Jesus is idealistic. This is important to know. Through what he is and was as a human, his submission to God, the Father he knew and still knows so deeply, through knowing such fulness of truth taught him by the Father, through abundance of the Holy Spirit given him without limit by the Father, Jesus has ideals of what he wants to see. This is noticeable in the gospel accounts of his earthly life and ministry. One way it is visible is in his encounter with a fruit tree which had no fruit.
I was out and about today, in October, and I was looking at an orchard of apple trees. I could not see a single fruit on any of the trees, nor on the ground around them. Not one. Not even a mouldy fruit. It seemed so wrong, I thought. At this time of year you expect apples. Maybe they had all been picked and the ground around the trees meticulously cleared. It did not look right though. I was surprised to feel it so strongly. Then I remembered Jesus looking for a fig on a fruitless fig tree. He found none, so he cursed the tree, and his disciples heard him. The next day the tree was dead. They remarked about it and he told them anyone who says to a mountain move and does not doubt, but has faith in God, the mountain will move.
The faith in God which Jesus had let him express his ideal for never seeing utter fruitlessness, by cursing a fruitless tree. God backed him up and the tree died. God supports Jesus in the ideals Jesus has, and we must take note. Jesus will one day judge us all. We ought to learn his ideals, which ‘make him tick’ as it were. He is master over us, if we believe, and lord even if we don’t believe. It is like knowing the approach a boss over us at work takes. A factory without activity. A harvest without harvesters. It might be repugnant to a business owner. Forget seasons of fruit, Jesus hates to see fruitlessness any time or season. It pays to know him well.
For Jesus, being Son of the Father is not just about scriptures or teachings or miracles. It is also about being the kind of human God has made him to be. It is his views and ways. Learning the Father’s ways, truth, life, he still has his own human life. This is a mystery of God. He gives life to sons, to children, who are not robots with lives only based on instructions from the Father, but more than this, they are people with ideals, and opinions, and humanness in general. God is putting human beings like Jesus in ultimate charge. We do not only need to know God, we need to know humans loved by God. Humans will judge all as they sit with the Son as sons. We therefore need to respect human ideals, especially those of the master human, Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Despite being a human in his own right, with human ideals and intentions, hopes and love and belief in God, Jesus shows God too. By his faith in God, his loving Father, Jesus works works which God is at work in. Sorry that is a lot of the word work, but it is worth remembering. In what God gives Jesus to do, we see God Himself at work. Jesus is so very much like the Father who taught him and showed him all He the Father does, and gives him the teachings to teach, and miracles to do. And when God gives Jesus something to do, God is there in Jesus doing it, and if we see it, we see the manifestation of the Father. Yet we can, if the Father wills it, know Jesus as well as knowing the Father, because each is there to be known. We ought to know the Father. We ought to know Jesus too. The Father made him the light for all.
