The Revelation of the Father
He testimony of Scripture upon this point is most explicit. Thus: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only - begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”! “No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.”? This, then, is one answer to the inquiry, What has Christ done for men that men could not have done for themselves? namely, He has revealed the Father. What does this expression mean? Three things are clearly excluded: (1) Christ did not reveal the existence of God; (2) He did not reveal the Fatherhood of God, for God is repeatedly called Father in the Old Testament; (3) He did not reveal the mercifulness of God, for God Himself revealed this to Moses. In what sense, then, did Christ reveal the Father? Clearly in the sense that, as far as human conditions made it possible, (1) He visibly embodied the Father, — “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;” (2) He made the Father universally entelligible, — “My doctrine is not Mine but His that sent Me;”* “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature;” (3) He made the Father universally accessible, — ‘“For through Him we both have access by One Spirit
1 John i. 18, 3 John xiv. 9. 2 Matt. xi. 27. 4 John vii. 16, unto the Father.’! The first revelation carries with it the remaining two, for if Christ made the Father visible it follows from the necessity of the terms that He also made the Father intelligible and accessible in exactly the degree in which He Himself could be understood and approached. We are not to insist on a literal visibleness, for that is impossible; but on a manifestation so unique and distinct as to justify the declaration, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” JI propose a new use of these words, as elucidatory of the whole life of Christ. Thus : —
“He that hath seen Me healing the sick and feeding the hungry hath seen the Father doing these things; the invisible care of God has been exercised from the beginning but now is made manifest and ye see it in this action of Mine, — what you now see is but a revelation of that which God in secret has never ceased to do! He that hath seen Me teaching the ignorant and offering the weary rest, hath seen the Father doing these very things; from His habitation in eternity He has been doing even so ever since He made man to possess the earth; this, therefore, is no new act, no new love, no changed affection, it is the invisible revealed to your eyes! He that hath seen Me seeking and saving the lost, receiving sinners and forgiving sins, hath seen the Father so doing: and he that hath seen Me sorrowful unto death, surrendering My own will, taking upon Me the form of a servant and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, hath seen what the Father has been and has done through all time; He has always been pitiful and forgiving, always sorrowful and self-sacrificing, always on the cross! This is a great mystery, and only to be seen in those occasional moments which surprise the soul into a consciousness of its own erandeur and value. He that hath seen me rising from
1 Eph. ii. 18.
the dead, and ascending high above all heavens, that I may fill all things, hath seen the Father in those invisible processes by which He turns the death and corruption of buried seed into the life and fruitfulness of golden harvests. The things which have been hidden from eternity, and which have been the secret and mystery of the universe, have thus been revealed in My earthly ministry: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.”
Or take the same truth in another form : —
1. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, accepting humiliation yet escaping indigmty. No man suffered as Christ did, yet whilst He was on earth He was in heaven! Such was the dignity that could never be impaired. So God has been mocked, defied, grieved, disowned by His children, distrusted by His saints, abandoned by His worshippers, yet He has fed the sun with fire, and sent abroad the arrows of His hghtning, He has weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, in all His humiliation He has never been less than God.
2. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, offering sympathy yet escaping defilement. This was what man could never do. Man could pity the leper, but Christ could fowch him. This power of God was the Divine gift to man; to ancient priest, and modern apostle: “I give unto you power to tread on scorpions and serpents, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you;”! “they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them;”? “and Paul shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.”? From the beginning God has been in the midst of the wickedness of those who have forsaken Him, yet
I huke xs 19; 2 Mark xvi. 18. 3 Acts xxviii. 5, the contagious corruption has had no effect upon His holiness. Who can touch pitch and not be defiled? None but God.
3. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, stooping to death yet escaping annihilation, He that hath seen Me die, hath seen the Father die. You think of death as extinction, and therefore you shudder at the thought of God dying; but see how I die; My enemies kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; I allow the body to die; I enter the grave; but at the appointed time I rise again and spoil the power of the enemy; it is so that the Father dies; He is grieved, disappointed, and His voice is lifted up in lamentation, yet He will overthrow the evil one and turn again the captivity of His own distress, — I have come to show you that that which you sow is not quickened except it die.
