Encountering Jesus by the Spirit of Revelation

By Randy Martinez

In Matthew 16, Jesus takes the disciples on a leadership retreat to Caesarea Philippi. Jesus has a very important subject to discuss with them that will forever change the way they understand the church, leadership, discipleship, and spiritual growth. The wise master builder is about to address a foundational issue with his disciples so that the church can be built on a rock and fulfill its high calling. He is about to introduce them to the Spirit of Revelation.

I can imagine that, around the fire one evening as they sat on the beach in Caesarea, the chit-chat had died down and seemingly out of the blue, Jesus asked a strange question, “Who do others say that I am?”

Perhaps the disciples were surprised he asked such an easy question, so much so that a couple of them choked on their fish and a few others chuckled. Nonetheless, they quickly replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

They were in touch with the popular opinions surfacing, but as they replied they began to shift uncomfortably where they sat, wondering where Jesus might be heading. They had no way to prepare for what was coming next.

After a moment or two, Jesus looked them in the eyes and asked the essential question of all the ages. He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

The chatter around the fire grew silent. None of the disciples dared to recite any facts they had heard in the synagogues growing up. None of them dared to take a flippant guess. With the eyes of Jesus gazing upon them, they realized they were in a holy moment. The uncreated Word of God was asking something from them that they did not possess. No amount of schooling, or the lack thereof, could have given them an advantage. No amount of charisma could skirt the question. I can imagine Jesus let them sit awkwardly silent, wanting each of the twelve to feel the vacuum of revelation, their misplaced confidence, and poverty of spirit. He let the moment linger so that every one of the young men sitting around the fire would remember forever what would happen next.

The disciples were hedged in and helpless as the time ticked by and as Jesus looked around the group, wondering if anyone would answer.

Then, out of nowhere, Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”

Jesus, struck with joy and amazement, shouted: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The Spirit of Revelation

Jesus knew that the issue of his identity—and the means by which one obtains that knowledge—was the single most important issue facing the disciples. He knew that everything in the kingdom is built upon this foundation, this chief cornerstone.

He was not asking the disciples those questions because he was overly concerned with his reputation. Instead, he was concerned with the disciples’ lack of revelation. There was a plurality of answers to the first question, and the disciples were quite familiar with them all. They knew the talk around town about Jesus.

Yet, all of the ideas floating around about the Person of Jesus in the days of the disciples had sour sources. All of the best theories were based on wrong interpretations of the Scripture or a misled mysticism. Though some of the ideas sounded “spiritual” and most of them even had Scripture verses to back them up, all of them were twisted at their origin. They were men’s opinions about the identity of Jesus. Left to their own devices, people will always define Jesus on their own terms, to conform him to their own desires and further their own agenda, wanting a Jesus they can explain away, put in a box, or manipulate for their own financial or political gain.

This reality explains Jesus’ excitement over Peter’s response. He knew that Peter did not arrive at his conclusion through the power of his own reasoning. No, the Father in heaven opened the eyes of Peter’s understanding. In that holy moment he knew Jesus and saw Jesus like never before and felt the power of that revelation. The Father of glory had broken in and revealed the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ to a weak human heart. It was no small revelation. With those words, Peter declared that the man before them from Nazareth was in fact the promised human king of Israel, the supreme ruler of all the nations, the one who would rule the earth from Jerusalem and enforce his government upon the whole earth. Not only this, he proclaimed that he was the divine Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity in the flesh.

Peter was given the Spirit of Revelation. He felt experiential knowledge, the type that surpasses mere head knowledge. He was given an encounter.

Peter did not get this from the last conference he attended or from an article he read on the identity of Jesus. He did not have a Ph.D in theology and by all accounts wasn’t very educated. No, something far more glorious than any of these things happened to Peter in this moment, one that forever defines for us not only who Jesus is, but how we too can encounter his beauty.

Jesus declared that what happened to Peter would be the foundational rock on which the whole ekklesia [church] would be built and the means by which every living stone would be set in its place—the Father revealing his Son to the human heart by the Spirit of Revelation.

There would be no other leadership strategy or substitute for this foundation, no program or schooling that could take its place. God has designed the salvation, transformation, joy, and sanctification of the believer to be centered upon the encounter with the most precious and beautiful thing he has—his Son!

The Spirit of Revelation comes from the Father in heaven, and no man or woman can give it to us. Intellectual agreement with a set of doctrinal facts cannot replace it. Right doctrine is important, but theological study is only as valuable as its ability to lead you into an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is not enough to know facts about him. He is not a math equation to be solved or a historical figure to be studied. He is alive at this very moment in a human body seated at the right hand of the Father, in the New Jerusalem, leading the church through intercession, and in love wooing his people to come and interact with him. We must know this man.

