“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus tells a story of a man who planted a vineyard and left it in the care of some husbandmen as he went into a far country. At the time of the harvest, this man sent some of his servants to collect the fruit. The husbandmen of the vineyard beat one, stoned another, and killed another. He sent more servants and they were treated the same. “But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.” (Matthew 21:37). The man and his son in this story were not naive. They had seen already the kind of treatment that these wicked husbandmen had done to the servants. They must have known that the son would get the same treatment. But the man sent his son anyway. And the son went anyway. Even though it seemed extremely unlikely, the man and his son had hope that these husbandmen still had the capacity for reverence. God knew that if He gave His Son to the world, it was extremely likely that they would kill Him. But God also had hope that some at least might show reverence to His Son. As important as Christ’s mission was to die for the sins of the world and to redeem all who would come unto Him from death and hell, one of the main reasons that Christ came was that we could have eternal life, and eternal life comes through knowing our Heavenly Father, and we know our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” (John 14:8-10). I am so grateful that Jesus Christ is my Savior, but He is so much more than that. When we reverence the Son, we reverence the Father. When we know the Son, we know the Father. I hope we will all receive more of the gift of the Son than can be represented merely by the cross that breaks the bands of death and batters down the gates of Hell. I hope that we will become one with Christ, and through loving and reverencing and becoming one with Him, we will become one with the Father as well.
