Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
When I was a child, I sang the hymn “In the Cross of Christ I Glory” by the British diplomat, imperial administrator, and poet, John Bowring, a Unitarian layman. With him I sang of Christ’s cross as it towered over the wrecks of time and shone its glorious light around his head sublime. Its radiance added luster to the day. When I got a bit older, we began to sing “Lift High the Cross,” with a text from two Anglican priests, George W. Kitchin and Michael R. Newbolt. It summoned the world to adore Christ’s sacred name, for he is victorious and leads his people in conquering ranks against death and hell. Kyle Borcherding glories in a cross that has blood running down it, with a weak, suffering, scorned, shamed, dethroned man on it, a man whose throne is in fact in heaven at the right hand of his and our heavenly Father. And Borcherding expects us to find glory there.
The Hebrew word for “glory,” kavod, referred to that which is weighty or important. In Exodus 24:17 God’s glory is compared to a devouring fire; God’s glory overwhelms every creature he made. Giving God glory simply meant to acknowledge his majestic person and his all-powerful rule, to regard him as he is, the maker and master of the universe. The Greek word that translates kavod is doxa, a word designating the appearance of something, among other usages. God’s doxa is his appearance as Lord of all, sometimes frightening, sometimes comforting his people—because he is Lord of all.
The German word for glory is Herrlichkeit, “lordliness.” It does not seem to fit in the scene at Golgotha. No throne there for the One who did not hang onto his throne from which he governed all that exists. He emptied himself (Phil. 2:6), exchanging his throne at the right hand of the Father for, of all things, a cross, perhaps the cruelest instrument used to impose painful death on people in history. The cross was a place of shame, not of honor. There seems to be here no glory for Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity, or for us.
Paul knew that it was precisely the way that God wanted to demonstrate his lordliness. The apostle observed that God’s wisdom and power appear to be foolishness and weakness to the world under Satan’s domination (1 Cor. 1: 18-25). Paul was referring to Jesus and to the cross when he wrote those words. For on the road to Damascus he had found out that the Word that had created the worlds had become flesh, taking up residence among us, so that we could behold his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten Son of the Father, One who personifies mercy and faithfulness (John 1:14). That is the way in which the Lord of all shows that he is Lord. Every pretender to his throne would not have undertaken expressing his weightiness by displaying it on a cross. The true glory of God appears in many forms, but at the critical juncture of human history, the glory of God appeared, not as it had on Sinai but in a Golgothan mode, in what theologians call a coincidence of opposites.
The showplace of God’s glory became the Romans’ cross, designed to bring intensity of suffering, exposure, physical pain. No glory there. But precisely here is the “there” where God has solved, resolved, and dissolved the contradiction to his goodness and power that sin and evil are. Therein he manifested his glory.
That is what we see in the glory that radiates through the darkness of Good Friday into our present day. It radiates from the inglorious cross and the One who was shamefully exposed to the world as a person in the company of thieves and murderers on Golgotha, that lonely hill of grief and woe. Blood flowing from holes in his skin, pain wracking every muscle in his body, and forsakenness shaking his mind, Jesus revealed what God’s glory looks like in a world beset by sin and evil. Jesus revealed God’s glory in his mercy and faithfulness, God as he is at his core, the model of love that extends itself in self-sacrifice. He did not express his glory in boasting but in pleading “Father, forgive them.” His glory led him not to say “I am tougher than you” (a concession of weakness, in fact) but to ask his Father about his forsakenness. His glory entered fully into human suffering and death so that he could end human suffering and put death to death in the End.
This Jesus not only buried our sins in his tomb so that we could be raised with him to new life, trusting in the One who has shown us mercy and faithfulness. This Jesus also comes to us today in the midst of feelings of being shamed as losers, being overwhelmed as powerless, being out of breath with nothing left as those who seem to have nothing to sing about.
It is counter-intuitive to find honor in the shameful death among criminals that we witness on Golgotha. It is a contradiction in terms to say that we can have joy with the weight of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil overwhelming and crushing us. There seems to be nothing glorious in Christ’s cross or in our suffering and desperation. But we know that Christ was battling and defeating Satan as he suffered and died on the cross. We know that he was collecting all that oppresses us—from outside ourselves and from the depths of our own rebellious and doubting hearts—so that he could deposit our suffering and shame, our sin and transgressions in his tomb and seal them there forever.
When we are out of breath with nothing left, when we cannot sing another song or even peep for joy, we look to the cross. Our hardship and misery can cast distractions away, and our eyes and ears seek the glory of our God, the Word of deliverance that he speaks from his cross into our lives. In God’s strange way of battling all that threatens us and turns us away from him, the cross creates consolation as it delivers the Crucified One into the center of daily life, with its pain and pleasure, sin and celebration. The comfort provided by the cross rides into our lives on the glory of God, his kavod, as it reveals him as the One full of grace and truth, of mercy, loving-kindness, faithfulness, reliable and unfailing in his placing himself at our side.