“Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus”

(Hebrews 12:2, GNT).

God created us for intimacy with Him – to enjoy and experience ongoing union with the Godhead and with each other, as family. An essential part of growing in intimacy is getting to know God through His Word. A good way to gain insight into God’s multifaceted, infinite nature is to prayerfully study the many names of God that we find in Scripture, together with their meanings.

Every truth we discover about God’s names and nature is true about Jesus because He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3, NIV).

The Father’s purpose for us is that we become increasingly like Jesus. The process of this transformation in us often involves painful periods for our old-Adam life, which keeps wanting to assert itself in us. But through it all, God keeps a tender watch over us: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength” (1 Cor. 10:13, NRSVA). And when the going gets hard, this is God’s wonder­ful promise: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).

It is a huge relief to know that we are not expected to achieve this transformation through our own efforts. It can only come about through intimacy – through gazing intentionally and persistently upon Jesus. It is only His Spirit who can bring about this change in us. Just look at the following verse which is most wonderfully encouraging!

“We can all draw close to him [Jesus] with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus. We are being transfigured into his very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another. And this glorious transfiguration comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, TPT).

The apostle Paul gives us insight into cultivating intimacy with Christ in his letters. He writes, “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus” (Heb. 12:2, GNT). Paul is not referring to a physical gaze, of course. Rather, he is speaking of an attitude of heart. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, or gazing at Him, means to keep Him in our hearts by thinking of Him. It can be reflecting on His beautiful qualities, or on verses of Scripture. It can be communing with Him through prayer and words of adoration throughout the day. It can be singing and worshipping in different ways.

Elsewhere in his letters, Paul continues the theme, urging us to “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1–2).

As we grow to know Him, more and more, the beauty of Christ draws our hearts and enables us to exercise our wills. For it is an act of will to gaze upon Him, and to walk by faith and not by sight. Sometimes, the circum­stances in our lives are screaming for us to gaze, instead, at “things on the earth,” and we do need to glance at those, and attend to them, of course. But the grace to deal with difficult circumstances comes from persuading our­selves to look away from our problems and to lean hard into the One who is wisdom and who is the answer.

Whatever may be coming against us, the truth is that Jesus is always intimately present by His Spirit – closer than our very breath. It is simply our individual perception that causes us to use the words “closer” or “far away”. He is always with us and in us.

To our minds, it is incomprehensible that the God of the universe should con­descend to desire fellowship and intimacy with us. Apostle Paul realized this dilemma, and he helps us to see that it is by an act of our will that we enter into this fellowship: “consider yourselves . . . alive to God [living in unbro­ken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11, AMPC; brackets in original). The original Greek word translated “consider” is actually an accounting term meaning to “reckon” or “calculate.” Paul knew that we need to exercise our minds to take in this extraordinary truth by faith.

Then, as we keep “reckoning”, God will cause this to come alive in our hearts, if we keep them open to Him. Our minds cannot grasp the truth that Jesus died in order to be united with us for ever – but our spirits can! Our spirits are hardwired to grasp it!

As we gaze at Jesus, in the Scriptures, our minds and hearts will go in the direction of our dominant thoughts and attitudes. In his well-known commentary, Matthew Henry describes our action and attitude of gazing or beholding in this way:

"We must in righteousness . . . by faith behold God’s face and set him always before us, must entertain ourselves from day to day with the contemplation of the beauty of the Lord; and, when we awake every morning, we must be satisfied with his likeness set before us in his word, and with his likeness stamped upon us by his renewing grace."

The concluding quotation comes from a commentary on Psalm 17:15 from Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hen­drickson, 1994), 765.

Photographs courtesy of Pixabay.com

By Ann Shakespeare 31 August 2023