Beholding Jesus

The Father is still in the business of showing off the beauty of his Son. This is good news for us today! In fact, one of the Holy Spirit’s job descriptions is to take all that is of Jesus and show it to us. And he responds when we ask! We know that Paul understood this, for his first priority in prayer for the believers in Ephesus was that God would give them day after day what he gave Peter in Caesarea. He wrote them, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Ephesians 1:15-17). Great joy awaits us and the church if we will grab hold of Paul’s apostolic urgency and pray his prayer in faith.

Paul knew the revelation of Jesus is the beginning, the central pursuit, and the consummation of the Christian life. It is not just a one-time event at an altar or a momentary epiphany. It is not intellectual agreement with a certain set of facts about an invisible man. It is everything that is the Christian faith. Christianity is only as good as its revelation of Jesus. He must be the plumb line and center post of our message and methodology. He is the head which we grow up into in every way.

The day we were born again, we saw a glimpse of Jesus. It might have been just a glimmer of his beauty, but in our desperate and dark state it was the light of a thousand suns. But it doesn’t stop there! We can continue to gaze upon him in sanctifying grace as the Father continues to unfold the beauty of Jesus to us by the Spirit. The progressive revelation of Jesus is God’s strategy to bring us to maturity, not only as individuals, but also corporately as the church. The light of his beauty conforms our wills, renews our minds, and subdues our members for righteousness. As a result, the beauty of Jesus is to be our first pursuit and the center of everything we do together. All of the fruits and gifts of the Spirit flow from this vine. We must not stuff Him away in a closet with our Christmas and Easter décor, for we will never see many become disciples of Jesus without making much of the Person of Christ from our pulpits, in our songs, and before our own eyes alone in the secret place, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Gazing upon Jesus is the means God has provided for our transformation. Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” In other words, what you behold is what you become. Our growth into mature disciples of Jesus is predicated upon one thing alone—our ever-increasing revelation and encounter with the man in whose image we are being transformed. Yes, the spiritual disciplines are important and accountability within a community of believers is necessary, but they are to serve the one purpose of keeping our gaze upon Jesus. This beholding is the one necessary thing that Jesus said would never be taken away from Mary and what King David cried out for in Psalm 27:4. If you are feeling weary in running the race, gaze at Jesus. If you are struggling with sin patterns, gaze at Jesus. If you are being persecuted, gaze at Jesus.

On the Road to Emmaus

In Luke 24, Jesus meets a couple of disconcerted disciples walking on the road to Emmaus. These men have probably just gone through the most difficult few days of their lives. They believe their master and hoped-for Messiah is dead. Their morale is at an all-time low. Even the strongest disciple, Peter, has denied the Lord three times.

Jesus, the resurrected Christ, joins these two along the road and takes them on the ride of a lifetime! Luke describes it this way: “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself ” (Luke 24:27).

Jesus went through the Law, the Psalms, and all the Prophets and showed them everything concerning himself. As Jesus revealed himself to them through the Scriptures, passion, strength, and hope were engendered in their hearts. It produced a longing in their hearts for his presence and his words, so much so that they said to one another after he disappeared from their sight, “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us on the road, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

Although they had followed Jesus during his ministry, they saw him that day as if for the very first time. They felt something tangible, and they knew something fresh. They encountered Jesus in the Scriptures.

We too can let Jesus take us on a guided journey through the Scriptures by asking the Holy Spirit, the teacher within, to show us Jesus today as we’ve never seen him before. This is not only our greatest need and our daily bread, but it is also the highest pleasure in human existence. For God to reveal himself to us is more pleasurable, intoxicating, wondrous, and terrifying than any other experience in the universe. It is what our frame was designed to receive and reciprocate.

We must remember that Jesus took these disciples through the Scriptures before any books of the New Testament were written! Of course we can experience him through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the rest of the New Testament, but can you believe that the Old Testament alone contains more than enough to lead us into a transforming encounter with the beauty of Jesus? We can see him throughout the divine story. He is the one who created all things with a word in Genesis 1. He is the one hiding in the bush waiting to blow Moses’ mind. He is the one who made Balaam apologize to his donkey. He is the one dancing in the fire with the three Hebrew boys in Babylon. He is the ultimate fulfillment of Psalm 45’s king who is “anointed with the oil of gladness beyond all of his companions.” He is Haggai’s desire of the nations.

