Q. When Jesus prayed after the Last Supper, he said to God about his followers, “I have given them the glory that you gave me.” What did he mean by that?
I believe that in other parts of his prayer after the Last Supper, Jesus makes clear what he means by “glory” in the statement you are asking about. Toward the beginning of the prayer, Jesus says, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Toward the end of the prayer, Jesus says similarly, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” So it seems to me that when Jesus says to God, in between these statements, that he has given believers “the glory that you gave me,” he means the same thing. He means the glory that he had in the presence of God the Father, as a member of the Trinity, before he came to earth as a human being.
Admittedly this is mind-blowing. Are we really partakers of what might be called the “inter-Trinitarian glory”? That would actually be consistent with other things that Jesus says in this prayer. He also says, for example, that he has given believers this glory “so that they may be one as we are one.” This suggests that we partake of the inter-Trinitarian unity, or at least of a unity of that same quality. Jesus also says to God about his followers, “You have loved them even as you have loved me.” That suggests that we partake of the inter-Trinitarian love!
Now I do think that when Jesus says he has given us this glory, he means that, on the one hand, it is already our possession, but on the other hand, it is something that we will need to grow into in this life, as individual believers and as a community of believers, and something that will ultimately come to full fruition only when God renews the entire creation.
Still, there’s no reason not to get started on it now. So what would that look like? I think we might be able to imagine what it would be like to partake of the inter-Trinitarian love. My late wife was very inspired by the idea that since we were both believers, our marriage could not only model the love of Christ for the church, it could also exhibit the same quality of love that the members of the Trinity have had for one another since all eternity. A very high ideal, admittedly, but one that was a delight to aspire to. Similarly, we may be able to imagine what it would be like to partake of the inter-Trinitarian unity. Even a small taste of that now would be like heaven on earth.
But what would it be like to partake of the inter-Trinitarian glory? I don’t think it would mean to have the same infinite glory that the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal God has. But it might mean to bask in the reflection of that glory and even to take some of it on, in the same way that a person seems to glow when he or she is in a wonderful relationship with another person. Beyond that, I think the glory of the members of the Trinity is the shimmering excellence and unaffected achievement of beings who know that they are infinitely, unconditionally, eternally loved and so become all that they can be, in the best of all possible ways, simply for the joy of it—for the joy that they themselves experience, and for the joy that they bring to those who love them in this way. This is admittedly another very high ideal. But it is also one that would be a delight to aspire to. And since Jesus has said that it is already true of us … let’s do it!
Good Question 