OUR blessed Lord all through John’s Gospel is bringing before His disciples the name of the Father, so as to put them in the same place with Himself before God and before the world.
In John 14 we find our Lord speaking to the disciples of the Father’s house and the place He was going to prepare there for them, so that they might be there where He would be; and then tells them where He was going and on what ground they too would be there in the knowledge of the Father, through the knowledge of Himself as the way, the truth, and the life — the Revealer of the Father.
This leads to Philip’s question — “Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us;” and in reply He tells them — that in all that He did and said, in all His works, He was showing them the Father.
“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?”
Our blessed Lord passed through this world ever telling out of the Father’s love and goodness, and care in all the details and activities of His life of love before His disciples. He says—
“I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world;”
“I have given them the words which Thou gavest Me,”
and He prays for them as those whom the Father had given to Him—
“For they are Thine;... while I was in the world I kept them in Thy name;... I have given them Thy word;... I have declared unto them Thy name.”
Walking as He did here in the unclouded joy of His Father’s love and presence with Him, He told out in every action, in every word, in all His ways what His Father was to Him, and how He was here but to manifest Him (John 6:5757As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57) and 4:34): and the purpose of all this was “that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them”; that they might know the Father and all His love as they had seen it manifested in the Son of His love.
The disciples saw and should have understood (as I believe they did later on when their understanding was opened by the Lord, and the Holy Ghost was come) that all this display was the result of the love wherewith He was loved by His Father (John 17:2323I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. (John 17:23)), and that He had, as He says (John 17:1212While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:12)), kept them in the name of the Father, as those who were the Father’s: He had acted towards them as in that name, which the Father had given Him to make known, so as to bring them into this conscious relationship as children before Him, and that they might know and enjoy His Fatherly love and care, and all that His heart is towards them — that “they might be one as we are one.” All the life of our blessed Lord here below was the answer back of the enjoyment of this love of the Father to Him (John 15:9-119As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. 11These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John 15:9‑11)).
But all this is disclosed that the disciples may enter into it, that that love and the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them — the same character of love — producing in them the full confiding response of love to Him, the Father—
“I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it.”
Not only was that name made known by our blessed Lord in His pathway through this world, but again, on that morning of resurrection, when He sent Mary of Magdala to announce to His disciples that—
linking them up in the same bundle of life with Himself, and putting them in such a place before the Father that He could say, “I and the children which God hath given Me” (Heb. 2:1313And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. (Hebrews 2:13)).
Into what a place of relationship and favor has He not brought us, and set us in the Son of His love; for it is only through Him that this is our place, as our Lord says (John 14:2020At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. (John 14:20)),
“At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.”
What two effective causes to work in, and exercise our hearts and draw them forth in loving, living service — the Father’s love in all its watchful, ministering care, and Christ’s love in all its constraining power over us; as the apostle Paul puts it in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians —
“Who loved me and gave Himself for me,”
and again —
I in them, “The power to tell forth that love of His—to be light bearers here, holding forth the word of life.”
Why is it we know so little of the Father’s love, which it was our Lord’s intention we should know, and that it should be in us? Because we do not take our place as children; as simply entering into what He has said and then by the Spirit through the Word occupying our hearts, with and meditating upon, the pathway and acting of our blessed Lord, and thus learning the Father and His love.
C. H. C.