The Way to the Father
For Meditation
How do you know God? In some ways, that question is at the heart of the human story from the very beginning. It is the root question of every religion, it is the yearning of many human hearts. And it is a question that has resulted in many divergent answers, too many to count.
In our passage, the disciple Philip asks a similiar question to Jesus: “Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Philip wants to see God! Like Moses in Exodus 33, he is asking to see the glory of the invisible God. Philip has deep respect for Jesus, and believes that Jesus can somehow give Philip an experience or vision of God. His view of Jesus is very high- but not high enough. He does not really understand who Jesus is. Jesus makes a shocking claim to Philip - “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (v.9). Jesus doesn’t just represent God. He presents God to us in his very person. Jesus the Son is so intimate with God the Father that in knowing and experiencing Jesus, we know and experience God.
This claim is both controversial and comforting. It is controversial because Jesus makes the claim to be “the only way” to God. In a pluralistic world like ours, this is a very challenging claim that we need to wrestle with - there is no other way to the true God than through Jesus! But it is also a comforting truth- because we don’t need to wonder what God is really like or what God thinks. In knowing Jesus, in seeing him in all his tenderness, compassion, kindness and love- we see what God is truly like. We see God in the flesh.
In preparation for worship, meditate on John 1:18 in light of our passage:
"No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known."
John 14:5-14
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.