Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
Many people aren't particularly interested in coming to the Father, because they have misconstrued the Father's heart. They take him to be sometimes absent, sometimes violent and vengeful, but only seldom merciful and loving. They focus on causes of fear rather than reasons to love and to trust. Closed hearts and minds darkened by sin are almost unable to see him differently. They claim to be looking for love, but are in fact only looking for the freedom of license. They say they desire justice and mercy, but themselves perpetuate the cycle of violence in our world. They see the Father reflected through themselves as other fallen men and women as a lens, and see only their worst aspects magnified.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.
Jesus came to heal our distorted image of the Father by being himself the Father's perfect icon. Looking at him reveals the Father, and is corrective to all of the ways we tend to misinterpret him. He gives healing to our vision, helping us to behold that which matters most, which has the greatest ontological priority, God himself. Thus he himself is the way to the Father, is the truth about the Father, and conveys the life, which he himself receives from the Father, to us. And he is eminently approachable, meek and humble of heart. Yes, he shares the Father's heart for justice, and will himself judge the living and the dead. But what he wants is for us to come to him and find rest (see Matthew 11:18-30). He came into the world to offer us mercy and salvation, because that was also what his Father desires for us.
Philip said to him,
"Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
No doubt Philip already received some measure of healing just being near to Jesus and seeing the relationship that Jesus himself had with the Father. Jesus' relationship to the Father made Philip believe that just to catch a glimpse of the one to whom Jesus related with such intimacy and love would be enough to satisfy his soul, perhaps forever. He desired his own little piece of the unfathomably deep relationship between the Father and the Son. But he was still not quite looking in the right direction. It was as though he was trying to look past Jesus and find the Father, somewhere else, out there. But to truly access the vision of the Father that could satisfy him there was no where to look other than Jesus himself.
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
Once we come to believe that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him, every aspect, gesture, and word of Jesus becomes also a revelation of the Father. All of his teaching, his powerful, life-giving works, and especially his self-sacrificial love, all of these are a revelation of the Father's heart, the love with which the Father himself "so loved the world" (see John 3:16).
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,
and will do greater ones than these,
because I am going to the Father.
The disciples of Jesus would receive the power of the Holy Spirit to fill the entire world with powerful works that revealed the Father. Jesus himself was going to the Father with sending the Spirit as his stated purpose (see John 16:6-8), to continue his mission, and make his presence available in an ongoing way throughout generations. But this fact was not merely a tangent, related because of the concept of works. It flowed directly from the need to have our spiritual vision healed to see the Father and to desire to see him. The Spirit was the Spirit of Sonship, and thus distortions about God were potential impediments to his power being fully unleashed in our lives. After all, if the mission of Jesus was to reveal the Father, so too is the mission of the Spirit. And if we are not onboard with that mission ourselves how could we expect the Spirit to bear much fruit in our lives?
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do,
so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.
To ask in the name of Jesus is more than to merely say as much in words. It means asking in a way consistent with what the Son himself would ask, and indeed asking how the Son would ask, with patience and trust and love. But this does not mean that these petitions make no difference, as we might otherwise think since we cannot, after all, change the Father's heart. Rather, as we have recently seen and noted, the Father delights to pour out good gifts on his children. Sometimes he waits for us to ask just so that, in responding, we can come to a greater appreciation of his goodness.
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