Jesus had two assignments to accomplish. The ultimate assignment was accomplished in the death that He died, but there was also an assignment that he accomplished by the life that He lived. John 17:4-6 NASB
I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. [5] Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. [6] “ I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
I love the way the amplified version of John 17:6 puts it, “I have manifested Your name [I have revealed Your very Self, Your real Self] to the people whom you have given me out of the world.”
I also like the Passion translations version of verse 6, “Father, I have manifested who you really are, and I have revealed you to the men and women that you gave to me.”
Both the amplified version and the passion translation capture the real meaning of verse 6 where Jesus says that he manifested Father’s name. To manifest someone’s name is to manifest their presence, nature, and character. Jesus makes it really clear in verse 4 and 6 that this assignment of manifesting who the Father really was, manifesting The Father’s real Self, was already accomplished before Jesus went to the cross. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God was in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”
Jesus was 100% God, and he was 100% man and as the second Adam He laid down his right to live from His deity and instead lived, according to Luke 4:1, as a continually spirit-filled man, showing us as the author and the perfecter of faith, how mankind was created to live. Jesus did not come to primarily be an example for us, though. Instead, He came to be an example of us. His assignment in the life that he lived before the death that he died was, to tell the truth about God and to tell the truth about Man. He actually told the truth about God by telling the truth about Man, for man was created, to tell the truth about God. Jesus said in John 14:9 – 10 that when you saw Him, you saw the Father, not because He was the Father but because He manifested the life of the Father who lived in Him. Jesus even said in verse 10 that it was the Father in Him doing all the works. In absolute and utter dependence on the life of the Father within, Jesus allowed the Father to demonstrate His holy life and limitless adequacy through Jesus’s own humanity. As the Son of Man, this was Christ’s identity and destiny in the life that he lived on the earth, and in John 20:21, Jesus said, “just as the father sent me, so send I you.” Jesus, by faith, manifested the life of the Father by allowing the Father to live His life through Him, and in the same way, we are called, by faith, to manifest the life of Christ by allowing Jesus to live His life through us. If we are prepared to be as available to Christ as Christ was available to the Father, then Jesus is prepared to be as available to us in all of His glorious adequacy as the life of the Father was to Him. We are created to tell the truth about God and I don’t mean primarily that we are called to talk about God. Instead, just like Jesus told the truth about the Father by the life that He lived in utter dependence on the life of the Father to be manifested through Him, we too, in the same way are called to manifest the life of Jesus. The world is not looking for an “imitation of Christ.” The world is looking for an authentic manifestation of Christ, and we are privileged to be the body from which that manifestation takes place.