How, then, is it true that they who have seen Christ have seen the Father, and yet only they have seen the Father to whom Christ has revealed Him? This reminds us that there is seeing and seeing; every one knows that there is a seeing which sees nothing; — “eyes have they but they see not, ears have they but they hear not, and hearts have they but they do not understand.” Seeing is truly the gift of God. “But their eyes were holden that they should not know Him:”?! “Mary saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus:” 2 “Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.” Clearly, then, something more is meant than the mere sight of the body; to see the Bible is not to see a revelation; sc to see the form of Christ is not to see “the image of the invisible God.”* To whom, then, will the Son reveal the Father? To the man who is humble and of a
1 Luke xxiv. 16, 3 John xxi. 4,
2 John xx, 14. 4 Col..1168.
contrite heart; not to the wise and prudent but unto babes.:
Now we come face to face with the vital question: So Jar as we can form a judgment of the Father by what we see of Jesus Christ, what was the state of the Divine mind in reference to human nature? The common supposition is that God was hostile to sinful man; that His feeling was implacable; and that nothing short of the actual shedding of human blood could appease His burning wrath; that Jesus Christ seeing this, felt that one of two things was inevitable, either first that the human race must perish under the infliction of Divine judgment, or that He Himself must offer to stand before God in the sinner’s stead and receive upon Himself the overwhelming storm of God’s indignation; that having received this storm, which confessedly He had neither provoked nor deserved, the sinner might approach the then satisfied and complacent God. This is substantially what is called the orthodox doctrine of the priesthood of Christ. In view of it we have to ask, Is there anything in the teaching of Christ, fairly construed, to suggest or justify such a conception of God’s relation to the human race? If God had been left in heaven in such a state of implacable anger, it is absolutely certain that Jesus Christ must have revealed the fact and founded His whole ministry upon it. It is further absolutely certain that when Jesus Christ took occasion to speak of God He would carefully guard His hearers from the impression that God was other than implacably indignant against them. Now the answer is not speculative or conjectural. It rests upon matters of fact. Is there a single sentence in all the teaching of Jesus Christ which says that God was in a state of hostility against the world? Is this such a sentence: “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life”? Not only is there no such doctrine in this sentence, but its very terms exclude the possibility of the alleged fact, as light excludes darkness. Is this such a sentence: “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved”? It is morally impossible that God could be both implacably angry with the world and yet so deeply in love with the world, as to send His Son to save it. Not that anger is inconsistent with love, but that ¢mplacableness is. Is the parable of the Prodigal Son such a sentence? Or the parable of the lost sheep? Is the truth not rather in the declaration of John: “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world”?! When did God begin to be so implacably angry with mankind? Not with Adam certainly, for the gospel accompanied the curse; and tender tokens of providential care were given through long years of service and discipline. When, then? Fix the mind upon the fact that it was above all things necessary that Jesus Christ should declare plainly the exact feeling of God in reference to the human race, and then remember that every word He spoke upon the subject, without a single exception, declared God’s love, and you are bound to reject the notion that God was implacably hostile to mankind. Otherwise the meaning of Christ’s work would be this: God is angry with you; irreconcilably angry; the mere mention of your name fills Him with indignation; but it occurred to Me, His Son well beloved, to propose to take your place, without asking your consent to the substitution, to receive upon Myself the full burst of the Divine wrath, and when I proposed this He was well pleased with it, He was willing that I should be treated as a criminal, and that through My obedience you should be treated as if no longer rebellious. The 1] John iv. 14.
mind recoils from such a statement. It signifies that Christ was more loving, more gracious, more pitiful, than God; by so much it creates a prejudice against God and a preference for Christ, instead of softening human obduracy it hardens it, and the question arises whether it is worth while (except for selfish reasons) to be upon good terms with a God so exacting, so vengeful, so unforgiving. The argument would not be complete if we did not take into account the effect likely to be produced upon the human mind by this so-called orthodox representation of God; not that the human mind is to be gratified, but that it is not to be insulted; not that it is to be made equal with God, but that it is to be saved from a corrupt homage which would be less excusable than superstition or idolatry.
It is now time to ask whether there is not another side to this way of putting the case, and whether indeed we have not been affrighting ourselves by the misapplication of long words. Perhaps we may come to see that Divine implacableness and Divine love are really parts of one another, and being so that any discordance between them is due to our interpretation and not to the necessity of the case. To say that God was implacable towards man, manhood, or humanity, confining the term strictly to his own ideal, is to say what is directly contradicted by every invitation, overture, and welcome, addressed by Himself to the human race. Was He implacable when He said, “Why should ye be stricken any more?” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”2 “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord and He will
1 Ta. i. 5. Lit Tsagln 13 have mercy upon him, and to our God for He will abundantly pardon.”! But instead of saying that God is implacable against man, let us say that He is implacable against sim, and therefore against the semner who loves his sin and repeats it with a high hand. Instantly we feel that such implacableness is just and necessary, and is an assurance of the moral security of the universe. God cannot behold sin with the least degree of allowance, is not a declaration of personal implacableness, it is the assertion of that beneficent and unchangeable law which makes no possible communion between light and darkness, Against the obstinately impenitent, God is unquestionably implacable, but “whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy.” God thus clears Himself of the revolting charge of implacableness against man without modifying His infinite abomination of iniquity. If any further proof were needed that no such charge is tenable against God, it would be found in the whole tenor and purpose of Divine providence, Righteousness underlies providence as certainly as it underlies grace, whilst providence is in even a more sensible degree than grace — because of our imperfections — Fatherly, in its daily and most minute and patient care. The God who fills our mouth with good things and defends our life from the arrow that flieth by day and the pestilence that walketh in darkness, cannot be implacable towards the nature so euarded and enriched. Yet “our God is a consuming fire;” He “is angry with the wicked every day;” and “the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to Him.” Besides, the question is not wholly, What did Jesus Christ say about God’s relation to sinners? it is also, What is the fair inference as to that relation, suggested by the very coming and ministry of Jesus Christ? If we can distinctly ascertain Christ’s personal relation to sin, we
