Christ
Revealing the Father
by
F.B. Meyer (1847-1929)
“Philip
saith unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus
saith unto him, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father - John
14:8-9
The
longing of the universal heart of man was voiced by Philip, when he
broke in, rather abruptly, on our Lord's discourse with the challenge
that He should answer all questions, dissipate all doubt, by showing
them the Father. Is there a God? how can I be sure that He is? what
does He feel toward us?--these are questions which men persistently
ask, and wait for the reply. And the Master gave the only
satisfactory answer that has ever been uttered in the hearing of
mankind, when He said in effect, "The knowledge of God must be
conveyed, not in words or books, in symbols or types, but in a life.
To know Me, to believe in Me, to come into contact with Me, is to
know the deepest heart of God. 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father; how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?'"
PHILIP'S
INQUIRY
It
bore witness to the possible growth of the human soul. Only three
short years before, as we are told in the first chapter of this
Gospel, Christ had found him. At that time he was probably much as
the young men of his age and standing. Not specially remarkable save
for an interest in, and an earnestness about, the advent of the
Messiah; his views, however, of his person and work were limited and
narrow: he looked for his advent as the time for the reestablishment
of the kingdom of David, and deliverance from the Roman yoke. But
three years of fellowship with Jesus had made a wonderful difference
in this young disciple. The deepest mysteries of life and death and
heaven seemed within his reach. He is not now content with beholding
the Messiah, he is eager to know the Father, and to stand within the
inner circle of His presence-chamber.
The
highest watermark ever touched by the great soul of Moses was when he
said, amid the sublimities of Sinai, "I beseech Thee, show me
Thy glory." But in this aspiration Philip stands beside him.
There is a close kinship between the mighty lawgiver and the
fishermen of Bethsaida. How little there is to choose between, "Show
me Thy glory," and "Show us the Father." Great and
marvelous is the capacity of the soul for growth!
It
truly interpreted the need of man.--"It sufficeth us." From
nature, with all her voices that speak of God's power and Godhead;
from the page of history, indented with the print of God's
footprints; from type and ceremony and temple, though instituted by
God Himself; even from the unrivalled beauty of our Saviour's earthly
life--these men turned unsatisfied, unfilled, and said, "We are
not yet content, but if Thou wouldest show us the Father, we should
be."
And
would it not suffice us?--Would it not be sufficient to give new zest
and reality to prayer, if we could realize that it might be as
familiar as the talk of home, or like the petitioning of a little
child? Would it not suffice to make the most irksome work pleasant,
if we could look up and discern the Father's good pleasure and smile
of approval? Would it not suffice to rob pain of its sting, if we
could detect the Father's hands adjusting the heat of the furnace?
Would it not suffice to shed a light across the dark mystery of
death, if we felt that the Father was waiting to lead us through the
shadows to Himself? How often the cry rises from sad and almost
despairing hearts, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us."
But
surely this request was based on a mistake: Philip wanted a visible
theophany, like that which Moses beheld, when the majestic procession
swept down the mountain pass; or as the elders saw, when they beheld
the paved sapphire work; or after the fashion of the visions
vouchsafed to Elijah, Isaiah, or Ezekiel. He wanted to see the
Father. But how can you make wisdom, or love, or purity visible, save
in a human life?
Yet
this is the mistake we are all liable to make. We feel that there
must be an experience, a vision, a burst of light, a sensible
manifestation, before we can know the Father. We strain after some
unique and extraordinary presentation of the Deity, especially in the
aspect of Fatherhood, before we can be completely satisfied, and thus
we miss the lesson of the present hour. Philip was so absorbed in his
quest for the transcendent and sublime, that he missed the
revelations of the Father which for three years had been passing
under his eyes. God had been manifesting His tenderest and most
characteristic attributes by the beauty of the Master's life, but
Philip had failed to discern them; till now the Master bids him go
back on the photographs of those years, as fixed in his memory, to
see in a thousand tiny illustrations how truly the Father dwelt in
Him, and lived through His every word and work.
Are
you straining after the vision of God, startled by every footstep,
intently listening till the very atmosphere shall become audible,
expecting an overwhelming spectacle? In all likelihood you will miss
all. The kingdom comes not with outward show. When men expected
Christ to come by the front door, He stole in at the back. Whilst
Philip was waiting for the Father to be shown in thunder and
lightning, in startling splendor, in the stately majesty that might
become the Highest, he missed the daily unfolding of the Divine
Nature that was being afforded in the Life with which he dwelt in
daily contact.
Philip's
request emphasized the urgent need of the ministry of the Holy
Spirit.--"If ye had known Me". . . the Saviour said. "Have
I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?"
