Not Recognizing

John 14:8-10; 17 "Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.' 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'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work . . . . the Spirit of truth-the world can not accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.'"



After three years of association with Jesus, the disciples were still not 100% certain of Jesus' relationship with God the Father. Before, they had proclaimed Jesus as the "Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Matthew 16:16); but the John 14 dialogue between Philip and Jesus tells us that the disciples wanted to see God in His glory and were thus oblivious to the fact that they were seeing God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. It was not enough to see God in His humble state as a man, serving the purpose of being the eventual atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world; it's as if the disciples would be convinced of the claims of Jesus as Messiah only if they could experience God in His magnificent splendor. The disciple's doubt was evidenced in Philip's skeptical response to Jesus, "show us the Father and that will be enough for us."



Jesus reproves the disciples for their lack of faith. He in effect tells the disciples that they were seeing God in Him; then, Jesus tells the disciples to believe His words as the illuminating Words of God, proclaiming the evidential truth that God was working through Jesus as Savior and Lord. Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that the world would not believe in God as Spirit for they could not experience Him through sight nor intimate association. But to the disciples Jesus proclaimed that they knew and would better know the Holy Spirit, for He was with them and would indwell them in the future.



We see this skeptical disposition paralleled in our culture today. People are unwilling to believe in the Triune God, for they are not able to experience Him through their senses. Many assert that they will only believe if they are able to see God; they in effect are saying "God show yourself to us and that will be enough." The Words that Jesus shared to His disciples are the Words that we all have available to us today through the Holy Scriptures. These Scriptures are "living and active . . . judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12); they are a gift from the Lord to increase our faith in Him, though we cannot physically see His glory in our temporal state.

God has also gifted us with the presence of the Holy Spirit that lives within the believer, giving to him the assurance that God exists as Sovereign Lord and is working all things according to His eternal purposes . . . . namely the redemption of the redeemed as eternal, evidential proof and testament to His glorious grace (see Ephesians 1).



Failing to see God in His Glory is not an excuse that can be used to deny the reality of God. God already has given to us the above mentioned gifts of the Word and the Spirit. The question that we should be asking is, "Are we tapping into the blessedness of an intimate relationship with God through the Word and the Holy Spirit?"