Jesus came to reveal God
The Christmas season always serves as an occasion to remind us of the first coming of Jesus into the world and the reasons why He came.
The prologue that opens the Gospel of John, after referring to Jesus as “the Word,” declares, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (1:18). In short, Jesus came to reveal God. Before His earthly life had been fully lived, He was heard to declare, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Two divine qualities were involved in Jesus’ mission of revealing God: the grace of God and the truth of God. John 1:17 reads, “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The fact that God desired to make Himself known through sending His Son is a matter of divine grace. No human deserved to know God because we all have sinned. God did not owe humanity another chance after the first human pair who knew God intimately chose disobedience instead of unbroken fellowship with Him. Only divine grace explains the offer of another chance.
Divine truth
God making Himself known through Christ’s coming into the world also is a matter of divine truth. God wanted His human creation to know Him accurately by knowing the truth. What better way to bring that truth from heaven to earth than to send His Son who had been with Him from all eternity!
The Bible gives us yet another word by which to round out our thoughts about God being revealed through His Son: glory. If we think of divine glory as the manifest presence of God, we understand that Jesus was revealing His glory.
We can be enriched by pondering what we read in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Hebrews 1:3 declares that Christ came as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person.
Since Jesus came to reveal God and since by personal faith He has come to dwell in our hearts, divine grace and truth seek to give believers here and now knowledge of God, as well as the hope of sharing His glory eternally.
Share with others: