Carson: We must also sing The Old Rugged Cross

This kind of use of “glory” is repeated in John’s Gospel. Then eventually you get to John 12, where Jesus is to manifest God’s glory by going to the cross (see 12:23–33). So where is God’s glory most manifested? In God’s goodness—when Jesus is “glorified,” lifted up and hung on a cross, displaying God’s glory in the shame, degradation, brutality, and sacrifice of his crucifixion, and by this means returning to the glory he shared with the Father before the world began (see 17:5).

The most spectacular display of God’s glory is in a bloody instrument of torture because that is where God’s goodness was most displayed.

It is good to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but we must also sing, “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame”—because there God displayed his glory in Christ Jesus, who thus became our tabernacle, our temple, the meeting place between God and human beings.

Carson, D. A. (2010). The God Who is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story (pp. 115–116). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

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