I have spent many hours in theological discussions—with my parents and family, friends and classmates, professors and mentors, and even complete strangers—but by far, the most challenging discussions have been with my two young children. Concepts like “sin,” “the Trinity,” or “salvation” are not easily digested by a four-year-old. “But Mommy how will He raise us up again? Can I take my toys to heaven? Will Jesus come back today?”
My best efforts to explain in simple, child-appropriate terms the meaning of Jesus’ ministry and sacrifice often leave me feeling full of wonder rather than comprehension. Why did Jesus do x, y, z? When is He coming back?
It strikes me now that certainty is antithetical to wonder, and wonder is a key ingredient of faith. Not that we can’t have assurance of salvation, of the return of Christ, etc. But these are things we can’t prove. We accept them as true because we believe through faith, and there is always a degree of imagination in this process. We can’t see heaven, but through the promises of God, the increasing signs of an end of this age, and our restlessness for a better place, we intuit that there is indeed something beyond our comprehension. We grasp onto this with wonder, faith, and imagination.
Messianic expectations
The teachers of Jesus’ day suffered from a distinct lack of imagination. They read the prophets, looked at their current surroundings, and said, “Aha, the Messiah will be a military leader.” When John the Baptist proclaimed that Jesus was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), the vision was too big, too strange, too ridiculous.
To make matters worse, the Baptizer declared that neither he nor the religious leaders knew who Jesus was until it was revealed to John at Jesus’ baptism (John 1:26, 33). The religious leaders assumed that the Messiah’s identity and background would be straightforward. The idea of the Messiah being raised in the backwaters of Galilee as the humble son of a carpenter did not fit with their preconceived ideas of who the Messiah could or should be. Nor did it occur to them that His identity was a thing to be revealed.
In looking upon Jesus, we should do so with childlike wonder, open to the strange and marvelous vision He has for us, for the people of God, and for the future.
The crowds that followed Jesus had their own ideas about Him. They were in awe of Him, revered Him, sought after Him, but did not understand Him. Few seemed to move from following Him for what He could do for them to following Him for who He was for them. Ellen White writes that those from the multitude who had been fed looked for Him afterward, but only because “they hoped still to receive temporal benefit by attaching themselves to Him.”[1] By and large, people were astonished and bewildered by Jesus’ actions, and disturbed and dissatisfied with His own statements about His identity and purpose.
Intuiting Jesus
In his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A. W. Tozer notes that the Gospel of John, in particular, “reveals the helplessness of the human mind before the great Mystery which is God.”[2] The trouble with the Pharisees and with many of us, is that we “tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control.”[3]
The teachers of the law wanted a Messiah who was part of their program, not a self-sacrificing radical who claimed an identity so much larger than nationalistic interests. They did not open themselves up to the wonder of the proclamation. How often do we do the same? Instead, “we cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper ‘mystery.’”[4]
Jesus did not point to His miracles to prove Himself and refused to perform miracles for such a purpose. In the words of George MacDonald, “wonderful works can only nourish a faith already existent.”[5] In His self-testimonies, Jesus pointed directly to God and to His identity as the Son of God. He was the testimony. As God said to Moses at the burning bush, “I am who I am” (Exo. 3:14).
Ellen White explains that “those who had learned of God had been listening to the voice of His Son, and in Jesus of Nazareth they would recognize Him who through nature and revelation has declared the Father.”[6] John the Baptist, Simon Peter, the Centurion, and others who declared that Jesus was the Son of God did so not because of the miracles He performed but because of who they saw He was by witnessing His character. They saw and intuited a revelation. The centurion, whose only known interaction with Jesus was at the cross, didn’t even see Jesus perform a miracle. He saw Jesus die. And that was revelation enough.
Faith as testimony
In 1 John, the apostle offers a mysterious explanation about testimonies: “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son” (1 John 5:9–10). Søren Kierkegaard, in commenting on this text, notes that the “inward testimony” is greater than some kind of “historical proof.” “It is not reasons that justify faith in God’s son, but just the opposite—faith in God’s son is the testimony.”[7]
Perhaps in looking upon Jesus, we should do so with childlike wonder, open to the strange and marvelous vision He has for us, for the people of God, and for the future. Rather than try to pin Him down and explain in minute detail exactly how His ministry operates, how the incarnation occurred, and how the Trinity functions, we could allow the mystery of it all to sink in. Of course, we should study and endeavor to understand what He has done in the past and will do in the future, but we cannot take our strivings as a substitute for faith. The testimony we proclaim is not a dead thing; He is alive!
[1] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), 384.
[2] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 9.
[3] Ibid., 8.
[4] Ibid., 18.
[5] George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., 1892; facs. repr. South Pasadena, CA: J. Joseph Flynn, 1988), 72.
[6] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), 387.
[7] Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2002), 270.
