Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Seeing The Father

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. (John 14:8-11)
Philip doesn’t seem to be tracking with Jesus either. “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus didn’t seem to be very God like. Nothing about him shouted that he was God. Sure he performed miracles, but the human mind has penchant for explaining away the unexplainable and just plain ignoring it. Phillip wants to see the Father.
It’s not that strange of a request. People often want to see God. Seeing is believing as they say. So it is. But we don’t get to see God apart from Jesus. At best we can know that there is a God, but nothing is ever known about him apart from Jesus. He isn’t seen. In Jesus he is seen. And this is just as true today. God is found in the person of Jesus. And his person can be known in the history he leaves and the gospel he proclaims.
This is where God has willed himself to be found. So where as there have been many philosophical arguments developed to show that there is a God, and people will use all sorts of scientific evidence to flesh those arguments out, they don’t end up telling people anything about him. They don’t really allow a person to see God.
But we can see God, we can see the Father, in Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that God reveals himself and his love for us, in his death and resurrection as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the gospel. That Jesus holds you to be valuable enough to lay down his life for you, to redeem and forgive you of every sin you have ever committed, every mistake you have ever made, every hard feeling you have ever caused in others or held against a friend. And this gospel can be verified for those who care enough to investigate, in the historical record of the gospel.

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