Jesus is the happiest, most joyful man that has ever lived, and he is looking for more than just obligatory worship and obedience from us. Searching the Scriptures looking for the Living Word of God in the pages of the written Word of God is the prescription for a dull, depressed, burnt-out, weary heart. As we do, something will erupt from our hearts that arguably gives him more glory than anything else in created order—fascination and lovesickness! Studying biblical principles and memorizing verses are helpful but should not be the end goal of our approach to the Bible. Remember, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees in John 5:39-40 because in their study of the Scriptures they were not looking for an encounter with Him! Be encouraged, though, that this desire for encounter is not one-sided. He is dreaming up ways to encounter us, blow our minds, and leave us gasping for more. Let’s allow him to meet us on our road and let him reveal himself to us through the Scriptures!

Friends of the Bridegroom

This pursuit of Jesus will not just set our own lives ablaze. Our burning hearts are God’s strategy to win the praise of the nations. John the Baptist exemplifies this. He gave his best years to stand before the Lord out in the desert and cultivate the Spirit of Revelation upon his life, and in the process he became “a burning and shining lamp” (John 5:35). Similarly, God is inviting us to lay down the distractions of this age and follow John’s example. Jesus is again raising up “friends of the bridegroom” who stand and hear as their great joy. This Psalm 27:4 lifestyle is one consumed by the desire to spend time in the hidden place of encounter. Like John, these men and women will one day open their mouths with a revelation of Jesus that will shake entire nations.

These friends of the bridegroom will be leaders whose only aim is to decrease so that the revelation of Jesus can increase (see John 3:30). They will be more concerned with introducing the bride to the bridegroom and stepping out of the way than with gathering the people to themselves. Their highest aim will not be the allegiance of men and women to their organizations and institutions, but to make much of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the church and the nations. Their ambition will have little to do with self-promotion and having the next big ministry. Instead, they will be gripped with a holy ambition to “declare the excellencies of the one who called them out of darkness and into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

If we want to be such a people, it will require great humility in our own lives and in the leadership of our churches to come to terms with our lack of revelation concerning the Man Christ Jesus. Similarly, it will take great courage to embrace poverty of spirit and again give priority to cultivating the Spirit of Revelation. We must rid ourselves of the forms of godliness that have no power to transform the human heart in love. Returning to this bedrock is imperative and is of no small concern. Our failure to address the famine of living revelation concerning the Person of Jesus Christ is producing churches full of men and women who run from sacrifice, crave the sedation of the pleasures of this world, and ultimately reject the call of Jesus to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. Furthermore, it is leading many of our own sons and daughters to reject the Father’s revelation of his Son and his true identity for a more palatable, politically correct Jesus who doesn’t interfere or disagree with anyone’s personal values, opinions, and convictions. I fear we have a whole generation growing up inside our churches that can answer the question “Who do others say the Son of Man is?” yet the definitive question in their own souls has not been answered with experiential knowledge. Thus, they are left powerless against lust, humanism, lawlessness, and twisted definitions of love and grace that are raging against the person of Jesus Christ. This battle for the face of Jesus has already begun and will only increase as we approach the greatest hour of perversion and deception the world will ever know at the end of the age.

The Father, however, still has a divine strategy to bring us to maturity and cause love to abound at the deepest level! By the Holy Spirit, he is asking us again, “Who is Jesus, and how do you know?” This question is a divine invitation to position our lives to receive a fresh release of the Spirit of Revelation like never before. Yes, there will be a price to pay to let him do so. It will look like saying “no” to many good things, and it will look like allowing the Holy Spirit to help us reprioritize our time and perhaps even our ministry strategies in order to gain this One necessary thing.

Not only will our own souls come alive as we feast on the excellencies of Jesus, but our homes, communities, cities, and nations will awaken as the church begins to encounter the Living One. Through weak men and women just like you and me, the Holy Spirit is going to declare the beauty of Jesus to all nations confirmed with signs, wonders, and transforming power! Just as God raised up John the Baptist as a voice to declare the revelation of Jesus in his generation, so God wants to release an entire generation of messengers who will proclaim the Lamb of God and the Lion of the tribe of Judah with clarity and boldness. As in the days when the early Apostles spoke with a power and authority that shook Jerusalem because they had “been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13), the nations of the earth will again shake when the church discovers the beauty of the bridegroom.

Today, I invite you to pray the prayer of Paul the Apostle and ask the Father of Glory again to give to you, your family, and your church the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Ask the Holy Spirit to take you on the same journey as the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Ask the Lord to encounter you with his beauty and awaken the eyes of your heart once again to the light of the glory of Jesus. Ask that this light would fill your thoughts, your body, your emotions, and your days. By seeing him, you will fall ever more in love with him, and you will be transformed into his likeness from one degree of glory to the next.