THE FATHER AND SON’S JOY FOR EACH OTHER

“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.  And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.  Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.”(John 17:9-11 NKJV)

During the process of creation, we discover how joy was a focal point of the relationship between the Father and His Son. The Father delighted in the Son, and the Son experienced His Father’s delight and rejoiced. They celebrated their creative work. There was more joy than they could contain, so they created mankind so we could all experience this joy with them. Their joy for each other inspired them to enlarge their family.

Jesus said, “I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, Rejoicing in His inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:30-31).

Jesus was so full of the Father’s delight that He directed His delight towards us (“the sons of men”). Mankind was created as the focal point of Christ’s delight. Mankind was the fruit of joy in the Godhead.

We see epic strategic effectiveness. The Godhead is full of joy, but they are also effective at accomplishing their purpose. Creation is a dazzling display of their genius in art, engineering, and biology. God’s creation is both epically beautiful and functional.

God also shows creative genius in His redemptive plan for mankind. The Bible’s central theme is the progressive unfolding of His redemptive plan. Each member of the Godhead plays an active role in both creation and redemption.

The Godhead functions as a remarkably joyful and relationally healthy team. Their strategic effectiveness is an outflow of their relational health.

Let’s look at honor and humility. We see how the Father honors His Son. When Jesus became a man in the incarnation, it marked the beginning of the most significant thirty-three years in human his- tory. The baby Jesus became a man, and at His baptism, the Father audibly expressed His joy for Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (Matthew 3:17). At the commencement of Jesus’s ministry, the Father affirmed Him for who He was. The Father’s approval of Jesus was emphatically expressed before Jesus began His ministry.

While Jesus was on earth, the Father did not need to be in the spotlight; He was in a support role. This was Jesus’s time to shine. Father God supported Jesus by honoring, affirming, guiding, and strengthening Him. There is a remarkable amount of humility and self-deference in the Godhead.

Jesus honors His Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the most capable person who ever lived, but He chooses complete dependence on His Father for direction and on the Holy Spirit for empowerment. Jesus does nothing on His own initiative; He does only what the Father is saying and doing (John 5:19, 30 and 8:28).

Jesus doesn’t need honor from men, but He honors His Father. One of the ways Jesus honors His Father is by doing His Father’s will.  (John 8:49-58).

As a child, Jesus grew and became “strong in spirit” (Luke 2:40). At His baptism, the Holy Spirit came to rest upon Jesus. Jesus relied on this ongoing source of empowerment from the Holy Spirit during His entire ministry (Luke 4:1, 4:14, 4:18).

Even though Jesus is uniquely in the spotlight during His earthly ministry, He humbly postures Himself in complete dependence on the other two members of the Godhead. Rather than display His impressive competence apart from the Father and Holy Spirit, He displays complete dependence upon them.

The Holy Spirit honors Jesus. The Holy Spirit plays an integral role in selflessly supporting the Father and Son. In creation, He is hovering over the water, bringing order out of chaos, and preparing the way for God to speak (Gen. 1:2). During Jesus’ ministry, the Holy Spirit is serving, empowering, and comforting the Son of God. The Holy Spirit also raises Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11).

The Godhead functions with amazing strategic effectiveness; they are each humble, interdependent, and eager to support each other. They are selflessly integrated to accomplish a common purpose.

It’s important for the Church to be a healthy family. Jesus wants His redeemed family on earth to function with the same relational health and strategic effectiveness as the Godhead.

The Godhead has shown the church how to be a healthy family, and now has supplied the grace necessary to become a healthy family. When His church learns how to live just like the Godhead, it will be the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

We declare that God is empowering us to live with hearts filled with honor and increasing joy today and every day. As we partner with heaven, we too are experiencing amazing strategic effectiveness for the glory of God.

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