Chapter 02

The Marks of A Christian

An Unending Preoccupation with the Glory of God

John 13:31-38

[Slide 1] In Galatians 6:7 , Paul wrote, "...I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Paul’s body was heavily scared—scares from beatings, shipwreck bruises, and marks from imprisonments. These marks set him apart because they spoke of his unbending commitment to the Lord Jesus.

Historically, Christians have displayed a number of different kinds of symbols to mark their identity as believers. Lapel pins and neck chains with gold crosses are nothing new. They have been used almost since the beginning of Christianity as marks of identification for believers. In recent years, bumper stickers, posters, tee shirts, decorated Bibles, and jackets with embroidered insignia all have been used by people trying to identify themselves as Christians, they are fine symbols, but superficial‑‑only as deep as the surface they are attached to.

As a Christian, whether you wear a button, display a bumper sticker, or use any other kind of visible symbol has little, if any real consequence. More important, and infinitely more definitive than all the pins and stickers and buttons, are the internal, spiritual signs of a true believer.[1]

[Click] That’s what Jesus was getting at when He said  in Matthew 16:24NASB95 “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.  So Paul writes in  Galatians 2:20NASB95 “I have been crucified with Christ; . . .[2] In Romans 6:11, “Even so you [also] consider yourselves to be dead . . .”  So the first mark surely is a mark of death embedded deep into our hearts, our minds, and our bodies.

I. The Marks of the Committed Christian

In John 13:31‑38, Jesus gives three more distinguishing marks that sets a Christian apart.  We will only highlight one of them this morning.

When we come to John 13 Jesus' earthly ministry was coming to an end. It was the night before His death. And He was spending those last hours with His disciples to prepare them for His leaving. He had just dismissed Judas to leave His presence eternally. With Judas gone, Jesus turned to the eleven remaining disciples and gave them a His farewell speech.

When therefore He had gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself and will glorify Him immediately. Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, "Where I am going, you cannot come.'

     "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

    Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, where are You going?"

     Jesus answered, "Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you shall follow later."

     Peter said to Him, "Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for you."

     Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a cock shall not crow, until you deny Me three times."

That passage introduces Jesus' last commission to His disciples before He went to the cross. His ‘final’ message, which continues through John 16, contains every ingredient we need to know about discipleship.

In fact, the basics of Paul's teaching on the subject of discipleship come right out of this portion of John. Thus these concluding words of our Lord on His last evening with His disciples are strategic to our understanding of what Christ expects of us as believers. Lets look at the first of the three marks of a Christian in Jesus’ final challenge to His disciples

[Slide 2] A. An Unending Preoccupation with the Glory of God

Following the mark of death,  the committed Christian is to be preoccupied and absorbed with our Lord's glory.

The very purpose for which we exist is to give glory to God. Jesus is concerned only with living to give glory to God. He's not concerned about himself. He's not preoccupied with his own glory. He's not worried about what brings honor to him. He's not on a popularity binge. He's not trying to climb the ladder, to get something bigger and better for himself.

 And so it is to be with His Followers. The greatest concern of a Disciple is our Lord's glory. We live so that whatever we do brings glory to our Lord. We realizes that it doesn't matter what people think of us, but only that they glorify God. Our motives, our theme, our goal, our reason, our purpose is to give the Lord glory in everything we do. Our lives are to reflect in some way the attributes of God, and God is praised by the way we live out our lives.

Jesus taught His us that perspective both by example and by precept:

     When therefore [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself and will glorify Him immediately. Little children, I am with you a little longer. You shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'

Reading that first phrase, we can almost sense a sigh of relief from our Lord. Now that Judas was gone, He could speak freely to His disciples. God incarnate, Jesus Christ, had come to earth in humility. He had restricted the full manifestation of His glory and subjected Himself to human frailty, though He never sinned. For thirty‑three years His glory had been shrouded in human flesh. By tomorrow He would be in His glory again. All the attributes of God would be on display in Him.

With His coming glory in mind, Jesus makes three distinct statements. Each is unique and important.  

