“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22).
In this passage, we overhear the Son speaking to the Father about the glory that He received from the Father and that we are able to receive from Him if we are willing to take hold of it. What was that glory? The glory of Christ given to Him by the Father was sonship.
John writes, “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The glory of the Son was that He reflected the Father’s glory; “whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9); He did all the things that pleased the Father and only did and spoke those things that the Father told Him to do or speak. In the same way, we are called to reflect the glory of Christ, so that Christ can be seen in us. This is the glory to which we have been called according to Peter (2 Peter 1:3) who writes that Jesus is “calling us to His own glory and moral excellence”.
That is the real call of God to His people and we can only take possession of His glory and moral excellence through becoming sons, to which “He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the intention of His wish” (Ephesians 1:5). This is the purpose of God’s call, that we might become sons, as Christ was a Son; He as the only begotten, but we as sons by adoption.
Only by our receiving and entering into this adoption by the Father and becoming sons, as Jesus was a Son, can He be the first-born of many brethren (Romans 8:29). For that reason Paul wrote to the Galatians; “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:5-7).
In this way, He is our inheritance, and we are His; ”the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). This is the glory that the Father gave Him, and what He offers to those willing to make the sacrifice to be made into His brethren, is sonship to God.
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