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I. CHRIST'S FINISHED WORK.

1. It is true of all men in a sense that they must finish the work given them to do. It may be well done or ill done, but we must each of us weave into the web of human story that bit of the pattern, be it dark or bright, which has been allotted to us. But though we have to finish our task, it may be anything but a finished piece of work for all that. The true soul looking back on its past cannot think but its life has been a poor thing after all. It is a thing of patches and broken ends, of wasted powers, opportunities lost, and the result is a lame and blemished offering that I am ashamed of, as I well might be.

2. But consider how entirely different the attitude of Christ is here. Though like us, having the same burden, and the same life of faith by which to direct His steps, and coming so near to us, yet what a gulf lies between Him and us in virtue of this one fact, that He was wholly without sin. Hence, when He comes to the brink of life, He can look back without one regret, and say, "I have finished the work," &c., so finished it that it needs no supplement, that it will tolerate no amendment. It had been given Him to reveal the Father, and He had discovered to us the brightness of His glory, &c. It had been given to Him to show us the path of life, and through the world's thorns and briers. He had walked on straight and undefiled in the way everlasting. It had been given to Him to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and with every human sympathy He had reached out and laid hold on all the ills of men, and made them all His own. It had been given Him to make His soul an offering for sin, and He was waiting, ready to be offered up. There was nothing which He undertook which He had not fulfilled, no opportunity given Him which He had failed to use. It looks, indeed, a broken life, when we think how brief it was, yet it was the only whole life ever lived on earth.

3. What encouragement lies for us in this, and how it helps to assure our heart before God. The glory which He claimed as His due is to be paid to Him in His people; it was for them that He finished His work, it is for them that He asks His reward. And as He had no misgivings about His right, no more should we when we are pleading in His name.

II. THE PRAYER (ver. 5). It must have been a strange thing, even to those who had accompanied Him so long, to listen to those words. No saying of Christ contains a suggestion of stronger and grander importance than this.

1. Jesus in the solemn simplicity of prayer takes it on Him to speak to the Eternal Father about a time when as yet there was neither heaven nor earth, and as it were reminds His Father that even then He was not companionless, neither did Divine love shrivel into mere self-love. And the strange thing is to think of Him who called Himself the Son of Man calmly recalling these mysterious communings as part of His personal experience.

2. And now, as to the nature of that glory whose restoration He prays for.

(1) We are apt, in a somewhat carnal way, to picture for the risen Lord that kind of regal magnificence which has always been the ideal of Eastern monarchs. Their notion of glory is to absorb to themselves all power and praise, and then to withdraw into privacies of undisturbed delight where toil and trouble may not enter, nor the cry of the afflicted or the groan of the oppressed. Christ never wore, nor wished to wear, such a crown, and was more glorious even in His crown of thorns than He would be with such honours. It was a true song the angels sang at Bethlehem, "glory to God in the highest" when God was lying there in the stable; and to exchange the grandeur of that humility for any kind of state and magnificence would be to fall away from the reality of greatness and to get mere empty show and display.

(2) What, then, was that glory? We read of the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," and the "Lamb foreordained from the foundation of the world." Words like these remind us that, far back in a past eternity, the spirit of the Son was the same as now. His was an eternal spirit of obedience, sacrifice, and love. Because of this the Father loved Him and delighted in Him; this was His honour, to be the symbol and the revelation of Divine love.

3. That is the one side of the medal, and the other presents exactly the same picture. The heavens have now received Him, but heaven is partly opened to show us what He now is; "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" is exalted still as a slain Lamb. There is change of place and circumstances, but no change of spirit. There are songs of praise sung to Him, there are crowns put upon His head, there are crowns east at His feet, but He is still the slain Lamb to whom honours and dignities are nothing except as giving Him power to work out the purpose of His life. His new power is only the means of new services, and His glory is to give us repentance and remission of our sins. It is as if the Cross were planted between the two eternities, whether we look backward or forward, it is the same glorious vision we behold.

III. WHATEVER GLORY CHRIST ASKS IS FOR HIS PEOPLE'S SAKE (ver. 10). He desires to realize it in them. The holy angels, and all the saints who have washed their robes, &c., cannot help singing, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," &c. But He turns from them all to His Church, and the thought of His heart is, "Father, let Me be glorified in them." The reward He sought and still seeks is that we should obtain His spirit; that we should be able to finish our work as He finished His, that He may be able to say of us one day, "Well done good and faithful servant." In a measure, it depends upon us whether the longing of Christ's soul is to be satisfied or not; He would be glorified in us, but if we are full of envy and malice and hatred, He is not glorified, He is dishonoured in us; He would be glorified in us, but if we are carnally-minded and selfish, caring only for the treasures that corrupt and perish, we do not glorify, we bring reproach upon Jesus. He would be glorified in us, but if we are slack in His work, counting His service a burden, He is not glorified in us, and He may well be ashamed to call Himself our God. But we are His glory, and crown, and rejoicing when in meekness, love, patience, righteousness, &c., we are doing in this world as He did; dead to it and laying up for ourselves the treasures which are unseen and eternal. See to it that you are going to be a crown of rejoicing to Him, and not a fresh crown of thorns.

(W. C. Smith, D. D.)

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KJV: I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

WEB: I glorified you on the earth. I have accomplished the work which you have given me to do.