Continuing now with our discussion of Jesus’ prayer, we can see the purpose for His request is that the Father glorify Him. Jesus prays, “Father glorify your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You.” Jesus’ desire is that God might be glorified.
What does it mean to glorify God? To me it means to make God look good in all the facets of His character. Jesus spent His entire life seeking to be obedient to God and to show what He was like so that people would see God in all His beauty and praise Him as a result.
Just as for Jesus, our motivation as we pray ought to be based on the glory of God. Even in the “Lord’s Prayer” we read the phrase, “Hallowed be thy name.” Even the seemingly mundane aspects of our life are to be to the glory of God. See for example I Corinthians 10:31 where we are told that even our eating and drinking should be done to the glory of God.
Some people try to separate the material world from the spiritual. This attempt has its roots in Gnosticism and is rejected by the Word of God. In I Corinthians 6:19 we read, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
The reason I bring this up is because God’s glory is at stake in the way we treat and use our body. This fleshly, material thing we call our body belongs to God. It is not our own. It has been given to us to use in this material world to interface with the world around us and to interact with others. It is not evil as the Gnostics teach. It is not to be used for our own sinful purposes, but to demonstrate the glory of the almighty creator God.
Scripture brings the goal of glorifying God right down to the nitty gritty of our life in our body in this physical world.
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