“….Sir, we would see Jesus…” John 12:21
Our gospel is not about behavioural modification. It is about transformation, conformation,in order to become like Him and this is not done by our own striving but by a humble receptivity to the grace He gives. We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified while teaching His disciples to observe all that He has commanded us.
The very ‘beholding of Christ’ is a transforming sight. As we gaze, the Spirit works. The gospel is a mirror, a perfect law of liberty, and as we look into this mirror, desiring to see Him, we are changed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
As we behold Him we become like him…..
Psalms 115:8,135:18 remind us that those who made and worshipped idols became like them; which is the perverted and deceptive way the devil works to get the worship He craves. Proverbs exhorts us, Attend to this word. Do not let it depart from your eyes. Keep in in the midst of your heart. They are life to the one who finds them and healing to all their flesh.
James’ epistle instructs us to look into the perfect law of liberty and continue therein. It is this place of attentive beholding that the Spirit works His transformative power. We become like the one we behold and we are to behold HIM.
However, when we read Scripture without a hunger to see Jesus, we risk growing in knowledge of the Bible without growing in affection for Christ. We’ve noted before the Pharisees sought the scriptures looking for eternal life, but Jesus said, “you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
We want to read Scripture with an intent to see how every passage relates to Jesus. Jesus invites us; “come to me and learn of me”. Reading our Bibles is so much more than reading words on a page. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ. From beginning to end our Bible reveals the Father’s eternal purpose in His sons redemption of mankind. The New Testament becomes the mystery of the Old Testament, hidden for the ages, revealed in Jesus Christ and now made manifest through the church. We come to see with the veil removed through Christ to behold the glory of our Lord and King.
The phrase ‘ "What would Jesus do?", often abbreviated to WWJD, became popular particularly in the United States in the late 1800s after the widely read book by Charles Sheldon entitled, “In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do.” The phrase had a resurgence in the US and elsewhere in the 1990s and as a personal motto for adherents of Christianity who used the phrase as a reminder of their belief in a moral imperative to act in a manner that would demonstrate the love of Jesus through the actions of the adherents. WWJD was a acronym…” ‘
Quoted From Wikipedia
There is so much more to know of Him and my prayer is that there would be an insatisable hunger can only be satisfied as we come to feed upon Him, to learn from Him and see Him as. He is. May He grant us His spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, as we cry, Father, we would see Jesus.