[Slide 3] 1. V31a, "Now is the Son of Man glorified."

The first is in v31, a great statement of anticipation: "Now is the Son of Man glorified." Judas had already begun to set everything in motion. He had already initiated and been paid for the betrayal, and he was out moving about, getting everything set. In just a few hours, Jesus and the disciples would go into the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ would continue His teaching. There Judas would march in with the soldiers and set in motion the events that would lead to Jesus' death. It was right around the corner, and Jesus was ready to die‑‑to be glorified.

Even though the cross looked like shame, disgrace, and disaster, it was glory. At first it may seem difficult to understand how death can be glory, especially death by crucifixion. In His death our Lord experienced the deepest kind of shame, humiliation, accusation, insults, infamy, mockery, spitting, and all that men could throw at Him. He died hanging between thieves, receiving the agony of sin and separation from God. Yet knowing He was facing all of that, Jesus could say, "Now is the Son of Man glorified."

How was there glory in the cross? There Jesus performed the greatest work in the history of the universe.

§         In His death He brought to pass the salvation of damned sinners, destroyed sin, and defeated Satan. He paid the price of God's justice and purchased for Himself all the elect of God.

§         In dying for sin, He rendered His life a sweet‑smelling savor to God, a sacrifice more pure and blessed than any sacrifice ever offered. And when the offended justice of God and the broken law were fully satisfied, Jesus concluded His work by saying, "It is finished." He had accomplished the redemption of the human race, satisfied the justice of God, repaired the broken law, and set men free.

§         In all heaven and earth, no act is so worthy of praise and honor and full glory.  

[Slide4] 2. V31b, And God is glorified in Him.

 Jesus makes a second statement about glory. Not only was He glorified, but God was also glorified in Him.

God is glorified through the details of the gospel. When Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him," He was speaking of His death, burial, resurrection, exaltation, and coming again. All the glory He was speaking of came through those things. And those things are the elements of the gospel message.

[Click] a. One of the greatest ways we can give glory to God is declare the gospel.

The message of the gospel radiates the glory of God like nothing else in all the universe. When we declare the gospel we are declaring the clearest and most powerful aspects of God's glory. Thus in a sense, witnessing is one of the highest and purest forms of worship, because it most clearly affirms the glory of God.

[Click] b. God's glory is wrapped up in His attributes.

His love, mercy, grace, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence‑‑all the attributes of God‑‑reflect and declare His glory.

We glorify God when we in any way praise or acknowledge or experience or display His attributes. When we are examples of His love, for instance, we glorify Him. When we acknowledge and yield to His sovereignty, we glorify Him. That is what it means to glorify God.

 At the cross every attribute of God was manifest in a way that had never been manifest before. The power of God, for example, was made visible on the cross.

The kings of the earth, the rulers of the earth took counsel together against God and against His Christ. The terrible enmity of the carnal mind and the desperate wickedness of the human heart nailed Jesus to a cross. The fiendish hatred heart nailed Jesus to a cross. The fiendish hatred of Satan put forth its best effort. The world and Satan and every demon in the universe threw all the power they had at Christ, and He had the power to overcome it all. In death He broke every shackle, every dominance of sin, and every power of Satan forever. His graphic display of God's power thus glorified God.

[Click] c. The justice of God seen in the cross in all its fullness.

The wages of sin is death, and if God was going to redeem sinners, someone had to die, for their sin. The penalty of the law had to be enforced, or God's justice would be compromised. Isaiah says that as Jesus hung there on the Cross, "the Lord... caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him" (Isaiah 53:6). Even though it meant the slaying of God's beloved Son, God would not overlook justice.

Thus by paying the greatest price, Christ glorified God on the cross by displaying His justice in the greatest possible way‑‑more so than if every member of the human race were to suffer in hell forever.

[Click] d. God's holiness was also manifest at the cross.

Concerning God's holiness Habakkuk wrote that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and [cannot] look on iniquity" (Habakkuk 1:13, KJV*). Never did God so manifest His hatred for sin as in the suffering of the death of His own Son. As Christ hung on the cross, bearing the sins of the world, God turned away from His only begotten Son in the midst of His suffering.

