The promise…

Of the Spirit (part 10) 

By the time Jesus shouted to the crowd “Come to me” in John 7:37, he’d already said and done some extraordinary things. One chapter back in John 6:2, “a great crowd of people followed Jesus because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick.” And when he fed a crowd of five thousand on five loaves of bread and “two small fish,” and filling twelve baskets with the leftovers, it really opened people’s eyes to the possibility that Jesus truly was “the Prophet who is to come into the world,” verse 14. 

So the Father made sure in what he gave Jesus to say and do, that people would look to his Son and believe in him. Why? Because in Jesus people would see what he, the Father, was like, and in seeing what he was like in the words and actions of Jesus, people would then come to see and love the Father, which is exactly what the plan was. 

First, Jesus would do miracles, and spend his earthly life “going around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil,” Acts 10:38. What people would see in Jesus, then, was love. The purpose being John 14:7, Jesus speaking, that “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Because in Jesus’ love for people they were seeing the Father’s love too. 

So when Philip said to Jesus in verse 8, “show us the Father and that will be enough for us” – which was true, because eternal life is about knowing the Father (John 17:3) – Jesus replied: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” verse 9. All that power and love they were seeing in Jesus, therefore, was to show people what the Father was like. 

So that was why the Father had sent him, the goal being, Jesus speaking, that people would realize “that everything you (Father) have given me comes from you,” John 17:7. Which was exactly what Jesus wanted them to see, verse 26, “I have made you (Father) known to them and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” 

Jesus, therefore, was sent by his Father to start the process of people coming to see the Father’s love. But after Jesus was dead and gone, how would people know about the Father’s love then?…(more on this tomorrow)