Lucy You Have Some Explainin' To Do

        

        In one of my classes I have a very bright student, well all my students are bright some are so bright that their fathers called them sons! :-) I'm sorry. The point here is that this extra bright student, we will call him Billy, usually gaves answers that were totally understandable to him but were completely divergent to the rest of us. At first we counted them wrong and dismiss him with a laugh.  Then one day he explained his answer and it made sense! From that time on he made us see objects, principles and natural events in a completely different light. He added a whole other dimension to our class. It has been a learning process for us, his class, to listen to his answers. We began looking forward to Billy's answers as he learned how to explain them to us. As he helped us, he became more relatable to his peers in the process. The whole class' eyes were opened where before they thought Billy was weird.  Now they realized he just thought differently about things.

        Personally, he helped me understand a verse in John the first chapter on which I have been working.  As I was translating John 1:18 the last verb in that verse was a bit puzzling to me.  The verb is exegesato. It is usually translated as "declared"(KJV) or "made known"(NIV).  It is the same word we get the English words, exegetical or exegesis. The USB Greek NT defines this word as "to explain" or  "to order". Now,  I have been wrestling with the correct meaning and nuance for what John was trying to say and Billy explained it to me, without saying a word. When I made that connection lights went on. God through Christ created all things. We know that. But creation did not understand its maker. God was talking to us but mankind mainly thought He was weird. You could say we thought he had the wrong answer, just like Billy. We were in the dark, in fact that is what the Bible says (John 1:10). But at the right time Christ came and "explained" God to man. Christ was God's explanation to us who thought God was weird, unreachable, too abstract, and/or too divergent. Christ came in our flesh down where we lived and understood things, and explained God, our heavenly Father, to us. "He alone has explained Him"(v 18 -NASB). 

         When we receive Christ, we can start understanding God. Who Jesus is to us becomes clearer. He said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father"(14:9).  Christ was making God friendly to us, again. He explained the relationship in a way that made things right between God our Father and us His children (1:12). Jesus' job was explaining the Father's love to us in such a way that we would choose to be children of God. God was reconciling through Jesus his sons to himself. And that is our job too. To explain our Father's love in such a way that men are drawn to Him (2 Cor. 5:18-20). 

Take form a word by Gary Hargrave - "Call Him Father"