“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son..,” Hebrews 1: 1-2a
“Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. ” 2 Corinthians 5:16 (KJV)
The subject of Christ is inexhaustible. We may never be able to fully comprehend His personality because the more we know Him, the more we realize how shallow the depth of our knowledge of Him is and yearn to know Him more. Besides, our knowledge of Him is only a function and measure of how much we’ve been able to glean of Him out of His fullness (see John 1:16). All we can ever garner and know of Him is but a fraction of His fullness, He still remains His fullness. There’s no limit to experiencing and knowing Him more. O the pleasures of a lifetime of knowing and understanding His person. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus!
More about Jesus is beyond a mental assent of His person; it is about a deep, intimate and experiential knowledge of Him. This knowledge of Him is not on the revelation of flesh and blood but on the revelation of God. Without a doubt, God aforetime spoke to our fathers by the prophets. He used diverse means and mediums to communicate His thoughts to them. He spoke to them through visions, dreams, voices, writings, dark speeches and similitudes, etc. The revelation God gave them was in snippets. It was only a fragment at a time, building one truth upon another. The word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept; line upon line; here a little and there a little. Each truth He set forth to them was only a portion of the whole. The sum total of each snippet of God’s revelation unto them was to instill in them a perfect and harmonious testimony of the person of Jesus (see John 5:39b, Luke 24:27).
For verily, the spirit of prophecy is an attestation to the testimony of Jesus. Alas, they couldn’t understand the entirety of God’s testimony. The bible tells us in 1Peter 1:10-11 about their diligent, careful search and inquiry to the meaning of their God-given prophecies. They probed into the mysteries of the personality of who would fulfill these prophecies and the time period when it would all take place. It remained to them a mystery.
God in His infinite wisdom, in order to demystify the person of Christ hath in these last days spoken directly to us by His Son. God’s language of communication to us upon whom the ends of the world has come is Jesus. Jesus is God’s spokesman to us. He mirrors God’s epistle to us perfectly, therefore – He is the finality of God’s message to us.
Under the Old Testament era, there were many parts, ways and persons God used in speaking to men, but in the New testament age, all was done through the Son who fulfilled the law and the prophets (Luke 16:16).
Regrettably today, the person of Jesus Christ still remains a mystery even though God hath made Him manifest. He is yet the subject of controversy amongst believers of different creeds and denominations. To this day, there be many who degrade His person because He has been hid from their eyes (Matt. 11:25). Their knowledge of Jesus is prejudiced, limited and after the flesh.
Then again, Satan continues to blackmail and attack the person of Christ in order to thwart the understanding of Jesus Christ. Amongst such, the god of this world hath blinded their minds, so they are unable to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining in the person of Jesus Christ. People today often see Jesus after the flesh, we are often tempted to see Jesus just as a good teacher or merely as one of the prophets of old with no spiritual significance for our lives. In order to learn of Him and appreciate His person, we ought not to see Christ with a limited human viewpoint via our worldly standards. Our estimation and valuation of him must not be on account of his carnal descent and parentage (Is this not the son of Joseph the carpenter), nor on account of his outward condition, natural abilities, education, poverty, afflictions and attainments. We must unlearn our knowledge of him after the flesh in order to know Him more.
Most of the fathers who had seen him in the flesh valued him only on account of his being a Jew and of his affiliation to them according to the flesh. We must lay aside such carnal apprehensions of Him. We must relinquish our prejudices and former notions if we must learn more of Christ the Son of the living God.
While such knowledge and sight of seeing him in the flesh was desirable, yet a spiritual knowledge and perception of Him is much better because He is to us now a spiritual personage. They were many who knew him after the flesh, who neither enjoyed his spiritual presence while on earth (see Matt 13:57-58) nor will they be favored with his glorious presence hereafter.
Our verdict of Christ must be based on spiritual knowledge – the revelation of God concerning Him. Paul once thought of Jesus as a blasphemer; he saw Christ’s crucifixion as a just punishment and Christians as heralds of a false religion until his encounter on Damascus road, as a consequence of the encounter, the eyes of his understanding were enlightened and his perception of Jesus changed from a blasphemer to the Son of God (see Acts 9:20).
How we need Spiritual knowledge, for it is the only antidote to knowing Christ after the flesh. Despite Mary Magdalene companying with Jesus in the flesh for about three (3years), she still supposed Him to be a gardener, it took divine revelation for her to recognize Jesus in resurrection. The same was the experience of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, it took the braking of bread by Jesus for them to realize it was Jesus. To know more about His person, we need Spiritual Light and Knowledge.
To this end, we pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him so we can know more about Jesus. May the eyes of your understanding be enlightened to the end that; we all with unveiled face will behold as in a glass the Glory of the Lord. But we see Jesus (Hebrews 2:9a) – Maranatha.