Do you wish for your faith to grow?  John’s Gospel teaches that your faith is
strengthened and deepened through the exercise of believing receipt of greater
revelations through the Word of the Triune God in His ontology and economy and
through your response, enabled by grace, of fuller surrender to and entrusting
of yourself to Him.  Therefore, while unbelievers refuse, to their eternal ruin, to see the
Lord Jesus in the Word and entrust themselves to Him at all, you must seek to
see more and more of Christ and the entire Triune Godhead in the Word, and
entrust yourself to Him in an ever greater way as the revelation of Him in the
Scripture is illuminated to your soul, through the supernatural grace decreed
by the Father for your good by Christ the Mediator through the applicatory work
of God the Holy Spirit.  See ever the
more of the glory of the Lord Jesus’ Divine Person.  Wonder ever the more at the condescending
love manifested in His incarnation. 
Meditate upon all the aspects of His glorious saving work.  Think in amazement about His exercise of all
the Divine attributes towards you for your good.  Rejoice with exceeding joy at His exercise of
all the attributes of His glorified Human nature towards you for your
good.  Fill yourself up with these
things.  You will be worshipping and
praising your Triune God through your precious Lord Jesus for them for all
eternity.

      

      Specifically:

1.) Passionately
desire that God the Spirit will illumine to you the revelation of the Triune
Jehovah, and of Christ the Blessed Mediator, in the Word.  How necessary it is that God reveals Himself
to you!  Left to yourself, you are
utterly unable to discover Him.  You will
not know whether to turn to the right hand or the left.  Furthermore, your heart contains such
corruption and wickedness within it that God would be perfectly just to
immediately thrust you into the depths of hell, separated from His blessed face
for all eternity.  Is the infinite King
of glory obliged to show Himself to such a worm?  God forbid! Recognize that both the initial
bestowal of faith upon you, and the increase of faith in its exercise in you,
are supernatural gifts from God, not autonomous products of your fallen will,
and look to the Lord to perform in you what you cannot perform yourself. Without
the free, gracious, and sovereign work of the Spirit in revealing Christ to
you, you will never find Him.  How
necessary it is, then, that God takes the initative and reveal Himself to your
soul!  

You certainly should have no such
expectation of a gracious revelation, and you will not be looking to the Lord
and seeking for God to reveal Himself to you in Christ, if you are not upright
in heart—if you are wilfully choosing sin over Christ, you evidence that you do
not desire a part in any of this glory, as you prefer your sinful abominations
to that knowledge of and communion with God that is the greatest treasure of
eternity. 

2.) Diligently apply
yourself to the reading, study, memorization of, and meditation on the Word,
praying for the illumination of the Spirit, depending on His sovereign grace
alone, hungering and thirsting after knowledge of God in Christ.  The Bible is the very Word of God, the
infallible, inerrant, revelatory speech of the Most High to man.  It is a more sure Word than even the audible
testimony of the Father to Christ as heard on the Mount of Transfiguration (2
Peter 1:16-21).  It is the perfect,
unbreakably authoritative revelation of the Father to you through Christ by the
Spirit.  Oh, the sureness, the power, the
infinite value of the Scriptures!  Here
is a sure anchor for your faith.  Here is
pure knowledge of God.  Here is a genuine
revelation, each jot and tittle of which is more sure and more lasting than the
heavens and the earth.  Here is the
spring from whence the waters of life flow. 
Here is the love-letter of the Most High to His blood-bought
people.  The Bible is the instrument that
the Spirit uses to show God in Christ to those who cry out for knowledge of Him.  Do you treat the Bible as the invaluable
treasure that it is?  Does your use of
time reflect such a view of God’s Word? 
What is your attitude when you read and study it?  “[T]o this man will I look . . . saith the LORD . . . even to him that is poor
and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).  Furthermore, read, study, memorize, and
meditate upon the Word with the expectation that God will work.  He has promised that if you draw nigh to Him,
He will draw nigh to you.  He both supernaturally
produces initial saving faith and supernaturally strengthens faith through the
instrumentality of the Word (Romans 10:17). 
If you hunger and thirst after Him, He will certainly satisfy your
longings for Him and will sup with you, and you with Him—for He Himself, in His
gracious love, has placed those desires within you.  He will shine in your heart the light of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 
Seek, then, oh Christian—seek your God in His Word!

3.) Indeed, the
believer should seek for the highest intellectual knowledge of Christ’s Person,
of his Triune God, and of the specific character of all their works.  Careful, detailed, and taxing theological
work and careful study contributes, rather than detracts, from affective
appreciation of God in Christ. 
Carelessness or disinterest in careful thought about God is not piety,
but ungodliness.  Do you love the truth
represented by the Nicene homoousios?
Do you love the truth represented by the Chalcedonian definition of Christ’s
Person and natures?  Throughout John’s
Gospel, learning and understanding more about Christ led to greater faith in
Him.  Do you long to learn and understand
more about the Lord Jesus Christ?  While
the intellectual apprehension of facts is not enough—commital to Him, based on
those facts, must follow (John 2:23-3:3)—unknowing determinations of the will
without knowledge are also insufficient (John 9:1-34 vs. 35-41).[i]  The embrace of faith requires a properly known
and apprehended object.  Do you seek God
with your mind, as well as your will and affections?

            Furthermore,
since the Biblical Christ is a real Person—the Creator and Redeemer of the
world, and the only begotten Son of God—believing fellowship with Jesus Christ
is both a product of and a means to a greater knowledge of Him, and leads to a
holy abhorrance of every counterfeit “Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:4) set forth by
the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
Love for the living Christ and views of His glory will lead to a love of
holy and spiritual worship and a rejection of the fleshly worship of fleshly
“Jesus”;  a love for the Redeemer who
boldly and plainly rebuked the false doctrines of the Pharisees and Saduccees
will lead the Christian to reject the ecumenical “Jesus” that unites false
doctrine with the true;  knowledge of the
true Christ will lead one to reject the fanaticism of the charismatic “Jesus,”
the annihilationist “Jesus” of sundry cults, the Arian or Sabellian “Jesus” of
others, the wafer “Jesus” of Romanism, and all other false Christs.

-TDR

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