Jesus Reveals His Father's Nature

How could the perfect person be so humble? What can I learn from Jesus' self-sacrificial and humble nature?

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. —Zechariah 9:9

We read in the Hebrew Bible that Messiah would enter the holy city of Jerusalem seated on a donkey. The scene painted in the Book of Zechariah feels like a kind of coronation, yet it is very unlike what most of us envision when we think of the crowning of a king.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. —Zechariah 9:9

Zechariah prophesies that the King is coming, but the way He comes will be subversive. He will not come with the kind of grandeur, pomp, and circumstance that we associate with royalty. He will come riding on a lowly creature, not on a “high horse.”

Yet while the King would come in lowliness and humility, His reign will be vast. Zechariah 9 continues: “He will speak peace to the nations; and His dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (v. 10). His rule will be “from sea to sea.”

Beyond the way the Messianic fulfillment of this scene reveals Yeshua as Messiah, it also gives us crucial insight into the very nature of God. Keep in mind Yeshua’s words to His disciples, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Whatever we see Yeshua doing in the Gospels reflects who God is! Paul said Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and the One in whom “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9, NKJV). The writer of the Book of Hebrews wrote that Yeshua is “the exact representation of His nature” (Heb. 1:3).

If Yeshua does, in fact, reveal the Father, then what does Yeshua’s fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 tell us about the nature of God? He came humbly. He didn’t come in pompous or obnoxious arrogance, reveling in the adulation of the crowd. He didn’t even come demonstrating His strength, though we all know that His power is incontestable. He came in gentleness and tenderness.