They failed to know the Father, because they failed to know Christ,
and they failed in this because they knew Him only after the flesh.
They were so familiar with Him as their Friend, His love was so
natural, tender, and human, He had become so closely identified with
all their daily existence, that they did not recognize the fire that
shone behind the porcelain, the Deity that tabernacled beneath the
frail curtains.
Often
those who dwell amid the loveliest or grandest scenery miss the
beauty which is unveiled to strangers from a distance. Certain lives
have to be withdrawn from us before we understand how fair they were,
and how much to us. And Jesus had to leave His disciples before they
could properly appreciate Him. The Holy Spirit must needs take of the
things of Christ, and reveal them, before they could realize their
true significance, symmetry, and beauty.
Two
things are needful, then: first, we must know Christ through the
teaching of the Holy Ghost; and next, we must receive Him into our
hearts, that we may know Him, as we know the workings of our own
hearts. Each knows himself, and could recognize the mint-mark of his
own individuality; so when Christ has become resident within us, and
has taken the place of our self-life, we know Him as we know
ourselves. "What man knoweth the things of man save the spirit
of man which is in him?--but we have the mind of Christ?"
THE
LORD'S REPLY
He
that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father."
He
did not rebuke the request, as unfit to proffer, or impossible to
satisfy. He took it for granted that such a desire would exist in the
heart, and that His disciples would always want to be led by Him into
the Father's presence. In this His ministry resembled that of the
great forerunner, who led His disciples into the presence of the
Bridegroom, content to decrease if only He might increase. The
Master's answer was, however, widely different from John's. The
forerunner pointed to Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold the
Lamb of God"; Jesus pointed to Himself, and said, "I and My
Father are One; to have seen Me is to have seen the Father; to have
Me is to possess the Father."
It
troubled the Lord greatly that He had been so long time with them,
and yet they had not known Him; that they had not realized the source
of His words and works; that they had concentrated their thought on
Him, instead of passing, as He meant them to do, from the stream to
the source, from the die to the seal, from the beam of the Divine
Glory to its Sun. He bade them, therefore, from that moment realize
that they knew and had seen the Father in knowing and seeing Himself.
Not more surely had the Shechinah dwelt in the tabernacle of old,
than did it indwell His nature, though too thickly shrouded to be
seen by ordinary and casual eyes.
A
GLIMPSE INTO THE LORD'S INNER LIFE
Let
us get help from this. Many complain that they know Christ, pray to
Christ, are conscious of Christ, but that the Father is far away and
impalpable. They are therefore straining after some new vision or
experience of God, and undervaluing the religious life to which they
have already attained. It is a profound mistake. To have Jesus is to
have God; to know Jesus is to know God; to pray to Jesus is to pray
to God. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. Look up to Him even now
from this printed page, and say, "My Lord and my God."
Jesus
is not simply an incarnation of God in the sense in which, after the
fashion of the Greek mythology, gods might come down in the likeness
of men, adopting a disguise which they would afterward cast aside;
Jesus is God. All the gentle attributes of His nature are God's; and
all the strong and awful attributes of power, justice, purity, which
we are wont to associate with God, are His also.
Happy
is the moment when we awake to realize that in Jesus we have God
manifest and present; to know this is the revelation of the Father by
the Son, of which our Saviour spoke in Matthew 11:27.
This
Gospel is the most lucid and profound treatise in existence on His
inner life. It is the revelation of the principles on which our
Saviour lived. So absolutely had He emptied Himself that He never
spake His own words: "The words that I speak unto you, I speak
not of Myself." He never did His own works: "My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work. . . . The Father abiding in Me doeth
His works." This was the result of that marvellous self-emptying
of which the Apostle speaks. Our Lord speaks as though, in His human
nature, He had a choice and will of His own. "Not My will, but
Thine be done," was His prayer. Perhaps it was to this holy and
divine personality that Satan made appeal in the first temptation,
bidding Him use His powers for the satisfaction of His hunger, and in
independence of His Father's appointment. But however much of this
independence was within our Lord's reach, He deliberately laid it
aside. Before He spoke, His spirit opened itself to the Father, that
He might speak by His lips; before He acted. He stilled the
promptings of His own wisdom, and lifted Himself into the presence of
the Father, to ascertain what He was doing, and to receive the inflow
of His energy (Read John 5:19; John 12:44, John 12:49).
These
are great mysteries, which will engage our further consideration. In
the meanwhile, let us reason that if our Lord was so careful to
subordinate Himself to the Father that He might be all in all, it
well becomes us to restrain ourselves, to abstain from speaking our
own words or doing our own works, that Jesus may pour His energies
through our being, and that those searching words may be fulfilled in
us also, "Striving according to His working, which worketh in Me
mightily."
