“All things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15b.
What does Jesus mean? If this is true, should we have thousands of pages of His teaching? Does the Father have so little to say? To teach? Are the Gospels all that the infinite God has to teach us?
Certainly in the Divine koinonia from eternity the Father must have infinite glories to share with the Son. In the mystery of the Incarnation there must be wave upon wave of wisdom and insight and understanding for the Father to open to the Son.
How has Jesus made known to us all things that He learned from the Father?
All things that Jesus learned from His Father are contained in what He has taught us. They are discovered in “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
All things that Jesus learned form His Father are hidden in all things that Jesus has taught us, they are discovered in the life of Jesus Christ - in what He said and in what He did. The life of Christ then (2,000 years ago) is seen in the life of Christ now; the life of Christ now flows from the life of Christ then.
The life of a grand oak tree began in an acorn. Within the acorn was all we now see and experience in the majestic oak tree. Of course we can trace the acorn back to another tree, to another acorn, to another tree, and so forth.
Little wonder that Jesus also says that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth and that He will glorify Jesus, because “He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you” (John 16:12 – 15). Jesus says, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).
On the one hand, in John 15:15 Jesus says that He has made known to us all things which He has learned from the Father. On the other hand, in John 16:12 Jesus says that He has many more things to say to us. On the one hand Jesus has given us the acorn, on the other hand Jesus wants to talk to us about the great oak tree.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit is given to us to continue to teach us, to continue our conversation with Jesus Christ. The friends of Jesus are in communion with Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit; and with one another. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, directly and through one another. The Holy Spirit takes the Word that Jesus has spoken and causes it to grow and expand and deepen, stretching into the eternals. Friends talk with friends, and our conversation with Jesus continues from generation to generation. How foolish to have a conversation frozen in time, whether frozen 2,000 years, or during the Middle Ages, or during the Reformation, or during a renewal movement of the past 200 years.
The table we sit at for the conversation extends beyond our own time and space, it is the communion of the saints. Our Road to Emmaus is populated with pilgrims from all places and ages and languages and times and seasons – and we can joyfully mix with them, joyfully encounter Jesus Christ with them. We live and romp and sing and learn among a great cloud of witnesses, within the Family of families.
I see Jesus introducing us to one another and I see His pleasure as we get to know one another. When our friends meet our other friends we have joy, image the joy of Jesus! Imagine the joy that Jesus will have on that Great Day!
So, dear friends, Jesus continues to speak to us today. When we gather as our way of life, whether in large groups or small groups or to have coffee with one or two, we can gather in expectation that Jesus is continuing to speak to us, that the Holy Spirit is disclosing more and more of Jesus – to us as individuals, as marriages, as families, as congregations, and as the greater Body of Christ.
Since we are His friends, He has much to say to us…are we listening?
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