Jesus Exposed The Father's Name

What Did Jesus Do?

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me...”
John 17.6

Everyone loves a good expose'. Come on, admit it, you've watched a little reality T.V. yourself, haven't you? I confess I have. Unfortunately, the genre's stock-in-trade tends to the tawdry and the titillating. What may be the worst thing about so much of today's popular expose's are that they pass off so-called “reality” as truth, when often nothing could be farther from it. There is a lot more deceit and illusion than truth in what many accept as reality nowadays. In marked contrast, the life of the Son was reality worth seeing, and his expose' of the Truth was captivating. How favored were the few to whom the truth was revealed, to whom Jesus exposed the Father's name.

While so-called reality television strives to expose its version of the truth to the whole world, the Son had quite a different audience in mind for his expose'. He would reveal, expose to view, manifest the Father's name only to those whom the Father had given him out of the world. They would eventually come to be known as the ekklesia-“the called out ones,” in our modern tongue—the Church. They were the receivers of the Word, possessors of the knowledge that everything of the Son had come from the Father (John 17.7). All the words that the Father had given to Jesus, Jesus dutifully passed on to those called out of the world, so that, by receiving these words, they would know the truth, and believe that Jesus had been sent by the Father (John 17.8).

You see, the world, so enamored, even back in ancient times, with its own take on reality, its own version of the truth, has always been totally deceived. This is to say that the world has forever, or at least since the Fall, embraced lies as truth, and illusion as reality. Jesus came into the world in order to call those the Father had given him out of the world, so that they might be exposed to the truth. For, in fact, the basis of all truth is the name which Jesus manifested, the name of the Father, then name shared by the Son—I Am (Hebrew-Yahweh). As it turns out, Shakespeare was wrong, there is much in a name, or, more properly, there is everything in the name.

To be exposed to the truth in the midst of a world totally invested in lies is not at all an easy thing. Jesus knew it would be the reason his followers, his Church, would face tribulation in the world (see John 16.33). So the Son prayed to the Father, not for the world, but for the ones called out of the world, for they were the Father's, his children, if you will (John 17.9). And the request of the Son to the Father was that he would keep his own in his name, that they might be one, even as the Father and the Son are one (John 17.11).

What it comes down to is this, the Church, if it would be worthy of that name, must keep the name, and not just keep it, but manifest it, reveal it, expose it in the world to those who are still being called out of the world by the name. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4