Whoever believes in me believes not only in me
but also in the one who sent me,
and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.
To see Jesus with the eyes of faith was to see the Father. This was what Jesus told Philip when he said, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (see John 14:9). The visible human nature of Jesus was a living icon of the Father. But it was of course possible to see Jesus and yet not recognize the Father. It was possible to look, but without the eyes of faith. It was not the arrangement of his facial features, nor the proportion of his limbs, nor the radiance of his skin, nor any other particular feature that revealed his divinity. And it was not as though there was typically a halo visible for all to see. It was rather by his love for the Father that the Father was made manifest. His obedience was so complete that the Father was unhindered in manifesting himself through Jesus. And in just the same way when Christians are obedient to Christ they manifest Christ to the world. No doubt this as why we are called Christians, which happened for the first time in Antioch, as we read yesterday.
I came into the world as light,
so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.
Jesus was the true light that darkness could never supplant. In this he was like wisdom itself, since "though night supplants light, wickedness does not prevail over Wisdom" (see Wisdom 7:30). He was the most perfect gift of the Father, the most exact reflection of his unchanging goodness. As James wrote, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (see James 1:17).
If we follow anyone other than Jesus we will not find the stability, peace, and life, that can be found in him alone. Other good things are subject to change and fluctuation. They come and they go. They cannot be held indefinitely and can therefore only provide happiness in a shadowy, transitory fashion. They are not necessarily evil, but they lack the permanence which we desire. They are not, finally, places where our hearts can come to rest.
Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words
has something to judge him: the word that I spoke,
it will condemn him on the last day
Jesus did not desire anyone to remain in darkness or come to condemnation. His work was to bring people into the light and his mission was to offer salvation to the world. He desired to give the gift of eternal life to all who would receive his word. But condemnation was nevertheless a possible reality for those who did not accept this invitation. This was not so much because he desired it as because it was the collision course on which humanity was already set apart from his saving help. His words described an offer of rescue and a way of escape. But those who would not avail themselves of the gift would eventually find the impending crash about which he warned to be all too real. Jesus came to save the world from where it was heading apart from him. In many ways much of our world and indeed even parts of our own hearts are still heading toward that disaster. May we all surrender ourselves more and more to him, allowing ourselves to be rescued, and no long insisting on sinking with the ship.
And I know that his commandment is eternal life.
The command of God sounds as though it might be arbitrary and burdensome. We tend to mistrust authority and to be suspicious of figures in authority. In some measure this jaded nature of ours stems from how we have been burned by the world and how authority has been, at best, unevenly administered. But it plays into a tendency we have because of the fall to mistrust God himself. And yet if we do not learn to trust him he will not have the scope of freedom in our lives and hearts to deliver us. He longs to give us something so good we can't quantify it, we can't even ask or imagine what it will be. And so, if the word of God is to continue to spread and grow in us and through us we need, by grace, to grow in trust. Jesus himself is an icon of how this trust should look and looking to him we can discern how we ourselves may grow, and eventually come to walk in the light.
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