(Audio)
“If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Jesus is the one who reveals the heart of the Father. "He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature" (see Hebrews 1:3). "He is the image of the invisible God" (see Colossians 1:15). What these verses tell us is that Jesus is so united with his Father that we actually encounter the Father through Jesus. We know him and see him.
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.
The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
The Father's work is being done and his words spoken in Jesus in such a way that we encounter both persons in the same encounter. We discover the heart of an obedient Son even as we at the same time discover the loving heart of the Father who has placed everything in his hands.
Without Jesus the Father's face is not made known. We are left with a vague sense of fear before God's justice. Perhaps we even find traces of his love and mercy. Yet without the revelation of God in Christ we would never know the depths of the love of the Father for us. But through Jesus we learn that he does not desire to be distant from us but rather wants to be Father to us as well. His is Fatherhood in the truest sense, and so he is "the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (see Ephesians 3:14-15).
Jesus wants us to know who he is, true Son of the Father, because in knowing him we know the Father. And knowing the Father really is "enough for us." The one who is Father more truly than earthly fathers longs to hold us in his embrace. This is the fullness into which we are invited by Jesus.
Just as Jesus reveals the Father we are meant to reveal Jesus by our own lives. People should be able to look at us and notice something greater at work in us, something, perhaps, which eludes firm definition, but something that makes them curious.
For so the Lord has commanded us,
I have made you a light to the Gentiles,
that you may be an instrument of salvation
to the ends of the earth.
Revealing Jesus to the world means sharing not only in his glory but also in his suffering and persecution, at least in some small degree. We are called to bear our share of hardships for the sake of the gospel. But, as Paul reminds Timothy, we are to do so with the strength that comes from God (see Second Timothy 1:8).
On our own we remain fruitless when trials come. For the sake of the love of the Father Jesus embraced suffering and the cross. Therefore we can in turn be united to him by love, that our suffering can bear fruit. When we are scattered we are not lost but are rather sown as seeds.
So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them
and went to Iconium.
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
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