Jesus Today …

THE EXEGETE OF GOD

No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. (Jn. 1:18)

We all understand that no mortal man has ever seen God, but suppose you did see the Father? Would you be able to convey to the rest of us what you saw? Would there be any satisfactory way for you to communicate your experience? The apostle Paul had the most unusual experience of any human being in history when he was caught up into paradise, but we may conclude that even he, there in the third heaven, did not actually see the Father. He reveals that even if it were lawful for him to tell what he saw and heard, which it wasn’t, he would be unable to do so, for it was ineffable. He couldn’t tell it even if he could! (2 Cor. 12:4)

If Paul found his heavenly experience too awesome to express, it is unlikely that any of us would be able to do any better even if we were privileged to behold the face of God. That is one more reason why I do not take seriously those who claim to have seen God or to have heard His voice.

It is beside the point anyway, for we already have the perfect Pattern, the one who reveals the likeness of God exactly. He is in fact the exegete of God, the one who explains God both by what he is and what he says. Our English word exegesis, which means to interpret (literally, to lead out) is taken directly from this Greek word in Jn. 1:18: “he has made him known” or “he has interpreted.” In looking for a translation that captures the idea the best, I came upon Schonfield’s: “No one has seen God. God’s Only-begotten, who is in the Father’s bosom, he has portrayed him.” Do you get the picture? That is the idea exactly; in Jesus we have a picture of God, the perfect exegete or interpreter.

While I cannot imagine how any person can ever actually look upon Yahweh God, we have the promise that the pure in heart will indeed see Him. It is simply too much for me to contemplate, though I have no difficulty with the idea of seeing Jesus, even in all his glory, for he is a human being like me, even now he is. Moreover, he walked this earth like I do; he laughed and wept like I do; he was tempted to sin in all the ways that I am. I can really relate to all that, and I cling to him as my mediator with the Father. But the Father is something else. I have difficulty relating except through Jesus. But that or he, our Lord is what it is all about. Jesus is the exegete of God. He explains Him. And without Jesus I have no explanation of God. That makes me eminently Christian in my total view of things, for without the Christ I am as tempest-tossed as a cork in the wild waves of a vast ocean. C. S. Lewis had this problem,’ explaining that the more his mother tried to describe the nature of God the more he conjured up in his mind a great sea of tapioca!

I have always sympathized with the apostle Philip’s naive question to Jesus, prompted by what must have been to him some very mystifying remarks about God: Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied (Jn. 14:8). It didn’t take much to satisfy him! Jesus’ answer really blows my mind: He who has seen me has seen the Father. The context reveals that Jesus expected Philip, by virtue of sharing the Lord’s pilgrimage on earth, to realize that he was in some sense the Father. “Do you not believe,” he asked Philip, “that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” I fear that if I had been in Philip’s place I would have been as dense as he was. But I accept by faith what John is trying to communicate to us, that “he who is in the bosom of the Father” is God’s portrayal. He who prayed “My Father” is the “exact representation” of the Father, as Heb. 1:3 puts it. It is too much for us, isn’t it?

But this unfathomable truth undergirds our faith and is the basis of our fellowship. “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” Paul says in Col. 1:15, and goes on to describe the Christ as the creator of all things. “In him all things hold together,” the apostle assures us, which refers not only to all nature, which has its existence in him, but also to the church, which is his Body, of which he is the head. Our unity therefore, which is a gift of the Spirit, is in him and only in him. Jesus holds together all who are in him, just as he holds all of nature together. In Eph. 1:10 we are told that it was God’s plan from the outset to unite all things in Christ. If this unity is not now fully realized, it will be in “the fulness of time.”

“In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” Paul tells us in Col. 1:19, a staggering statement to make of any man. This grand fact, that God became man, is the basis of the gospel, as Paul puts it in 2 Cor. 4:4: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.” Inasmuch as Jesus is in the likeness of God he is the exegete of God. He shows us what God is like.

It not only pleased the Father that the fullness of God should dwell in Jesus, but that we too should take on the likeness of God by being conformed to the image of Christ. Rom. 8:29 makes it clear that believers were “predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son.” while 2 Pet. 1:4 show that God’s promises make us “partakers of the divine nature.” It is a truth so baffling that we are left to accept by faith what is beyond our comprehension: that sinful man might partake of divine nature and become like God. That was of course the Father’s intention when he created us, for He made us in His image. Because of sin we fell from that state. Jesus restores our divine nature by changing us into his likeness, a work of grace through faith.

The apostle assures us that the Father does this by degrees, that we grow in the likeness of Christ from one degree to another: “We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). This is saying that we reflect or mirror Christ’s likeness, and as the Spirit transfigures us by degrees we become more and more like Jesus, reflecting his glory. Schonfield puts it this way: “We reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord. We are transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendor into his own image.”

We should rejoice that the Father has given us the indwelling Spirit, whose function it is to bear fruit and transform us little by little into God’s image by making us more and more like Jesus. This promise extends to the very end as I Jn. 3:2-3 indicates: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” We shall be like him! How is that for good news.

Thus we have the essence of the Christian faith: Jesus came as God’s exegete, to show us what the Father is like, a revelation that we could have in no other way. He came as the very image of the invisible God, the exact representation of His nature. Jesus not only gave us access to the Father, but he empowered us through his Spirit to become partakers of his nature and to be transfigured into his likeness. The point of the Christian religion, therefore, is to reclaim man from sin and restore him to the likeness of his Creator, both in this world and in the world to come, from one degree of that likeness to another. All this is through Jesus, God’s exegete.

We may assume therefore that the more one yields herself to the mission of the Holy Spirit within her, bearing the fruit of love, joy and peace, the greater will be her likeness to Christ. She thus prepares herself through God’s grace for a more glorious similitude in the world to come. It is not merely heaven that is our goal, but the cultivation through the Spirit of the highest degree of Christlikeness as possible, each according to his own capacity. “You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Pet. 1:19). the Editor