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A theological inquiry: what do you believe were all of Christ’s personal motivations to be crucified, and what was the overriding motivation? We have, of course, brotherly love (John 15:13). But there’s also the motivation to live so as to exemplify the glory of God (17:4); to receive glory for himself from God (17:5) (5:44); consequently, there is the interest to always do God’s will (5:30) and work (4:34). There is also the intriguing verse that His motivation was for his own heavenly joy (Heb 12:2), as “for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross”, which I think is the only verse which directly links personal motivation to the cross. This joy is not necessarily mutually exclusive to God’s glory, because glory itself is a supreme joy.
Regarding the overriding motivation, I am partial to Heb 12:2, that Christ was motivated by the glorious “joy set before him”, because the whole passage reads almost like a doxological summation of the faith (“let us look to the founder and perfecter of our faith”). It ties in neatly with a different underrated verse: “Those who, through patience in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, God will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7), while the “self-seeking” face wrath (2:8). This is somewhat tricky because we no longer talk about glory as an emotion today. But if you understand that glory is a feeling that always emanates from a person’s assessment, then seeking God’s glory is not self-seeking, because all of the “social valuation” exists within another person. Seeking one’s own glory would mean something like “wanting to believe oneself to be glorious”, which is different and to be condemned. “Seeking that God give us glory” is equivalent to just “wanting to do our best so that God gives a ‘well done’”.
Maybe this is just the consequentialist in me, but it seems like love for humanity and the enabling of their salvation has to be the overriding one. Suppose that you literally had to pick one:
1: God will get glory equal to saving all of humanity, but you will not be gloried, and humanity will not actually be saved and they'll all go to hell
2: God will not get glory (at least, not any extra from your decision), but you will get glory from God as if you had saved humanity, but humanity will not actually be saved and they'll all go to hell
3: God will not get any additional glory, and you will not get any personal glory or credit, but humanity will be saved (or at least, have the ability to repent and be saved if they so choose)
Setting aside the inherent contradictions (because it would be unjust for God not to glory you or himself for saving humanity) for the sake of the thought experiment, it seems to me that the actually most good action would be 3: save the people. And this is in line with everything else Jesus preached. You do good works, even at the cost of your own material well-being, and then this automatically glories God and yourself automatically as secondary effects. But you have to actually do good.
Now, in reality all of these are inextricably linked: God only gives commands iff they are good iff they benefit people iff they glorify Himself iff they glorify the person who does them. I think that on a fundamental level there isn't even a meaningful distinction between "doing good" and "glorifying God", otherwise God would have said different things until they became the same thing. So I strongly suspect that Jesus had all of them as equally strong motivations because they're all the same thing if you have true understanding (which he did). But in-so-far as you consider them to be distinct, I think the saving of humanity was the primary motivation (but this might just be my perspective as a selfish human who loves being saved more than I love glorifying God)
Yet would [3] really be the motive with the highest good in a consequentialist sense? It may not be, insofar as the motive and conduct of Christ is for our imitation. Because if we believe that Christ’s guiding motivation was pure love for others, then we would likewise believe that our own guiding and primary motivation ought to be love for others. But here we may be wrong. Because Christ never says that love for others should be paramount, only that love for neighbor should be equivalent to the love we have for ourselves. The love for God is the paramount love, significantly greater than our love for neighbor, uniquely requiring “all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength”.
If Christ’s overarching moral motivation was to obey God for God’s glory, knowing that he will share in that glory and receive honor from God, then his motivation makes a lot more sense. Glory has been the motivation for all kinds of self-sacrificial acts throughout human history, whereas “love for humanity” is rare, if not nonexistent. (The man does not rush in to a burning home to save strangers because he loves humanity, but because he knows (from media) that this is glorious, and a glorious way to die). Additionally, the Epistles say that when we suffer morally, we should do so with glory in mind:
We do not suffer because “it’s right”, or love our enemy (though we ought to do so), but because we will feel glory. And to be Christians means to be —
The “social rewards” from God are intrinsically linked to moral conduct by Christ:
If Christ’s motivation was glory, both for his Father and for his divine family and for himself, then we would likewise imitate this, and this would lead to glorious moral acts. But if Christ’s motivation was pure and uncorrupted “love for humanity”, then we will only feel a gnawing discomfort at the impossibility of our ever replicating this motivation in any legitimate sense.
I would broadly agree that glory as a motivation is easier to follow, as it's more inherently rewarding. While love for others is less inherently rewarding and thus a larger sacrifice. Which in turn is why it is MORE good. It is... easy is not the right word... easier to follow glory, to do good things which will give you glory, than it is to do good things which will merely help others but not yourself. Someone who is filled with a desire for glory but not a love for their neighbors might do all kinds of things, and only by sheer coincidence will those things be truly good, while someone who is filled with a love for their neighbors and no desire for glory will live a humble and self sacrificing life doing small amounts of good. Although someone with both will do large acts of good that help many many people, and thus is even better.
A motivation for glory is a smaller, easier stepping stone to reach. A motivation of love for humanity is a greater goal which is much much harder to attain but of greater value if attained.
It's axiomatic that no human can possibly reach the true goodness of Jesus. We are imperfect sinful humans. So you have to figure out how to not despair at never reaching the goal, and do your best anyway. Again, I think that on a fundamental level there isn't truly a distinction between actions which glorify ourselves, actions which glorify God, and actions which show love to humanity. They're the same actions. There are things which people might define as "glory" which harm people like being a murderous conqueror, but don't give true glory because they are evil and sinful. Ultimately true glory comes from doing the most good. So you don't really have to choose, just do all the good things for all the good reasons. But I think love for humanity, although harder to attain, is harder to corrupt once present. Still possible, but harder. There are fewer examples of actions which superficially seem loving but are actually evil than there are actions which superficially seem glorious but are actually evil. But in the end I think Jesus was motivated by all of them, so imitating him by yourself following all of the motivations seems like a more robust way to do good than following one of them to the exclusion of the others. You're more likely to notice when you're being led astray when the motivations appear to diverge instead of converge like they're supposed to.
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