“Don’t go to bed angry.” How many times have you heard some version of this marital proverb? Many bright-eyed couples hear it in premarital counseling and happily nod along in agreement. Those who’ve been married for a while may chuckle at the naivete. We’ll see if they’re still smiling and nodding in a few months.

Once you’re married, the counsel quickly becomes more complicated, uncomfortable, and costly. Sometimes, dealing with anger before bedtime can feel like finishing the basement before bedtime. My wife and I know firsthand, having fought hard over seven years to subdue our anger before exhaustion subdues us. Achieving a cheap, superficial peace may be easy enough, but meaningful reconciliation typically takes meaningful time and energy and, well, work.

The counsel really is good counsel, though, because it’s God’s counsel: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). The command covers all relationships, but marriage may be the hardest place to apply it. For many of us, marriage carries the most potential to make us most angry (or at least angry most often).

Counsel for Couples Battling Anger

This heightened tendency toward anger isn’t a defect in marriage. It’s actually a consequence of what makes marriage beautiful. Marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for anger because marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for intimacy. Sin hurts more when we’ve opened and entrusted all of ourselves to someone. The proximity and vulnerability can make even small sins feel like acts of war.

So how can couples fight to put their anger to bed? While many (rightly) turn to Ephesians 5 for a vision for marriage, the verses immediately before that chapter also hold valuable weapons in the fight to love each other well.

1. Anger is a good emotion that we often express sinfully.

Be angry. (Ephesians 4:26)

You won’t often hear those two words together in premarital counseling (or any counseling, for that matter). Before we try to put away our anger for the night, we need to remember that anger can be a healthy and godly response to evil.

“Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified.”

Many of us have developed a map of our emotional life in which anger is always out of bounds. We tend to assume that anger — especially any anger directed at us! — is unwarranted and wrong. This was my bent coming into marriage. God’s word to us, however, is not, “Never be angry,” but, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Has your marriage made room for some righteous anger over an offense? Does either of you ever say, “I was wrong. I sinned against you. And it’s right for you to be angry about that”?

Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified. Often, we assume the former when it comes to our spouse’s anger, and the latter when it comes to our own. The rest of chapter 4, however, puts checks on the anger that inevitably arises in marriage.

2. Strive to put away all anger.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)

Wait, isn’t this a blatant contradiction? Didn’t Paul just say, “Be angry, and do not sin”? There is a tension here, but not a contradiction. Much of maturity and wisdom in marriage (and in the Christian life in general) is found in the ability to know when to apply seemingly opposite commands — when to correct offenses, and when to overlook them; when to speak, and when to stay silent; when to be angry over sin, and when to put away anger.

“Be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.”

The message should be clear: anger has a place in healthy hearts, but it’s a limited and temporary place. It’s right to feel angry over evil, but only within a life that’s actively, persistently laying anger aside — and not just most anger, but all anger (“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger . . . be put away from you”). God gives even our righteous anger an expiration date — and that expiration date is today.

3. The 24-hour day is a mercy for marriages.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26)

Have you ever wondered why God made each day 24 hours long? Surely there are hundreds of good reasons, but he himself tells us at least one of them here: because it checks our anger and keeps it from breaking into a quiet wildfire. In this way, the 24-hour day is a great mercy for marriages. As the sun crosses the sky each day and begins to bury itself on the horizon, it steadily carries us toward reconciliation. It draws a line in the sand that forces us to choose between submitting to God and seeking reconciliation or refusing his counsel and coddling our hurt.

Many marriages suffer because we let offenses harden into bitterness that slowly erodes trust and intimacy over days, or weeks, or even months. Trust is the currency of intimacy. Spouses can squander that trust in big, obvious ways that we could all name. Trust is also squandered in more subtle ways, though, and perhaps the most common way is by carrying and stoking offenses. The initial hurt or anger may have been completely warranted, but the warrant has long expired, and yet the bitterness quietly remains and wounds and separates. So God pushes the sun around the earth, each and every day, to give us a golden opportunity to put away all our anger.

