The Word Declaring the Unseen God
‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only -begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” — John i. 18.
WITH this marvellous verse, the Evangelist brings to a close his sublime prologue. It is a befitting introduction to all that follows. Like some noble portal to a temple of transcendent size and “j”” beauty, it admits the reverent soul into this Divine Gospel, thrilling the heart, quickening the imagination, and preparing the thought for things which have not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Here is the seed-plot of the Gospel. Here is the standpoint from which the nature and ministry of the Lord are to be viewed. Here are struck those three keynotes — Life, Light, and Love — which, in different combinations, vibrate through the entire range of the writings of the Apostle John.
We believe in the Being of God. Vast as this universe is with depths and heights, and its immeasurable expanse, we believe that it is filled throughout with his mighty Spirit. He is everywhere. He knows everything.’ He can do all things. But the human heart pines to know what He is. Man seeks after God, groping in the dark, if haply he may feel after Him and find Him, and read the secret of his inner being. “What is God? What does He think and feel? What will He be to me?”
You send me to study Nature. But I find there nothing but his power and Godhead, his deeds, not his heart. And sometimes I am baffled by the apparent working of a malign power by which the creature is brought into subjection.
You send me to study Providence. But the march of God through the ages is so vast, and his footsteps so far apart, that they seem to be hidden in the sea, and his path in the dark waters; so that it is hard to understand the true trend and character of his dealings with the children of men.
You send me to decipher the Names of God. El-Shaddai, the God of Might, on whom difficulties which threaten to overwhelm us break harmlessly, as storms on the brow of the Matterhom. Jehovah, the Unchangeable, who knows no shadow of turning; whose word is inviolable, and his covenant sure. Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts, on whose bidding legions of bright spirits wait. But, after all, these names rather disclose the might and splendour of a sovereign, and do but increase my dread of Him as my sins come back to memory.
Is there nothing more? May I not see Him? Is there no open door of vision where I may stand and satisfy the hunger of my soul; no spot in all the wilderness where I may shelter behind a rock and catch a glimpse of his majesty as He passes by, escorted by the serried ranks of angel armies? “Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to his seat!”
Bui it ?nay not be! No man hath seen God at any TIME. Never yet. Not Moses; for he was hidden under the hand of God, and saw not his face. Not Elijah; for God was not in the earthquake or fire. Not the favoured three; for the cloud of glory dazzled them with its splendour. And even in the Apocalyptic vision, the rapt, gaze of the seer beheld only the circumambient halo as of the jasper and sardonyx stone. And if we were to search the annals of any other nation, we should receive from every quarter the reply, addressed by a grey-haired Indian to Sir John Franklin during one of the expeditions cf that renowned explorer: “I am an old man now, but I have never seen God.”
And the explanation is given in those memorable words of a later Scripture: “He only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”” The King eternal, immortal, invisible, the.
only wise God.” If the vision of the glory of God as it was veiled by the human nature of our Lord was so awful, in its dimmed radiance of glory, that the beloved disciple fell at his feet as dead, what would not be the effect of its insufferable splendour on the nature of any created being! It is of God’s mercy that there are as many dense curtains between Him and us as covered the tabernacle of old, and veiled the unearthly glory of the Light that shone there.
But, surely, there must be some satisfaction for this hunger of the soul to know God, and of that other hunger, more eager still and harder to bear, for love. Our hearts pine for God and for love. What will we not give to appease our yearning for love! This makes us seek so eagerly for human friendships; mourn so bitterly if they are withdrawn; feel so lonely if they come not within our reach. Oh that this great and invisible God were Love! But how can we know? Hush! the Word hath declared Him; hath told the secrets of his inner being; yea, more, hath let those inner secrets reveal themselves through his words and life.
I. The Qualifications of the Word for declaring THE unseen God. — (i) His Eternity. — This was indicated by John the Baptist (15). Our Lord was his cousin, younger by six months, and John had already been for eighteen months before the people when Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptized. Thus, in a very true sense, “our Lord came after him.” But when the greatest of woman-born saw Him approaching, he who had never quailed before the face of man, whether royal or priestly, lowered his erect bearing to a deep humility, and cried: “This one must take precedence of me; it is his by right, for He was before me.” And so speaking, he is the spokesman of the entire prophetic band, whom he represents.
Ask Isaiah, the evangelic; or Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish race; or Noah, standing on the green-sward of a new world; or Adam, the first man; or the oldest star that first glimmered on the bosom of the night; or the most ancient elder who stands at the foot of the eternal throne; and from each the reply comes back dimmer and fainter from ever further distances, He was before me.
Jesus is the Alpha; the beginning; the first. He was before time, as we have seen. As Isaiah tells us, He is the Father of Eternity. And therefore He is well qualified to declare God.
(2) His Nature. — “The only-begotten Son.” Many ancient manuscripts give this phrase as God only begotten.. God has many sons, but only one Son. Angels are sons by their creation. Penitent sinners are sons by regeneration and adoption. But our Lord Jesus is Son in an altogether unique and unrivalled sense. He is Son by generatioa “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee” (Psa. ii. 7; Acts xiii, 33). And He is the only Son thus begotten.