Even though He loved Jesus Christ with an infinite love, His holiness could not tolerate looking on the sins of the world. That's why Jesus cried out in agony, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). All the cheerful obedience of the holy men of all ages is nothing in comparison with the offering of Christ Himself in order that every demand of God's holiness might be fully met. Through it, God was glorified.

[Click] e. God's faithfulness was displayed at the cross.

He had promised the world a Savior from the beginning. When Christ, the sinless One, was offered on the cross to receive the full and final wages of sin, God showed to all heaven and earth that He was faithful. Even though it cost Him His only Son, He went through with it. When we see that kind of faithfulness, we are seeing His glory.

There are many other attributes of God that were displayed in their fullness at the cross, but the one that stands above all the others is the attribute of love. "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). The human mind cannot comprehend the love that would cause God to permit His Son to die as an atonement for our sins. But He is glorified in the display of it.  

[Slide 5] 3. V32, God will also glorify Him.

In His third and final statement about glory, Jesus emphasizes the truth that the Father and the Son are busily engaged in glorifying each other, and the greatest glory of the Son is subsequent to His work on the cross. "If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself and will glorify Him immediately" (John 13:32). There was a certain glory in the cross, but the Father would not stop there. The resurrection, the ascension, the exaltation of Christ in total glory are all important aspects of the glory that would be His. Even today, His greatest glory is yet future.

All this glory that was coming to Christ meant that He had to leave. So He says, "Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, 'Where I am going, you cannot come'"(v. 33). While His thoughts were on His glory and all the grandeur of it, He was also thinking about His eleven beloved disciples. He calls them "little children"‑‑an expression He probably would not have used if Judas had still been present.

a. What did He mean, "As I said to the Jews?"

In John 7:34, He told the Jews who sought to have Him seized, "You shall seek Me, and shall not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come." John 8:21 says, "He said therefore again to them, 'I go away, and you shall seek Me, and shall die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.'" In v24, He adds, "I said therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins."

It is significant that Jesus gives no such warning to His believing disciples. Although they would not be able at this time to follow Him where He was going, there was no danger that they would die in their sins. Jesus was going to the Father, and they would miss His physical nearness, especially in times of trial and problems.

In fact, in Acts 1, as Jesus ascended into heaven, they just stood there, gazing longingly into heaven. They didn't want Him to leave, and Jesus knew that. So here in John 13, He was reassuring them that although His glory would involve His leaving, He still cared for them. It is the introduction of a theme that will carry through the next few chapters.

b. Why did He tell them all this?

Because He knew that as true disciples, their concern was for His glory. He wanted them to share the expectation and the excitement and anticipation of His coming glory. He wanted them to be preoccupied with thoughts of His glory.  

[Slide 6] II. Conclusion

A concern for God's glory, then, is one of the marks of a true disciple. It is the heart of the reason for our existence, a burning passion we inherit from our Lord Himself. 

When Henry Martyn sailed for India, he said, "Let me burn out for God." Later, as he watched in a Hindu temple in India, he saw people prostrating themselves before images. He wrote in his diary, "This excited more horror in me than I can express." He wrote, "I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified, it would be hell to me."

Once somebody said to him, "Why are you so preoccupied with His glory?" And he answered, "If someone plucks out your eyes, there's no saying why you feel pain, it is feeling‑‑it is you. It is because I am one with Christ that I am so deeply wounded." Every genuine disciple knows something of that feeling.[3]

So Paul wrote in Galatians Galatians 2:20NASB95 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

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[1] Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of a Christian, http://www.ccel.us/schaeffer.html; Noel Hornor, Gentleness: The Mark of a Christian, http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn07/gentlenessmark.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_of_the_Christian; J.I. Packer, Knowing God; A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God; Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality; John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life.

[2] New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995. LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[3] John MacArthur, The Mark of A Christian, http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/GTYTT01.HTM