It’s perfectly possible to believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be – Son of God, Son of Man – and still not realise that this matters to each one of us personally or that our response to who Jesus is has eternal consequences.
Jesus puts love right in our faces! He confronts us with who He is. He’s not pushy, but He is persistent. He invites us to accept Him as our Lord and Saviour: ‘I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ (Rev 3:20) Francis Thompson referred to Him as the ‘hound of heaven’ who pursues us with ‘unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace’; in the song ‘Pursue Me,’ we sing of ‘unrelenting grace, never-failing mercy’ and ‘I hear You singing, You are calling me home.’ (‘Pursue Me’, Worship Central) God longs for us to draw near to Him and shows us how much He longs for that in the person of Jesus. ‘No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.’ (Jn 1:18) The Voice paraphrase of the Bible translates that verse as ‘God, unseen until now, is revealed in the Voice, God’s only Son, straight from the Father’s heart’ and explains the decision to translate Logos (usually translated ‘Word’) as Voice in this way: ‘Since logos essentially refers to the act of speaking or bringing thoughts to expression, we have decided to use the word “voice” to capture that reality. John declares that truth has culminated in the person of Jesus. No single word captures the complete meaning of logos, but “voice” has a number of advantages…
- “Voice” manifests the act of speaking…John intends that in Jesus God is speaking and revealing Himself to the world.
- A voice is distinct and personal. We can distinguish people from one another simply by their voices. In John 10 Jesus describes the fact that the sheep hear the voice of the shepherd when he calls and they follow, but they refuse to follow a stranger because they do not know his voice (John 10:1-5). John desires that we know Jesus as the Son of God and believe in Him personally as the Good Shepherd.
- “Voice” is dynamic in that it reflects the robust and powerful activity of a living God. It is historical in that any act of speaking comes to expression and takes place in the real world as a “voice” calling, demanding a response. It challenges any notion that the Christian faith can be reduced to rules, propositions, or doctrines that can be merely believed or dismissed and not lived out in our lives. Since in Jesus God is speaking and revealing Himself to the world, and since in Jesus we hear the Voice of God, then this new reality changes everything so we, too, must change.’
‘In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.’ (Heb 1:1-2) What is Jesus saying to you?