Let me add one important qualification here: full reconciliation may be unrealistic some days. Releasing our anger does not mean all is well in the relationship. That’s why in our home we talk about pursuing meaningful reconciliation before bed. A little bit of time and sleep can actually be great allies in the process. Insisting on full reconciliation in a short time often will just prolong the pain and discord (again, I’ve learned this firsthand). That doesn’t mean, however, that we should allow ourselves to harbor anger or settle for less than real forgiveness and reconciliation. It just means we’ll have to be patient at times for the warmth and harmony to fully return. The important lesson here is that both spouses resolve to regularly, even daily, put away all anger.

4. Unresolved conflict opens a door for the devil.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

Maybe we would be quicker to resolve conflict in our marriages if we could see what Satan can do with unresolved conflict. It’s not simply that he can poke and stir unresolved conflict and make it worse over time; it’s that unresolved conflict gives him access to every other area of our marriages. An open wound in one area eventually bleeds onto every other area. Sleeping together gets harder. Praying together gets harder. Parenting together gets harder. Scheduling together gets harder. Serving together gets harder. Just existing together gets harder.

Many marriages suffer because they ignore the spiritual war against marriage. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood” — including the flesh and blood lying beside us in bed — “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Every marital battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle, and we’ll inevitably lose that battle if we think we’re only fighting each other.

5. Treat your spouse’s sin as Christ has treated yours.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

How many marital crises and divorces might have been averted if these fifteen words had really taken hold?

Notice, Paul doesn’t merely say, “Be kind and forgive one another,” but “Forgive as God has forgiven you in Christ.” God didn’t just overlook our sin and begrudgingly move on; no, his Son bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, he received our thorns, he was crushed for our iniquities, he was wounded to heal our wounds, he was cursed, all so that we might be forgiven. So forgive as you’ve been forgiven. Nothing you or I suffer in marriage will ask or demand more of us than what Christ bore for our sake on the cross.

Many couples who have practiced this verse have made a startling discovery: conflict is actually an unusual opportunity for intimacy. Why? Because when we treat each other’s sin as Christ has treated ours, we both get to see and experience more of him. For sure, we get to see and experience him on the days when we get along, but how much more present and real does he feel when we extend and receive meaningful forgiveness, when we receive harshness with kindness, when we stay and love when we could reasonably leave?

The moments in marriage that make us most angry can become the clearest pictures of Christ and his church. What else could make a husband so kind, even now? What else would compel a wife to forgive him — again? Where else would a love so selfless, so patient, so resilient even come from?

So, husband and wife, be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.

Audio Transcript

Hashtag winning. Global missions and personal evangelism is all about winning. Winning is the word Paul loves to use, as you can see in a text like 1 Corinthians 9:19–22. There Paul wrote,

Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. [And] to the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.

So what does Paul mean when he uses win five times in four verses? Here’s Pastor John to explain Paul’s word, and why it matters for our evangelism today.

Now the word win in English is ambiguous. You can win a prize, and you can win an argument. What does Paul mean by win — win all these people? If you win a prize, you gain it: “I’ve got it. I have it. Mine!” If you win an argument, you defeat somebody.

What’s Paul’s meaning? There’s no doubt what his meaning is. It’s on the face of it, but it’s even more clear in the original language. He means, “I win a prize. I gain a prize.” How do I know that? Well, it’s just obvious from the context, I think. But test me on this, the hundreds of you who know your Greek. Kerdainō is the verb for win. It’s almost always translated gain (except for here and one other place), like in Matthew 16:26: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” That’s kerdainō, the word win here. Or Philippians 3:8: “I count everything as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ.” That’s the word win here.

Our Expansive Joy

So his point is, “I want to gain Jews. I want to gain Gentiles. I want to gain the weak. I don’t want to gain money. I don’t want to gain power and rights. The gospel has assured me that I get great gain in fully enjoying Christ, so what can I add to that? More enjoyers of Christ for me to enjoy.”

“I want to gain people, all kinds of people, so that I can be a sharer with them as they enjoy gospel blessings.”

What does that even mean? And he tells us what he means by the reward of gaining people in 1 Corinthians 9:23: “I do it all for the sake of the gospel [here comes the purpose statement], that I may share with them [that is, with all those people that I gained] in its blessings.” So he wants to gain more and more people so that he might share in the gospel blessings with them.

