Advent
Continuing
with Hebrews Chapter Two:
“For
both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father;
for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, ‘I will
proclaim Your name to My brethren, in the midst of the congregation I will sing
Your praise.’” Hebrews 2:11 – 12.
Here
we have a quotation from Psalm 22:22, a psalm of crucifixion and resurrection,
a psalm of a grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying, so that it may
bring forth much fruit (John 12:24). This, of course, is also our calling in
the Firstborn Son, as Paul writes in 2 Cor. 4:12, “So death works in us, but
life in you.”
What
does it mean when the Firstborn says, “I will declare Your name”? How might we
think about this? One of the reasons that this is important is that if Jesus
sends us as the Father sent Him, then we also ought to be declaring the Name of
the Father to our brethren. Is this what we are doing?
Jesus
says in John 14:7, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also;
from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”
Philip
respond to this by saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
Jesus
replies, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me,
Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the
Father’?”
This
is to be the measure and standard of our testimony as well, the testimony of
the Body of Christ, that the people who see us see Jesus, the Head of the Body;
that the people who see us see our Father.
Is
there not a mystery surrounding the Name of the Father? That Name which the Son
declares to His brethren?
Let’s
consider the following from Jesus’ prayer in John 17:
“I
have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave me out of the world…”
“Holy
Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one
even as We…”
“While
I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me…”
“…and
I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love
with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
Consider
the above slowly, that is s-l-o-w-l-y. What do these things mean?
The
idea that “I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known” suggests
an unfolding illumination of the Name, an ever-deepening understanding of the
Name, an increasingly intimate koinonia with the Name, the Person, of our
Father…indeed, of the Trinity.
Perhaps
Paul expresses the ever-expanding glory of this when he writes his desire that his
readers, “…may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 4:18 –
19).
One
may pray verbally “in the name of Jesus” and yet not know that Name. One may
know that Name and yet not pray verbally in the Name of Jesus in a particular
situation. Are we so foolish as to think that reciting words, as important as
words are, is the equivalent of knowing His Name and of praying in His Name?
So
then, how did Jesus manifest the Name of the Father? How are we to manifest the
Father’s Name?
In
Christ, how are we to keep others in the Name of the Father? That is, how are we,
by the grace of God, to serve others, guard others, shepherd others, in the
Father’s Name?
How
are we receiving the Name of the Father from our Lord Jesus? How are we sharing
that Name with our brothers and sisters?
A
continuing Advent means a continuing declaration and manifestation of the
Father’s Name to the “many sons [and daughters] which the Father is bringing to
glory” in and through the Firstborn (Hebrews 2:10).
As
we gather as His People, are we declaring the Father’s Name to one another?
Do
we have the Name of the Lamb and of our Father written in our hearts and minds
(Rev. 14:1)?
Is
the Nature of the Holy Trinity such within us, His People, that we can begin to
see that glorious City descending “from God”?
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