his mediatorial office—all the crowns which he won by his victory over the powers of death and hell. The Father raised him from the dead, and received him up into glory, as a testimony of his acceptance as the sinner’s surety—an expression of perfect satisfaction with his vicarious sacrifice upon the cross. It was the just reward of his work; it was the fruit of his gracious travail. He is “crowned with glory and honor for the sufferings of death.” “Because he hath poured out his soul unto death,” therefore “God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name.”