In John 14, Philip asks Jesus the question humanity has been fighting over forever: What is God like? What does God want? What does God think? About me? About them? About the world?
And honestly, Philip’s request is understandable. Because God can seem so elusive – not just for unbelievers but even devout Christians. Christians have claimed God endorses everything under the sun: empires and revolutions, crusades and conquests, vengeance and violence. One person says God is angry. Another says God is compassionate. One says God demands blood. Another says God forgives freely. One says God chooses sides. Another says God loves everyone.
Even within the Bible itself, we encounter portraits that appear radically different from one another. Want a warrior God? You’ll find one. A tribal God? You can have one. A God of peace, he’s there too. Vindictive? Yep. Compassionate? For sure. A God who hates what we hate and loves who we love, we can find that too. Sometimes the Bible’s revelation functions less like a window and more like a mirror. It reveals God—yes!—but also the hearts of the people who wrote it and read it and the God that they wanted.
So Philip offers the right request: “Show us the Father.” And Jesus gives the most revolutionary answer: “Philip… have I been with you so long and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
This is one of the most radical claims ever uttered. Jesus doesn’t say: “I can point you toward God.” He doesn’t say: “Here is a book. Now believe EVERY word.” He says: “If you have seen me, you’ve seen God.” Not “part” of God. Not “one side” of God. Not “God on a good day.” Jesus essentially tells Philip: “I am exactly what God is like.” The writer of Hebrews understood Jesus. They wrote: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being . . . “(Hebrews 1:3). And Paul will echo the same truth saying that the fullness of God was in Jesus (Col. 1:19, 2:9).
And this is where Christianity becomes either astonishingly beautiful and mysterious or deeply troubling and offensive. Because Jesus reveals a God unlike the gods we usually imagine. The gods of humanity tend to rule through coercion. Jesus rules through compassion. The gods of empire kill their enemies. Jesus forgives his enemies. The gods of power crush the weak. Jesus washes feet. The gods of religion demand sacrifice. Jesus becomes the sacrifice and forgives the ones who kill him.
Jesus’ statement means that the clearest picture of God is not seen in raw displays of omni-powers (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence), but in Christ crucified. This is the scandal. We wish to see God’s sovereignty in unstoppable power. Jesus reveals God’s power in unstoppable love. We want to see the Lion who devours. But when we look, Jesus reveals the Lamb who is slain. The New Testament insists that the crucified Christ is “the very icon of the invisible God.” Not partially. Fully. The cross is not the moment where Jesus saves us from God. The cross is the truest moment where Jesus reveals who God actually is. What God really wants. Sometimes we’ve been so worried about trying to prove that Jesus is God we forgot the equally scandalous idea that God is like Jesus.
And Jesus crucified shows us what God looks like when humanity does its worst. Not retaliation. Not annihilation. But self-giving, co-suffering, forgiving love – that can’t ultimately be killed. And if Jesus crucified and risen is the fullest revelation of God, then we must wrestle honestly with what that means. It means we cannot appeal to some “other” God hidden behind Jesus. We cannot say: “Yes, Jesus is loving, but God Himself is harsher.” Jesus will not allow that separation. “The Father is in me.” “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” This changes everything. Because many people secretly carry a divided image of God. Jesus is kind. But the Father is severe. Jesus forgives. But God is angry. In this entire series, we’ve watched Jesus completely dismantle that dualistic framework.
According to Jesus, there is no hidden God lurking behind Him. There is no dark side of God concealed behind the back of Christ. God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. In God there is no unChristlikeness. That is in part why the doctrine of the Trinity came into being.
And this is why the crucified Jesus becomes the interpretive center for who God is. Not religious triumphalism. Not moral purity. Not violence baptized in God language. But the forgiving God who surrenders. The self-emptying God who submits to being pushed around. The enemy-loving God who would rather die for His killers than destroy them.
And if all this is true, it raises a difficult question: What do we do with unChristlike images of God, especially from the Bible? As Christians, we must deeply honor the Bible. But we do not worship the Bible or merely believe in everything one might find in it. We worship the God revealed in Christ. The Bible is the inspired witness that leads us to Jesus. And Jesus taught that he was the person and story that Scriptures aims to tell and serve (John 5:39-40; Luke 24:25-27). The Scriptures bear witness to Christ. But Christ is the Word that bears witness to God.
Make no mistake. Jesus will not let us get away from our Bibles. His most often asked question was, “Have you not read?” So to be a follower of Jesus demands that we engage with Scripture but always and only as that which bears witness to Jesus. C.S. Lewis says it this way: “It is Christ himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the right guidance of good teachers, will bring us to him.” Perhaps here’s a helpful analogy offered by Brian Zahnd: “What John’s prologue says of John the Baptist, we can say about the Bible: ‘There was a book sent from God that we call the Bible. The Bible came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. The Bible itself is not the light; it came only as a witness to the light.’ This is not a low view of Scripture but a high view of Christ.”
And Jesus, the Word of God, stands before us and says: “If you want to know what God is like, don’t simply listen to my words, look at my works.” Look at the One touching lepers. Look at the One forgiving adulterers. Look at the One welcoming children. Look at the One eating with sinners. Look at the One weeping over Jerusalem. Look at the One carrying a cross. Look at the One praying forgiveness over His executioners. Look at me and behold your God.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a choice. Will we continue creating God in our image? Or will we allow Jesus to reveal God to us? Will we believe every vision of God offered in the Bible? Or will we interpret everything through Jesus? Because according to Jesus, the final and fullest revelation of God is not a book dropped from heaven but is best encountered through a flesh-and-blood person.
So, because of who Jesus is, what Jesus said, and what Jesus did, we refuse to read the Bible as a flat text where every word has equal authority. Rather, we understand that Jesus is the pinnacle of revelation and every word of Scripture must finally submit to him. Jesus himself reveals that not every word of Scripture aligns with the living Word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus will say, “You have heard it said (quoting Scripture), but I say to you . . . “ (Matthew 5). That’s not tweaking Scripture – it’s a correction. Yes, Jesus corrected the Bible, including words in the Bible formally ascribed to God. So if Jesus is the truest revelation of God and the true Word of God the formula is simple: Read the Bible – carefully, thoughtfully, honestly, prayerfully. When anything in the Bible disagrees with Jesus and who he reveals God to be, listen to Jesus. In Matthew 17, when Moses, who represents the Law, and Elijah, who represents the Prophets, appear with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, they represent the whole of the Old Testament witness. And Peter wishes to equally celebrate all three. And what does God say? “This is my Son. Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5). The Law and the Prophets point to Jesus and bow to Jesus. Never use them to correct him. He’s the Word of God.
So when we ask: “What is God like?” The answer Christians give is not a philosophical abstraction and not simply any verse from the Bible. It is Jesus. Jesus healing. Jesus teaching. Jesus forgiving. Jesus welcoming. Jesus suffering. Jesus crucified. Jesus risen. This is God, according to Jesus.
And if that is true— then the deepest reality in the universe, the best view of God, is not wrath. Not fear. Not domination. It looks like this. And that, friends, is utterly scandalous and incredibly beautiful. Behold the crucified God.
No comments:
Post a Comment