Pages

Tuesday 24 February 2015

John 1:18 - Father and Son

This verse is so theologically rich. No one has seen God except the one and only Son. If we wanted to know about someone who would we rather listen to, people who had all sorts of ideas about the person, or someone who had actually met him, who actually knew him. Jesus has seen God, has met Him, knows Him. So He is the most reliable source of information, of true knowledge about who God is. People spout all sorts of nonsense about who God is, but they know nothing.
Now when speaking about the trinity we should never take any one phrase in isolation, for we are talking about a concept that is way beyond our everyday experience. We are each one person, everyone we know is one person. God is both One and yet three persons. So the first part of this verse taken purely on its own would imply that Jesus is not God. So John is quick to correct any such misconception. The Son is Himself God.
Then he tells us that Jesus is in closest relationship with the Father. The relationship between the Father and the Son is not a mere theological relationship, it is a deep personal relationship. All human relationships derive ultimately from the relationships within the Godhead (Eph 3:15).

And it is this Jesus who makes the Father known to us. This is a recurrent theme in John. This is the Jesus who has seen the Father and is in close relationship with Him. We can trust and rely upon the words and testimony of Jesus.

No comments:

Post a Comment