The Manifestation of Jesus
- Steve Richards
- Oct 1, 2025
- 2 min read
The 2025 political party conferences are almost over. I wonder how many times manifestoes were mentioned.
Obviously, the word manifesto comes out of the word manifest and means to publicly put forward a set of intentions, objectives and motives. I’ve always liked the sound of that word ‘manifest’, even the way it looks in print on the page!
After I became a Christian, I found that the word manifest was to become essential to my understanding of Jesus. Here is why.
The God of everything is a personal being but, as humans, we have no categories or capacity with which to understand and relate to him. In love, God condescended to come to us as a man, showing forth (or manifesting) his very self. In this way we could know and understand what he is like in human terms. When we ask, ‘So what is God really like?’ The answer is, ‘like Jesus’.
In light of this, has Jesus anything to say to the hopeless, those who are sad, the complacent, arrogant and proud? What about the unbelieving or those with just a little faith? What is his mind towards religious leaders who don’t actually feed those in their charge with true spiritual food? We can go into the four Gospels in the New Testament and see Jesus addressing these things and other matters, while being assured that what he says is perfectly in line with God. Jesus himself said, ‘I and the Father are one’.
We may say Jesus has a manifesto. He has a plan: a purpose in which his intentions, objectives and motives are all present. Central is his objective to fulfil the role of God’s Good Shepherd who, as foretold in the Old Testament, is intent on seeking out his lost sheep and saving them from ultimate harm. So dedicated to his sheep is Jesus, that he laid down his life and took the slaughter that otherwise would have befallen them.
How do we feel about being referred to as a lost sheep? If such talk offends us we will likely want to evade or hide from the things of God and so forfeit the good intentions that he has for us. Those who are glad and thankful to be found by him, can genuinely relate to the 23rd Psalm that’s often sung at funerals, ‘The Lord is MY Shepherd…’.