We Would See Jesus - Chapter Two

Chapter Two - Seeing God in the Face of Jesus Christ

"...we realize that our goal should be God Himself, but He seems far off, unknowable. The fact is, God is unknowable, unless there is an easily appreciated revelation of Himself. Apart from that revelation, men have groped for Him in vain and have had to say with Job, 'Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!'...Left to themselves, men arrive at a false knowledge of God, a knowledge that begets fear and bondage, and which repels rather than draws them to Him."

The authors go on to say that the full and final revelation of God is in His Son Jesus. Jesus Himself told His disciples that seeing Him, they were seeing the Father (John 14:9). God is light but light is "invisible unless it shines upon some object...The object upon which He has shone is the face of Jesus Christ, and as we look into that face, there shines in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, which we can see nowhere else."

II Cor. 4:6 says "...it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." This, at first glance, sounds wonderful and beautiful until we realize that the glory being referred to here by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul is the ugliness and shame of the cross (John 12:23, 32).

"We are always falling into the mistake of thinking God is one like ourselves (Psa. 50:21) and therefore that His glory consists in much the same things as that in which man's glory consists, only on a bigger scale. Man's glory is normally thought to lie in his ability to exalt himself, and humble others to his will...How often have we coveted the glory of being able to sit at a desk as a high adminstrative chief and at the touch of a button command men to do what we want!...In Jesus, however, we see that God's glory consists in the very reverse - not so much in His ability to exalt Himself and humble man, but in His willingness to humble Himself for the sake of man..."

God is Christlike! We see in Jesus a startling meekness and humility that caused Him to be very approachable, and the Father is just like that! As Christian believers we have learned this with our heads, but we need revelation of this to our spirit in order for it to transform us at the gut level. I find that I need ongoing revelation of this truth to my heart and mind in order to not come under the lies of the evil one who is constantly slandering the character and nature of God in subtle ways.

How do we see the face of Jesus? We find His face in the written Word first of all; but we must not be like the Pharisees who knew the Scriptures inside out but couldn't recognize the One Who the Scriptures were talking about when He showed up. It's possible to know the written Word of God better than anyone around you and not know the Living Word intimately.

And so our approach to the Word must be one of poverty of spirit (in other words, coming with a childlike hunger to learn even if it runs cross-grain to what I've believed all my life about Jesus) and a willingness to take the time and effort to fast and pray and study the Word of God under the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. It means to cry out what the Greeks cried out to Philip: "We would see Jesus." The word "would" in the original language carries the sense of "preference, wish, desire, will", etc. This wasn't a passive wish but a must for these Greeks; in other words, they went out of their way to try to see Jesus.

For us as well, seeing Jesus requires that we go out of our way; it will be inconvenient and mess with our lifestyle but until we seriously seek Him out through fasting and prayer and studying His Word and leaving some things undone, there won't be said of us what was said of the early Church disciples in Acts 4:13, "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus."

Before the Lord returns, He will have a Bride across the earth of whom this can be said; meanwhile, each of us can be moving in this direction in our own walk with Him, starting with baby steps: short times of fasting and prayer and study that will grow into longer times, and also inviting one or two others to join in on this because God wants us to do this in partnership with Him and with others rather than try to make it on our own.

God bless you with the empowering grace of His Holy Spirit to seek Him in the face of Jesus this week! Next week we'll look at chapter three, Seeing Jesus as All We Need.