Now, notice the wording carefully. He does not say what I would expect him to say (and it would be true): “. . . so that they can share with me in the gospel blessings.” There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s absolutely true, right? Missionaries go out to bring people to share with them in the gospel blessings. That’s not what he says. He says, “. . . that I may share with them in the blessings of the gospel.” I want to gain people, all kinds of people, so that I can be a sharer with them as they enjoy gospel blessings, that I might enjoy their enjoyment of Christ.

Now, what does that imply about the nature of joy in gospel blessings? What do I mean by “gospel blessings”? Forgiveness of sins; declaration of your righteousness before Christ, before God; removal of all condemnation; reconciliation with God; adoption into his family; fellowship with Christ; hope of eternal life. What does what Paul just said imply about my enjoyment of that, those gospel blessings?

Here’s what it implies: our gospel joy is authentic and satisfying only if we desire to taste this joy in the hearts of other people. I’ll say it again. Our gospel joy in those blessings is authentic and satisfying only if we desire to taste those blessings and that joy in the hearts of other people as they experience those blessings. “I want to gain people. I want to gain people of all kinds in order that I might share in their experience of gospel joy.” Do you?

‘I Want You’

Let me just pause here, because this is relevant for missionaries, it’s relevant for every believer, and I just have a little practical, earnest plea. Most of you have shared the gospel with a dad or a mom or a brother or a sister or a son or a daughter or a roommate or a colleague or a friend or a stranger.

“Our gospel joy is authentic and satisfying only if we desire to taste this joy in the hearts of other people.”

And if you’ve never done this, I really encourage you to do it. Next time, when the situation allows it — that is, there’s enough solitude and earnestness — you sit down across the table at a restaurant, and you look them in the eye, and you say, “I want you. I really want you. I want you to be my friend forever. I want you to be my brother, my sister, forever. I want to gain you. I want your joy to be my joy.” They’ve never heard anybody say that to them. Many people have explained the facts to them, right? How many people have looked into their eyes and said, “I want you — I want you to come in, be in my life, be in my church, be in my forever”?

That’s, I think, what Paul was saying. “I want to gain people.” And I would just say, right here, to the unbelievers in the room, “I want you.” I know about some of you. We’ve had emails. You’re here. You may still be resisting. And just hear John Piper say, “I want you forever, my brother, my sister, my friend.” I mean it.

Saved by God from God

Did you notice where I stopped in my list of people that he is trying to gain? You should have said, “Why did he stop there?” Because there was another thing. I stopped right in the middle of 1 Corinthians 9:22. What did I leave out? Let’s pick it up in the middle of 1 Corinthians 9:22: “I have become all things to all people, that I might [and he switches from win to save] save some.” What does save mean for Paul? “I want to save people.” Well, he doesn’t mean that he’s the Savior. He doesn’t mean he’s the means of people’s salvation. What does he mean?

Romans 5:9: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Or 1 Thessalonians 1:10: “Jesus . . . delivers us from the wrath to come.” Being saved, in biblical language, means first and fundamentally — those are two important words: first and fundamentally. There are other things it means, but first and fundamentally, it means that God, by means of the substitution of Christ bearing our condemnation, saves us from God. And if you don’t get that, I don’t know how you get the gospel at all. We are saved by God from God. We’re saved by the love of God from the wrath of God. And Christ was sent by God to reconcile us to God and lead us out of wrath.

In 1 Corinthians 9:23, Paul says, “I want to share with them, those that I’m saving, in their enjoyment of the gospel blessings” — meaning, “I want to share with what happens when they hear the verdict in the courtroom, ‘not guilty,’ and they run out of the courtroom and do handsprings down the sidewalk in front of the court, saying, ‘I’m not going to be executed! I’m not going to be killed! I’m not going to be spending eternity in hell! I am free!’”

“I want to be there,” Paul said. “I want to share in that. I want to watch that happen all over the world with Jews and Gentiles.” Do you? If it only happens to one person in your life, it will be one of the sweetest moments of your life to have a person thank you and watch them come into the enjoyment of no condemnation forever.

