Why Jesus?…

In his own words (part 23)

In John 17:2, Jesus says the Father “has given him power over all flesh” (or ‘authority over all people’) in order that he “might give eternal life to all those the Father has given him.” 

Working backwards through that verse we have the Father “giving” people to his Son. It’s on the Father’s initiative, then, that Jesus has disciples. Which ties in nicely with John 6:44, when Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.” And in verse 45, “They will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”

So the Father puts out a call that can be heard or “listened” to, and it means enough to a person hearing it to want to “learn” and find out more, the result of which is “coming to Jesus,” or coming to understand who Jesus is. And there’s an example of just that happening in Matthew 16:15, when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” – and Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 

But how did Peter come to believe that, when most people at the time didn’t believe it? Jesus answers that in verse 17, when he tells Peter, “Blessed are you, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.” 

Two points here: first of all, that it was the Father who gave Peter the understanding of who Jesus was. But secondly, it was what Peter understood about Jesus that was important too, because Peter called Jesus “the Son of the living God.” 

But why did the Father want Peter to understand that about Jesus? For two reasons; first of all, that anything Jesus said and did was as good as coming from God himself. So that, secondly, it would focus the disciples’ attention on what it was that God was revealing through Jesus. 

The Father, then, was drawing people to belief in who his Son was, so that they would listen to what he’d sent his Son for. And what had he sent his Son for? Jesus answers that in John 17:6, when he says to his Father, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.” It was through the human Jesus, therefore, that we’d know what the Father’s up to…(continues Friday)