John 14:9
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’?”
Jesus had been talking about “the Father” and the fact that if the disciples knew Jesus, then they knew the Father. Philip was confused. God had been such a distant object to the Jews for so long that the idea of an intimate and personal relationship was completely foreign. Jesus was near but God was far. Jesus was approachable but God was not. Jesus walked and talked with you, but God remained shrouded behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. Jesus was kind and compassionate, but the God of the Old Testament was angry and vengeful.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Jesus and God are not two different entities—they are one. “From now on you do know him and have seen him,” Jesus said. That’s a remarkable statement! No mere mortal could make the link between himself and the Creator of the Universe. Additionally, Jesus was not saying they were like twin brothers or that he was a son that very much resembled his dad. Jesus had and was continuing to make plain the reality that he and his father were one in the same. This is the mystery of the Trinity—a biblical reality despite the fact that the word itself does not appear in the bible.
As all orthodox Christians agree, the doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one essence but three Persons; God has one nature, but three centers of consciousness; God is only one What, but three Whos. It’s easy to get caught up in the difficulty of trying to imagine what God is…or is like…or looks like. We are talking about an immaterial entity that exists outside of time and space, otherwise, how could He create either reality? To put it bluntly, we simply lack the cognitive ability to fully grasp the reality of God. But we do have Jesus, and that is a wonderful gift that allows us to grasp the hand of our Heavenly Father through the very material hand of His Son.
The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old. Exodus 34:6-7 describes him as well and as beautifully as all four Gospel accounts unpack his attributes through the actions of His Son:
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”
It’s far more important to understand WHO he is rather than WHAT he is. The former should be the basis of our love and intimacy while the latter helps with reverence, faith, and a proper fear of the LORD. Let us rest in the words and actions of Jesus when it comes to our grasp of The Father, rather than looking for some other depiction like Philip did.