ABSTRACT: Those who celebrate the God-centeredness of God might expect to find in the Gospels a clear Christ-centeredness of Christ. As Jonathan Edwards argues in two of his greatest works, however, Jesus’s pursuit of glory is complex, multilayered, and dynamic as he moves from the manger to the cross. The Gospel of John in particular shows how Jesus renounces the pursuit of his own glory during his earthly life, seeking instead the Father’s glory as his last and ultimate end. Yet, as he moves closer to the cross, Jesus increasingly looks forward to the glory he will receive from his Father — indeed, the glory he and his Father share. Along the way, we learn from Jesus’s example of holy creatureliness, and we worship him as the one who died, rose, and now sits with his Father in unsurpassed glory.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, David Mathis traces the God-centeredness of Jesus through the Gospel of John, with help from Jonathan Edwards.

“That one phrase, the glory of God” — says Jonathan Edwards — includes “all that is ever spoken of in Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works.”1

This might be Edwards’s most memorable, and often quoted, summary of his Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. In the final section, he argues that God’s supreme end in creation is one (not many), and that this one end is best captured as the glory of God — that is, the “true external expression of God’s internal glory and fullness.”2 God made the world, and rules all of history, to display his own glory.

So, many of us, gladly persuaded by the biblical refrain, speak reverently of “the God-centeredness of God.” As the Scriptures testify at many times and in many ways, and as Edwards catalogs and presents, our Creator righteously has a “supreme regard to himself,”3 rather than any mere humans. With patient instruction and careful reflection, biblically shaped minds often see the sense and rightness of the infinite value of the Creator compared to his creatures — yet the incarnation and human life of Jesus raises some fascinating questions.

What happens when the Creator himself, in the eternal person of his Son, takes on our full humanity, and in this way becomes a creature, with us, in the created world? How does the earthly life of Jesus, the God-man, in his so-called “state of humiliation,” from birth to the cross, relate to God’s God-centeredness? And how does this God-centeredness relate to Christ’s subsequent “state of exaltation,” beginning with the cross and resurrection, and including his ascension and sitting down on heaven’s throne?

Developing Theme

In both Edwards’s dissertation and his most celebrated work, The Freedom of the Will, he addresses (albeit indirectly) this often-overlooked aspect of our doctrine of Christ. In End, chapter 2, section 3 (on “particular texts of Scripture, which show that God’s glory is an ultimate end of the creation”), Edwards briefly notes that “Scripture leads us to suppose that Christ sought God’s glory as his highest and last end,”4 a theme to which he returns in section 6. In Freedom, Edwards draws in a relevant aspect of his christology as “a point clearly and absolutely determining the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians.”5

As we’ll see below, in both instances, Edwards leads us to consider our question diachronically, rather than statically. In other words, despite our tendency to press for a simple timeless answer, Edwards observes a progress and development of the theme across time as the incarnate Christ moves through his “state of humiliation” to his “state of exaltation.”

Today, in his exalted state, with the Son’s redemptive work complete, the glory of the Father and his Son are seen to be the one essential whole that they are, and always have been. But in the earthly life of Christ, the plan of the Father and Son unfolded in history as Jesus moved toward the cross.

Christ’s Goal in Life

First, Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father and his Father’s glory. Rightly did the angels proclaim, “Glory to God!” at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:14), as the glory of the Father came to the fore in the life and ministry of the Son. In his state of humiliation, from manger to cross, the man Christ Jesus did not glorify himself, he says (John 8:54; Hebrews 5:5), but his words and deeds, and the effect and intent of his human life, were in full and glad submission to the will, and glory, of his Father. As Jesus summarizes his earthly life and ministry in John 8:49, “I honor my Father.”

The Son loves his Father (John 14:31). And he lived as man, and set his face toward the cross, propelled by his great delight in and love for his Father. Jesus instructed his disciples to so live, and bear fruit, that his Father would be glorified (Matthew 5:16; John 15:8), and he taught them to pray for the hallowing of his Father’s name (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). The night before he died, Jesus summarized, in prayer, his life’s work as “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). When Jesus sees that, at last, his “hour” has come for the cross, he turns heavenward in prayer, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28).