It is a profound depth, for which our thought has no fathoming-line. But clearly this phrase indicates that our Lord Jesus shares in its fulness the very Nature of God. “He is a partaker of that incommunicable and imperishable essence which is sundered from all created life by an impassable chasm.” * He is the object of such love as an Abraham might have felt to his son, his only son, Isaac; but multiplied by the difference which must ever part the finite from the infinite. He used the expression of Himself, because it constituted in Jewish speech the very strongest method of claiming equality with God. It was well understood in that sense by the Jews, who instantly charged Him with blasphemy, and sought to avenge so daring an assumption of Deity (v. 18).
Is it not significant that the humblest and meekest Being that ever trod on our world — the pattern of perfect holiness, whose perceptions as to the truth of his own being could not have been mistaken — dared not withdraw a single iota of his claim, but died, rather than evade its entire force .? (xix. 7). He could not abate those claims, because He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He was ever conscious of his Divine oneness with God (x. 30). He knew whence He was (viii. 14). He lived in constant fellowship with God (x. 15). And therefore He was well qualified to declare Him.
* The late Canoa Liddon. (3) His Intimacy with the Heart of God. — ‘’ Which is in the bosom of the Father.’’ At a Jewish table the guests recUned on couches in such a way that one might easily lean back his head on another’s breast. Of this privilege the beloved Apostle availed himself at the last opportunity which offered. The breast is near the heart. By this tender and sacred clue he helped himself, and has helped myriads in succeeding ages, to realize the deep love, the close intimacy, the perfect acquaintance, subsisting between the Word and the unseen God; so that He is well able to declare Him. “I know Him” (viii. 55). The preposition “in” might be rendered “into,” as if there was an ever deeper and closer approximation.
(4) His Human Nature. — “The Word was made flesh.” He was the Son of God; but throughout this Gospel He speaks of Himself repeatedly as the Son of Man. Not A Son of Man. Not the Son of A Man. But, as if He were the child, offspring, and representative of the entire human family — the Son of Man (iii. 14). Whilst, therefore, as the Son of God, He was able to know God perfectly, as the Son of Man He was able perfectly to express, unfold, and reveal Him; so that all might understand the deepest thought and being of the ever-blessed One.
II. The Mode of Declaration. — This is very wonderful. He spoke about God; corrected men’s false conceptions; confirmed their vague and visionary hopes; and poured floods of light upon the mysteries of God’s nature, which had been hidden from ages and generations.
His choicest revelations were made to the little inner group that gathered closest around Him. He gave them God’s word. He manifested the name of God to the men who had been given Him out of the world. In tender, glowing words He made known to them all that was concealed from other eyes in that ever-blessed word, which the Jews dared not pronounce, Jehovah (xvii. 6, 14, 26). All that language could convey was conveyed in the words of the Word.
But He did more; He so emptied Himself, He became as to his human nature so utterly dependent on his Invisible Companion that the life of God declared itself through his. He did nothing of Himself, but what He saw the Father do. He lived by the Father. He spoke only what his Father said to Him. He made known only what He heard from his Father. His words were not his, but the Father’s that sent Him. The very works He did were disclaimed by Him. Remember his emphatic declaration: “The Father which dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works” (v. 19; vi. 57; xii. 50; xiv. 10).
And thus, when Philip said to Him on one occasion, “Show us the Father,” the demand elicited a sad and heart-weary reply, “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. Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?”
This then was our Lord’s way of declaring God. God wrought and spoke through his human life, that as men beheld its grace and truth, they were able to study as through a veil, or from a reflecting mirror, the veiy nature of the unseen God. In blessing little children; in welcoming the lost and desolate; in lessening human pain; in weeping true tears of sympathy; in bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows; in dying for our sins; in seeking and restoring an erring disciple, as a gardener might lift up a flower bent downwards by the storm — in all these things, Jesus declared God, just letting the God that was in Him live through Him in each lovely act and tender word.
III. The Declaration. — “The Father.” From his first talk with the woman by the well to that other talk with women at the sepulchre, the one choice word with which he designated God was — Father (iv. 23; xx. 17). In that name He came. Of that name He spoke. By that name He taught us to commence our daily prayer. Into that name we must be baptized. Within that precious name, as a rampart of sure defence, we are to live. He is the Father’s gift. Heaven is the Father’s home. True worshippers are the objects of the Father’s search. Humble hearts are the chosen dwellings of the Father’s love. All who belong to Him are dear to the Father’s heart. God is his Father, and the Father of all those who have received Him, and in doing so have obtained the right to become sons of God. Other men, as Paul said, may be his offspring; but they are sons.
Not orphans or desolate are we! Never lonely again! Never pining for a love which mocks our yearnings and evades our reach! Never roaming the universe to escape God, or dreading Him as unknown and unknowable! Never again shrinking from life for its solitudes, or from death for its mystery, or the hereafter for its terrors! But nestling ever in the strong, tender arms of a Father who pities us, and whose love is as much more sensitive than that of any earthly father — as his nature, thoughts, and ways are higher and better than ours; or as the fire is greater than the straw which is lit at its blaze (Eph. iii. 15).
What a blessed lot is this! Let us bathe our tried, fearful hearts in these rays of sunshine, with which Jesus has lit up life and death, earth and heaven; and, as the little child, in the dark tunnel or on the turbulent waves, forgets its alarm with its father’s voice in its ear, its father’s heart as pillow, its father’s arms as encircling walls, so, amid the problems and perplexities of life and death, let us trust the Fatherhood of God, soft as a summer zephyr, deep as ocean depths, and be at peace.