SEEING GOD IN JESUS

I can’t leave the subject of learning about God from the Bible without dwelling on the special place the Lord Jesus has in making him known.

We know from the lips of the Saviour himself that he had a special function in this regard. Speaking to his disciples on the night he was betrayed he told them that to have seen him was to have seen his Father (John 14:9). Earlier in the same Gospel John writes, “No one has ever seen God, the only God [mg the only one who is God], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18 ESV). Jesus is the fullest and clearest revelation of God.

Like many, I went through a phase in my Christian life where I thought that I had graduated beyond the Gospels to the deeper understanding of the faith presented in the epistles – especially Paul’s epistles. For years I read the Gospels but absorbed the letters. I analysed, wrote out, synthesised and dissected them, and used what I learned to build a theological system.

Looking back, it’s not surprising that those years were also years of relational leanness. My thinking and spiritual understanding were becoming increasingly abstract and rationalistic. Thankfully, however, I never got so far down that track that I ceased to thirst for personal interaction with God. Time and again I found myself turning back to the Fourth Gospel (John) in particular, till I reached a point where my whole thinking began to shift back to being anchored in the revelation God gave of himself in Jesus.

J.I. Packer describes this scenario well when he writes, “Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles to the gospels as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really, this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord Jesus in person. We should think, rather, of the theology of the epistles as preparing us to understand better the disciple relationship with Christ that is set forth in the gospels” (Keep In Step With the Spirit, p. 71). He then goes on to explain the special value of reading the Gospels as follows: “For gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him. The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels” (Ibid., p. 71 – emphasis added).

I’m persuaded that if we want to know God better we need to be constantly studying and meditating on the person of the Lord Jesus. It’s not that we cannot learn about God from other parts in the Bible – indeed we can, and must. But it is in the person of Jesus that God has, as Calvin would say, “accommodated to our weakness” and made himself known in a form that we can bear.

So, unashamedly, I love to dwell upon Jesus as he is presented to us in the Gospels. In seeing him I know I am seeing God. Dallas Willard has very helpfully identified four points of emphasis to keep in mind when doing this. He suggests that we need to consider (i) the matchless life of goodness he lived among us, (ii) his selfless sacrifice of himself for us on the cross, (iii) his resurrection from the dead and continuing presence with his church, and (iv) his rule over the entire universe and its history, guiding it towards it conclusion. “Thoroughly presented in all these ways,” Willard writes, “the love of Jesus for us, and the magnificence of his person, brings the disciple to adore Jesus. His love and loveliness fills our lives… The key to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible.” (The Divine Conquest, pp. 366, 368).

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