While the God-centeredness of God might lead us to expect a simple Christ-centeredness of Christ in his earthly ministry, this is largely not what we (yet) find in his state of humiliation. In End, Edwards points to John 7:18 (one of several statements from Jesus renouncing the pursuit of his own glory) as characteristic of Christ’s humbled state: “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” The incarnate Christ does not “[seek] his own glory” but the glory of his Father, “him who sent him.” Jesus sought his Father’s glory, says Edwards, “as his highest and last end.”6

In Freedom, Edwards observes that “the words [of Isaiah 42:1–4] imply a promise of [Christ’s] being so upheld by God’s Spirit, that he should be preserved from sin; particularly from pride and vainglory, and from being overcome by any of the temptations he should be under to affect the glory of this world; the pomp of an earthly prince, or the applause and praise of men.”7

So, to be clear, the God-centered God becoming man in the life of Christ does not produce one who is, in essence, a self-centered human. Jesus’s preservation from sin, says Edwards, is “particularly from pride and vainglory.” As demonstrated in rebuffing Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus did not pursue “the glory of this world.”

Rather, Edwards cites Isaiah 49:7 to show that Jesus, in his state of humiliation, is “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation.” However, here in the same verse of prophecy comes the shift from humiliation to exaltation that will come at the cross: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves” before the one who once was deeply despised.

His Near Approach to Death

As Jesus draws near to the cross, we discover a significant development. Edwards turns from John 7 to the “now” of John 12, with Jesus’s crucifixion “in a few days.”8 Christ is “in this near approach” to his death, and where does he turn? Again to his ultimate and supreme end, praying,

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. (John 12:27–28)

The Father’s voice from heaven then confirms it: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Edwards comments, “God had glorified his name in what Christ had done, in the work he sent him upon [in his earthly life so far]; and would glorify it again, and to a greater degree, in what he should further do [in his sacrificial death], and in the success thereof.”9

In his next statement, Jesus refers, however obliquely, to his own lifting up and exaltation. Now, writes Edwards, “in the success of the same work of redemption, he places his own glory, as was observed before.”10 As Jesus had said in John 12:23, with his imminent death in view, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

“God made the world, and rules all of history, to display his own glory.”

In this hour, not only will the Father lift him up, rather than Jesus lifting himself up, but this first lifting up will be a lifting, of all places, to the odium of the cross (Jesus “said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die,” John 12:33). Even as Christ, who is himself God, moves to acknowledge and affirm the coming lifting up, the glorifying of himself, he proceeds with a care befitting his humanity and creatureliness.

Though, at this key juncture, as he draws nearer to the cross, he rehearses his supreme end, to glorify his Father, Jesus also now acknowledges (and reveals that he desires) his own exaltation. As John 13:31–32 fills out Jesus’s multiple motivations in going to the cross, Edwards comments that “the glory of the Father, and his own glory, are what Christ exulted in.”11 Seeing that his hour has come, and that he will soon move beyond his “state of humiliation,” and enter into glory (Luke 24:26) with his great final act of self-humbling (Philippians 2:8), Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31).

In Jesus’s near approach to the cross, we see both glories, as it were — of Father and of Son — coming to the fore, not in competition, and each accentuating the other. Not only will the incarnate Son continue to glorify his Father, as he has since Bethlehem, but now he will do so in new measure “and to a greater degree” — and the Father too will glorify his Son. “So intertwined are the operations of the Father and the Son,” comments D.A. Carson, “that the entire mission can be looked at another way. . . . One may reverse the order.”12 Son glorifies Father, and Father glorifies his Son.

He Comes Yet Nearer

Edwards then moves to the far side of the Upper Room Discourse, to Jesus’s remarkable prayer in John 17, when Jesus “comes yet nearer to the hour of his last sufferings.”13 As in John 12, Jesus prays again for the glory of his Father, and yet here, remarkably, the prayer is, even more clearly, for his own glory, and that to the glory of his Father:

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5)

Verse 1 captures the essence of this “hour” at the cross: the Son will be lifted up in the culminating humiliation that is simultaneously the first lifting up of his exaltation, and this glorification of the Son, at the cross, will be to the glory of the Father. The cross is both the final act and consummation of his humbling and the essential prelude to, even the first act of, his exaltation. Verses 4–5 trace, in sequence, the movement from his humbled earthly life (verse 4) to his coming exalted state (verse 5). Humbled: “I glorified you on earth.” Exalted: “Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence.”

How Did Jesus Endure?