1 Iga. ly. 7.
The Revelation of the Father. 205
shall also discover God’s relation to it, for “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” “I and the Father are one.” Now what was that relation? It was one of absolute implacableness towards self-satisfaction and self-gratification, — say against selfishness, which is the earthward and practical aspect of sin. But what of the penitent and the self-distrustful? Let the parable of the Prodigal Son answer; or the scene in the house of Zaccheus, also in the house of Simon the Pharisee; or the conversation with the impenitent thief upon the cross. If it were contended that Jesus Christ was the most implacable of men, the contention could be supported by His unvarying conduct towards “them who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others;” and the contrary contention could be upheld by His unvarying conduct towards those who by “faith” went out of themselves and sought content and rest in His sufficiency. Thus, too, we have found it to be with God: implacable, yet most placable; far off, yet nigh at hand; a consuming fire, yet infinite in love. To answer this Inquiry we must enlarge the outlook. We have been fixing the mind upon special instances of penitence and faith, and those special instances themselves have been called from the records of a peculiar and favoured people. It has already been pointed out that the work of Christ related not to the Jew only but also to the Gentile, even to the heathen and the uttermost parts of the earth; to people, therefore, who know nothing of contrition for sin, or the mystery of destroying the sin and yet saving the sinner; to people, indeed, who did not so much as know either the fact or the consequences of sin. To such people the gospel is in reality a double revelation; that is to say, it is quite as much a revelation of sim as it is a revelation of mercy. Being such, it was necessary that the way to the Father should be shown, and the sovereignty of God determined that the only complete, even the. only philosophical and intelligible, disclosure of that holy way was to be found in the priesthood (including necessarily the sacrifice and example) of Christ. This primarily Divine idea, not at all comprehensible in its metaphysics, had of course to stand the test of practical acceptance and risk; from being a metaphysical proposition, it had to descend into the actual life of man, and to satisfy the very intelligence which it originated and inspired; hence law had to be honourably satisfied, sentiment had to be protected from abuse, human nature had to be guarded from the degradation of mechanism, and the infinite sanctity of the Divine Being had to be vindicated and glorified. Not that all this was apparent at first. Far from it. But it was all involved, and its disclosure was as the shining light shining more and more unto the perfect day. As life itself is a progressive disclosure, from the blade to the ear, from the ear to the full corn, from infancy to youth, from youth to maturity, all being there at the first, but only a little of it developed, so the gift of God in Christ Jesus is complete in itself, as a mere grain of wheat to begin with, yet broadening out over the whole landscape of life, supplying not present want only but all the requirements of endless existence.
For the purposes of the present inquiry we need not go farther into the revelation of the Father by Jesus Christ; He made the Father visible, intelligible, and accessible, — not so much to the Jew, who had in a measure enjoyed all those advantages before the Christian era, but to the heathen and the uttermost parts of the earth; He showed that God was implacable toward sin, yet most unwilling that the sinner should die; and lastly, He showed that God (like Christ Himself) could only be approached successfully in - a spirit of self-sacrifice and self-contempt. What other revelation of the Father He granted is not our immediate business to inquire, yet we cannot forget that the Father was revealed by the Son as kind to the unthankful and the evil, not willing that any should perish, waiting for the return of the prodigal, giving good gifts unto them that ask Him, answering the prayer of faith with abundance of blessing, and forgiving sin (confessed and mourned) with pardon upon pardon, even unto infiniteness of deliverance and security. All this was known to the Jew before the coming of Christ, so that if He had come to the Jews only He would hardly have brought a new revelation of God. Perhaps richer forms of expressing the pity, forbearance, and love of God are to be found in the Old Testament than in the New; certainly the care of Providence is there revealed with amazing minuteness and patience; and certainly the gospel of forgiveness is preached there with a fervour and resonance not excelled in the most intensely evangelical utterances of the apostle Paul. But the revelation was not to the Jew only, but also to the Gentile; probably the Incarnation was not needed by the Jew; but it was necessary for those who knew not the Father of spirits that God should be “manifest in the flesh,” that for a moment Jewish education should be as it were turned backward (from the invisible to the visible), so that Jew and Gentile might be abolished in the New Manhood that is in Christ Jesus,
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