⁵ And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

⁵ And now,

“Now” indicates that Jesus finished His work on earth. Since He finished God’s plan for Him on earth, He was ready for the next phase—His crucifixion and return to glory.

O Father,

Jesus now asked the Father to begin the events that would take Him to the final phase of salvation—the cross, resurrection, and ascension.

glorify Me together with Yourself,

Jesus again requested that the Father to restore Him to His preexistent, pristine glory in eternity with the Father. However, here He asked that the glory would be for both Himself and the Father.

with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

The Son lived eternally in heaven with the Father before He took on human flesh (Jn 1:1, 2, 18). His glory of deity was veiled in His humanity while on earth. This glory was God’s glory. It was His pre-incarnate glory in eternity past. Jesus asked for what was already His in eternity past. He did not ask for a new glory but for His previous glory as God to be restored.

PRINCIPLE:

Jesus returned to His glory as God after His ascension.

APPLICATION:

Jesus did not possess the same kind of glory during His time on earth that He had in the eternal state before the incarnation.

When the Word became flesh—that is, when the Son of God took upon Himself a human being—He set aside the voluntary use of His attributes as God (Php 2:5-8). He did not as a man use His prerogatives of deity but functioned truly as a man. Now that He was about to return to His eternal state, He would reassume the full use of those attributes as God. He never stopped functioning as God during His incarnation. When He operated as a human being, He did not use His eternal attributes but was truly man. He was truly tested as a human being. Now that He had finished His work as a man on earth, He was ready to return to His pristine glory that He had in eternity past.