Jesus, object of Worship

Mt 2:11    On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.
    
The thought of worshipping a person is quite an alien one to most of us. There may have been Roman emperors and the like in the past, who claimed divinity, but we write them off as egomaniacal characters who are worthy of little consideration. Worship of individuals was rejected by the apostles (Acts 14:11-18), as was worship of angelic beings (e.g. Rev 19:10). Worship requires a divine object. Worship means bowing down before a supreme being, to acknowledge their greatness and our smallness. God, surely, can only be the object of any worship we may offer. Offering worship to anything or anyone else, is foolish, so when the wise men fall down and worship this baby we find they get our attention in a big way.
     
If we had been modern-day reporters on the scene, we would want to know why these men of riches and wisdom had come so far and now, having arrived, why they bow before a baby. What is it about this baby that we can’t see that they obviously can? Somehow these men have knowledge that we don’t have. To all intents and purposes this baby looks the same as any other baby, so why worship it? It’s only a baby!
    
And it is at this point that our credulity is stretched. Oh no, they tell us, this is God. Pardon? But I thought God was Almighty, all-powerful, all wise? Surely this baby is none of those things? Again it is perhaps a poor analogy as we struggle with these things that the Gospels tell us about Jesus, but imagine a container before you that appears sealed. Yet there is one tiny pin-prick hole in it and through the hole there seems almost the indication that inside this container is light. Suppose that hole get fractionally bigger as the years pass until it is clear that there is light coming through the hole in ever bigger measure. It has always been light; it’s just that the hole needed to grow to reveal the contents. Perhaps that’s how it was with Jesus. The baby is too small a ‘hole’ for us to realize the container is full of light. As the baby grows up, there are more indications and then, as he moves out in ministry, the ‘hole’ is enlarged more and more and the glory that is there is revealed. The only trouble is that some of us are so polluted by self and sin that our eyes are dim and we can’t see even the brightness that shines from the One who came in the form of a baby.
   
When individuals in the Bible saw the glory of God they fell down in abject worship (see Ezek 1:28, Rev 1:17). At various times in Jesus’ ministry various individuals ‘saw’ who he was: Nathaniel (Jn 1:50), Peter (Lk 5:8, Mt 16:16), and Thomas (Jn 20:28). Each of these men suddenly realized that the one before them was more than a mere man. Each one acclaimed Jesus as he was, and thus worshipped him. This is the point: Jesus is the Son of God but because we have so many preconceived ideas about him, or because we are so tainted with unbelief, those are just words to us. 
      
Perhaps we need to come to the Lord and ask him to open our eyes so that we can see the truth about him. How many of us, even if we’ve been Christians for many years, truly worship Jesus? How many of us truly bow before him and acknowledge him in all reality in our understanding as the all-glorious one who came from heaven, remained perfect (sinless) on earth, died in our place and rose from the dead and ascended back to the glory he had had previously? Maybe we need to ask for sight.