Day 4 of the “What Child is This?” Advent Devotional
Jesus Christ, the faithful witness… (Revelation 1:5)
Jesus is a witness in two dimensions. Today, we are going to explore the first dimension, and this involves Jesus being the faithful witness of the Father.
No one sees God the Father more closely and more clearly than God the Son. Makes sense, right? There is no more intimate relationship that could exist in the whole of creation than the union between Father, Son, and Spirit. Right now, I want to focus specifically on the Father-Son dynamic of the Trinity. Jesus is God, God is Jesus. We are not going to get distracted by attempting to explain the unexplainable. All I know is God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity is a reality. It is truth.
Time after time throughout the Gospels, we read about Jesus’ relationship with the Father. Though Jesus was God, He also modeled a relationship with God. Often, Jesus would retreat to be alone with the Father and spend considerable amounts of time in His Presence. Why do this?
Even though Jesus was the Father, He gave you and I the opportunity to gaze into what a person in right relationship with the Father looks like. Truly, only God could have a relationship with Himself as a man. You’ll find that when dealing with the Incarnation, you come to that conclusion quite often. It protects the mind from offense. Sooner or later, we must conclude that “Only in God’s economy, that could take place.” And quite honestly, we need to be okay with that because God is God. Anything He says and wants… goes.
God was intentional about becoming a man, so that in the Person of Jesus Christ, He could show us that it would become possible for men and women—cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus and filled with the Spirit of God—to also become faithful witnesses of the Father. Because of Jesus, Scripture tells us that we have been brought into the very Presence of God, as His blood made us holy and blameless (see Col. 1:22, NLT). We are able to see and know and experience the Father as sons and daughters, not aliens or orphans.
So here you have Jesus Christ, the God-Man. He has been with the Father since the beginning of time, and will exist forever. In fact, Scripture tells us that the Son was in the bosom of the Father (see Jn. 1:18).
This Jesus deserves our focus. His model. His words. His works. His miracles. His demonstrations of compassion, love, healing, deliverance, grace and mercy. They’re not just cute Sunday school stories. Every miracle displayed and every revelation of compassion shows you and I Who the Father is. After all, no eyes behold God Almighty with greater clarity than the Son. I would say that what He sees and what He unveils deserves our attention!
Advent Prayer
Father, open my eyes to see Jesus in a new way. Help me break any familiarity I may have with the stories and testimonies in the Gospels.
Release fresh vision for everything Jesus said and did, for it all shows me Who you are.
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