Submission to Father God

Almost all of us want to know more than we need to know but would you believe it is not only acceptable but godly to know less than everything! The common mindset is that he who knows less is somehow inferior but Jesus Himself knows less than God the Father. How can that be if they are both LORD? Both are infinite, eternal, all-knowing, fully God but there is a distinction of roles they have chosen to focus upon which says it is wholly acceptable to trust each other and the Spirit to do what is best and fitting and agreeable to all Three even without knowing.

Jesus, speaking of the last fullness of time, says,

“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when…” ¹

‘Only the Father’ knows. Yes, if the Son wanted to know He could know but He has no need or compulsion to know for He submits to the Father’s knowing and trust Him. In this statement, He reminds us ‘you do not know when’ either but that we should use that as requiring attentiveness to God on our behalf.

Trust requires submission. Jesus taught His disciples when speaking of His serving them,

Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ²

Just a little bit later, He emphasizes this more poignantly as He speaks of His near future and what He is about to trust the Father to guide Him through:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ³

Jesus will again ask the Father to deliver Him from this hour when He prays in the Garden but Jesus’s resolve is in submitting to the desire of the LORD to provide the way to redeem and trusts the Father to only do what is agreeable with Their purpose from the foundation of the world.⁴ There is that trust which comes from being in settled agreement. Jesus speaks to His disciples of how they must commit and resolve to be in one with Him and through Him to the Father.

“Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. 
For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.” ⁵

We are not in this life alone and we have a trustworthy LORD and Savior who desires to live in us and participating through us. If we are willing to trust Him.