Previously, Jesus had eschewed pursuing his own glory (John 7:18; 8:50), receiving glory from humans (John 5:44), and glorifying himself (John 8:54). In the “near approach” of John 12 and 17, in the quintessential creaturely act of prayer, Jesus reveals the heart that kept him going to the cross — a heart that was not simple, but complex. First, his lifework, and lead prayer, were for his Father’s glory (John 12:28; 17:1). Second, as he draws near to the cross, we see his holy desire for his proper glory and exaltation, not in place of his Father’s but with him, in his presence (John 17:5). And third, his desires for his Father’s glory, and his, come together with his heart of love for his people (John 13:34) and his acting to save them (John 12:46–47). Here Edwards connects John 12 and 17 with Hebrews 12:2:

The expressions of divine grace, in the sanctification and happiness of the redeemed, are especially that glory of his, and his Father, which was the joy that was set before him, for which he endured the cross, and despised the shame: and that this glory especially was the end of the travail of his soul, in obtaining which end he was satisfied.14

“‘The joy set before’ Jesus, through which he endured the cross (and thus loved his people), was his glory and his Father’s.”

In other words, “the joy set before” Jesus, through which he endured the cross (and thus loved his people), was his glory and his Father’s. “The travail of his soul” and subsequent satisfaction refer to Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, who, “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, . . . shall see his offspring [that is, his redeemed people]. . . . Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10–11). In both End and Freedom, Edwards points to Jesus’s looking forward to the reward of his exaltation as the key to his enduring in his state of humiliation, all the way to death on a cross. In End, he says, commenting on John 7:18,

When Christ says he did not seek his own glory, we cannot reasonably understand him, that he had no regard to his own glory, even the glory of the human nature; for the glory of that nature was part of the reward promised him and of the joy set before him. But we must understand him, that this was not his ultimate aim; it was not the end that chiefly governed his conduct.15

In Freedom, Edwards highlights that Jesus

had promises of glorious rewards made to him, on condition of his persevering in, and perfecting the work which God had appointed him (Isaiah 53:10–12; Psalms 2 and Psalms 110; Isaiah 49:7–9). . . . Christ had not only promises of glorious success and rewards made to his obedience and sufferings, but the Scriptures plainly represent him as using these promises for motives and inducements to obey and suffer; and particularly that promise of a kingdom which the Father had appointed him, or sitting with the Father on his throne; as in Hebrews 12:1–2.16

Glory Set Before Him

With Christ, we come to the unique and spectacular man who is also God — and the one person of the Godhead who also became man. We both learn from his imitable example of holy creatureliness, and we worship him as the one who inimitably died and was raised for us.

In doing so, we see that as Jesus came closer to the cross, his pursuit of the Father’s glory became increasingly distinct from ours. We, the redeemed in Christ, have a great “state of exaltation” to come, but not as the unique divine Son. Yet even here, in his unfolding pursuit of divine glory in his “near approach” to the cross, he shows us how we too acknowledge and righteously seek our own portion of creaturely glory. In asking for glory in John 12 and 17, Jesus is strikingly human. On his human knees, in human words, with his fully human mouth and soul, he asks of his Father. He prays. Rather than grasping or putting himself forward, he makes his holy request and walks in faith.

“As Jesus draws near to the cross, we see that the glory of the Father and his Son are one essential whole.”

For Christians, as it was for Christ himself in human flesh, our being glorified, exalted, lifted up by God is no sin or danger. The trouble is our self-glorifying, our self-exalting, our grasping. Jesus’s humble acknowledgment of his coming glory in John 12, and his prayer for his Father to decisively exalt him in John 17, are not instances of man seeking to take or seize glory, but rather man “by patience in well-doing seek[ing] for glory and honor and immortality” (Romans 2:7).

Yet Christ as our imitable example is not the final or most important word. We worship one whose glory is distinct and inimitable. As Jesus draws near to the cross, the glory of the Father and his Son is revealed to be one essential whole. We dare not pit one against the other. So, as Edwards says in End, “The glory of the Father and the Son is spoken of as the end of the work of redemption.”17 And as he writes in Freedom, “the glory bestowed on Christ” does not compete with or detract from the glory of his Father, or the Godhead as a whole.18

As Edwards had long preached, so he confirmed in two of his great works of the 1750s: God made the world “to communicate and glorify himself through Jesus Christ, God-man.”19