Learning to Look at Jesus
Reading Gospel stories first to ask what Jesus shows us about God.
Sometimes the most important change is not discovering a new passage of Scripture. It is learning to read a familiar one differently.
That has been happening for me as I have spent time with Jesus’ words in John 14:
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9 NIV)
If Jesus really is the visible revelation of the invisible God, then it raises a very practical question.
How should that affect the way we read the Gospels?
Most Christians have learned to read the stories of Jesus looking for lessons. What should I do? How should I behave? What can I learn from this person? What does Jesus want me to change?
Those are worthwhile questions. The Gospels certainly call us to follow Jesus.
But I have become convinced that there is another question that needs to come first:
What does this show me about God?
Before Jesus is our example, Jesus is our revelation.
Look at What Jesus Does
Jesus himself explains this in John’s Gospel.
In John 5:19 he says:
“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19 NIV)
Later Jesus says that he has not spoken on his own authority, but that the Father who sent him commanded him what to say (John 12:49–50). Then in John 14 he says that the words he speaks are not simply his own and that the Father living in him is doing his work (John 14:10).
The words are the Father’s words. The works are the Father’s works.
That gives us a simple way of looking at Jesus:
If you want to know what God says, listen to Jesus. If you want to know what God does, watch Jesus.
Once you begin reading the Gospels that way, familiar stories start asking different questions.
Jesus reaches out and touches a man with leprosy (Mark 1:40–45). Of course I can ask whether I am willing to reach people others avoid. But first: What does this show me about God?
Jesus welcomes children when the disciples consider them an interruption (Mark 10:13–16). What does this show me about God?
Jesus weeps beside the grave of Lazarus (John 11:32–36). What does this show me about God?
Jesus washes feet (John 13:1–17). What does this show me about God?
Jesus asks the Father to forgive the people crucifying him (Luke 23:34). What does this show me about God?
Those questions begin reshaping our theology from the centre.
Let Jesus Correct the Picture
Hebrews opens by saying that God spoke in many ways through the prophets, but that in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. The Son is described as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:1–3 NIV).
That does not dismiss everything that came before Jesus.
It tells us where the revelation is heading.
Jesus becomes the lens through which we understand everything else.
I think that matters because we can sometimes construct an idea of God from isolated pieces. A verse here. A story there. Something somebody taught us when we were young. An experience we never quite understood. A picture inherited from our culture.
Eventually we have assembled a God in our imagination.
Then Jesus stands in front of us.
And sometimes the God we have imagined does not look very much like him.
At that point we have a decision to make. Do we force Jesus to fit the picture we already have, or do we allow Jesus to correct the picture?
I increasingly want to do the second.
If Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), if he makes the Father known (John 1:18), and if seeing him is seeing the Father (John 14:9), then Jesus deserves that authority.
So I have begun approaching Gospel stories with some fairly simple questions. What does Jesus do? What does Jesus say? Who does he move towards? What does he value? What makes him angry? What moves him with compassion? How does he use power? How does he treat people who have failed? What does he refuse to do?
And through all of those questions:
What is he showing me about God?
This is not a technique for mastering God. God will always be greater than our explanations.
It is simply taking Jesus seriously.
He said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Perhaps one of the most important things we can learn to do, then, is actually look.