Manifested love, Pt 11: Know the Father
John 14:7-11 7If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.
Colossians 2:9-10 9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
This passage touches upon one of the most difficult concepts presented by God to the human mind: That of the Trinity. We humans are finite creatures used to thinking in finite, concrete terms. So, it is very difficult for us to think of God as three separate Persons who somehow still function as one. Yet that is exactly what Paul says—that the fullness of God, everything that is God, resides in Jesus. Jesus says that also about himself. So, although we don’t fully grasp it, we must accept it because God Himself says it is so.
See me, see the Father
For three years now, the disciples have been following Jesus watching him interact with the Pharisees, observing his miracles, and listening to his teachings. But as my pastor likes to say, they were really only a half a step ahead of the crowds. I imagine what it must have been like, hearing and seeing those things so different from my natural view of the world. I’m sure I would have been bewildered, profoundly overwhelmed, and completely confused. So although Jesus gives Philip a gentle rebuke, it is not the least surprising to hear Philip say, “Show us the Father.” Philip is thinking with his eyes, not his heart, and not making the connection between Jesus and the Father.
Jesus is talking about that moment of epiphany when one’s understanding makes a leap to a greater level. Teachers refer to that moment as the point when the light seems to come on in the eyes of the student. Here Jesus is talking about the leap from physical sight to spiritual sight. The disciples still thought in terms of the teaching of the Torah, thought of Jesus as Messiah, but had not accepted him as personal Savior, had not yet received the Holy Spirit, and so were limited in their understanding. Their sinfulness still blocked the way. They were used to the Father being revealed through Torah, but didn’t grasp that Jesus was God’s full and final revelation.
I am in the Father, the Father is in me
It is hard to make sense of this verse because it is so foreign to any normalcy of human endeavor. The appropriation of this passage in faith is that moment of epiphany spoken of earlier. The only way to make sense of this passage is to understand that the Father and the Son are of one essence and that that essence can express itself through multiple persons. But let’s make one thing clear: Jesus is not talking about some sort of physical alignment of two separate persons. He’s not talking about moral or ethical cohesion. No, this statement is a claim to divinity. There are a variety of reasons why Jesus had to come as a man. One of them is that the further revelation of the Father required intimate communication with human beings to help them understand. Jesus had to be 100% God to communicate with His Father and 100% human to communicate with people.
It is one thing to have intellectual understanding of a thing, entirely another to have heart-felt spiritual understanding. This spiritual understanding is what is required to appropriate the salvation Jesus is bringing to the people of God. The monotheistic religions of the world do not understand this idea of one God revealed in three persons. It requires the leap of faith and the subsequent presence of the Holy Spirit to grasp the idea. Jesus knew he was about to leave and also knew the Holy Spirit would subsequently come. He was saying, “Wake up guys! The time has come, pay attention.”
The disciples did not really understand who Jesus was; that understanding probably didn’t really come until they were later filled with the Holy Spirit. At this point though they probably saw him as a wise man of God who stood up to the Pharisees and who could effect miraculous things. Maybe they saw him as a prophet, or even Messiah, but they didn’t understand him to be the Word made flesh. Although they had the fundamental human longing to see God, they still didn’t realize that in seeing Jesus they were in fact seeing the Father.
What about me?
There are plenty of nominal believers in the world who profess to know Jesus, but don’t really know him. If they go to church at all it is on Christmas and Easter only, and the rest of the time they find excuses to be somewhere else. These are people who think with their eyes, not their heart. They have been with Jesus for some period of time, as was Phillip, but don’t yet understand. Dear reader, what about you? How long have you been a believer? Please understand, believing in Jesus Christ in the face of world ridicule is not easy. It is hard for the human mind to reach that epiphany. Please, don’t give up because you find the way is hard. It is supposed to be hard. If we were spoon fed belief in Jesus, we would hardly be more than automatons. As it is, the difficult path is not the way to the goal, it is the goal.
The application of this passage in our lives rests in knowing that we can trust what is said in the Word. The Torah and writings (what is often called the Old Testament) are in full cohesion with what is said in the New Testament. Although the Father is invisible and we won’t see Jesus until he comes again as the Cloud Rider, we have two things to help us through life: What we read in the Word as amplified by the Holy Spirit, and our relationship with Jesus. When Jesus said his words were really the words of his Father, he was saying he is the full and complete expression of the Father. It is a good, even blessful, thing to read the Word; please set aside regular time to do that.