I am fortunate in that I have loved Jesus of Nazareth all my life. That love has not always issued in trust and obedience, but I have had a deep and tender affection for Jesus for over 50 years now. Over the last five to seven years I've come to realize that, in order to know Jesus better, I must get to know his Father better, because Jesus is the Son of the Father. Jesus lives his whole existence oriented toward the Father. At the age of 12 he says to his distraught biological mother and adoptive father, "Did you not know I had to be about my Father's business?"

That affirmation would shape the rest of his ministry. To his first disciples, by a well in Samaria, he says, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me."

To the religious leaders and scholars, he says again and again, "I only do what I see my Father do; I only say what I hear my Father say."

The more I get to know Jesus as Son, the more I am discovering and enjoying his passion to reveal his Father. Jesus loves his Father. Jesus finds his joy in his Father.

T. W. Manson, in his 1939 teaching of Jesus, said, "The fact with which we have to reckon at all times is that in the teaching of Jesus his conception of God determines everything, including the conceptions of the kingdom and the Messiah."

George Caird puts it this way in his posthumously published New Testament Theology: "Jesus is indeed like an apprentice in the Father's workshop." Isn't that a marvelous phrase? He's an apprentice in his adoptive father's workshop in Nazareth, but also and primarily he's an apprentice of his heavenly Father in the workshop of the world.

John 5:19–20 (NASB): "The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, ...

Darrell Johnson has been preaching Jesus Christ and his gospel for over 50 years. He has served a number of Presbyterian congregations in California, Union Church of Manila in the Philippines, and the historic First Baptist Church in the heart of Vancouver, Canada. He has taught preaching for Fuller Theological Seminary, Carey Theological College in Vancouver, and Regent College in Vancouver.