“ No man knoweth [ἐπιγινώσκει thoroughly knoweth] the Son but the Father.” These words were spoken by the Son Himself. They are absolute and unqualified, and foreclose utterly, while they anticipate, the irreverent questionings of men. Our Lord's statement is the more striking that in the very same verse He declares that the Father is knowable—in and through the Son. As we read elsewhere (John 14:99Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? (John 14:9)), “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Clearly the mystery of His Person is in question; to the captious, the irreverent, the curious, a stone of stumbling in all ages, but to the humble and reverent soul a source of unfailing gladness and thanksgiving. Of course there is a sense in which we do know Christ—most really know Him, albeit not the mystery of His Sonship. Our Lord gently reproved Philip for not knowing Him, for not discerning that all that infinitude of moral glory was the manifestation of the Father. To know Him was to know the Father, so that this verse in John is in the fullest accord with the passage in Matthew. But, as we know, it is the union of the divine and the human in His blessed Person that is unknowable. All manner of ingenious speculation has been exhausted in the attempt to analyze it. In vain! No such impregnable tower ever rose foursquare to heaven. The would-be interpreters are ever baffled, and the burning of their own fingers is the least part of the damage. What of the widespread injury to the flock of Christ? Surely, it had been better, instead of such unhallowed dissection, to have bowed before the “mystery of godliness,” or even to have taken up, may be, the words of the ancient creed, for “God and Man are one Christ.” Such is the Incarnation.
Perhaps this stupendous fact is hardly sufficiently emphasized by any of us, not merely by those whose tendency is to recondite speculation, but by very many who fear lest by so doing their attention should be diverted from the atonement. It is not improbable that the fact that men are willing to descant upon the virtues of the Man Christ Jesus, and admit in a vague way a manifestation of the Divine in His Person, but who slight or ignore redemption, may in some measure explain the slender reference to this cardinal truth that prevails here and there. But our wisdom is to hold all truth, Johannean and Pauline, with equal hands. Doubtless he, who is jealous to hold both, will most effectually hold either. The dying recommendation of one who combined an adoring spirit with singularly acute and comprehensive knowledge will be remembered in this connection. Those who were in danger of becoming transcendental and losing Christ over Ephesian truth were counseled to study John.
But not even in the fourth Gospel is there a lovelier picture than in the passage under consideration. For, if the Person of the Christ be unknowable, if the Son reveals the Father to the sons who had strayed so far away, He calls upon us to “learn of Him.” For what purpose but for this have we a fourfold portraiture? Why such a multiplicity of incident, each leading up to the central truth of the atonement, each laden with its special touch of grace, its peculiar ray of glory? Such pictures may well refresh the heart, and quicken the spiritual pulse as we “consider Him,” when gathered to “proclaim His death till He come.”
The divine and the human in our blessed Lord may be likened to a gold and silver thread, of which the strands are indissolubly united. His Person is to be adored, not analyzed. With Athanasius we say, “so much we know; the seraphim veil the rest with their wings.” R. B. Junr.