During the post-world war 2, cold-war space race, both the Russians and the Americans wanted to be the first to the moon. This was part of a clash of ideologies—the Atheistic and Communist Soviets and the Democratic and Protestant Christian United States.
When the Communist Russians sent their first space capsule, the sputnik, into space, many atheist commentators took it as proof that there is no god. They argued that humans have now gone into the heavens, and did not find God, so atheism is right. Mind you, it would appear that Yuri Gagarin did not say such a thing—it was something that very much earth-bound Atheists said. Gagarin was actually a member of the Russian Orthodox church. (See https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)
For when Apollo 8 orbited the moon, on December 24, 1968, in what was then the most watched television broadcast ever, the crew of Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman read out Genesis 1:1-10. And after they read from the King James Bible, they closed their Christmas broadcast with “God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azf4FkhOWn4)
These American astronauts went into space, they took up a Bible, and they saw everything God had created, and while they didn’t find God himself, they saw the fingerprints of God everywhere. For to the eye of faith, the evidences of God are everywhere, but to the unbeliever, God is nowhere to be found. Humans actually find in space what they take up in the first place.
If we want to see the fingerprints of God, we find them everywhere. If we don’t want to see them, we won’t see them at all.
But either way, you don’t find what you’re looking for when you look in the wrong place. One of the problems with many people who complain that they cannot see or sense God, and therefore he is not there, is that they are looking in the wrong place. And when they see evidences of him, they don’t recognize him anyway.
The place to look for God is not in space—although as the Astronauts of Apollo 8 said, there are the evidences of God’s creation up there.
The place to look for God is in Jesus. According to John’s Gospel, no one has ever seen God, but God the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known (John 1:18). So let me save you a trip up in ‘Space X’ or ‘Virgin Space’. You won’t find God in space. You will find God in Jesus.
Now the thing about asking a good teacher a question is that you might not get what you think is a direct answer to your question, but you will learn what you need to know. You see, the question you ask might be mistaken. Your question might be based on a wrong assumption. The question you asked might reveal your lack of understanding of other things the teacher has taught.
So what’s more important than Philip’s question is Jesus’ answer and response. And Jesus will use the question as a launching pad not only to answer the question, but to correct the questioner, and tell them the disciples the things they need to know to survive and thrive in the days, weeks, and months to come.
In our passage, Jesus is speaking to his eleven disciples on the night before he died. They have just finished the Passover meal—lamb roast, with bread and bitter herbs. Jesus has washed his disciples feet, as an acted parable of his love for them. He has told them to do the same. He has sent out his betrayer, Judas, to do his foul and loathsome task of treachery. And he is preparing his disciples for his own death and departure. So Jesus is under a fair bit of pressure—he is human, after all. And the disciples are grief stricken and confused—they are fallible, human, and sinful, just like you and me.
And John continues to record for us the conversation around the dinner table. As the utensils are being cleared, Jesus has dropped such a bombshell—I’m going to die and one of you will betray me—that he delays his departure from the upper room to continue his discussion with the eleven disciples that remain with him.
But before they go out together in the cold night air, Jesus will respond to two more questions, and the first one is from Philip. Today’s passage, chapter 14 verses 8 to 11, records for us Philip’s question, and the first part of Jesus’ response to it. Jesus will spend from verses 9 to 21 responding to it. But we are going to look at Jesus’ answer over a number of talks, because of its richness.
Philip’s question is a thoughtless and somewhat insensitive one. Verse 8:
14:8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us.”
Philip wanted what Moses wanted (Exod 33:18)—to see what no sinful human has ever seen nor can see—God himself. Philip wants to see God the Father, he who is pure spirit, the font of all divinity, the one from whom all fatherhood is named and derived. While in the incarnation, God has come near to us in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ, the Father did not become incarnate, but dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see (1 Tim 6:16). The hymn, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” reflects this reality. When we sing “though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see”, we are reaffirming this reality. Likewise, we read in John 1:18, we read that “no one has ever see God.”
Send up the space shuttle—we don’t have any of them, but send one up—and guess what? We don’t find God. That’s not Christians ‘hiding’ God. That’s just what the Bible said almost two millennia before humans could go into space. “[God] alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16). Suppose by the grace of God we can travel to the moon or mars, or send things out of our solar system. Yet the ancient book says, we can’t see God. Why should we think we can find God when he says he can’t be found there? For anyone who has read any of the Bible, they would realize that God is not the subject of our scientific investigations. We cannot gaze upon him. He doesn’t submit to our investigation. He lives in unapproachable light.
But this is the wonder of the incarnation, of God becoming flesh and pitching his tent among us. God has in fact exposed himself to our poking and proding. The unapproachable God has approached us. God has condescended to show himself to us. For John 1:18 also says that God the only begotten has made this unseen God visible to humanity. God has chosen his own method to reveal himself to us. The method involving him becoming everything we are, except sin. God stoops down to become one of us, so that he might not only reveal himself to us, but be united to his creation permanently, in the incarnation.
People want to look at the sun, especially if there is an eclipse. But they must not look directly at the sun with the naked eye, or they will burn their eyes out and go blind, such is the heat and light emitted by the sun. Sun glasses and beer bottles aren’t adequate for safe observation of the sun. A reflection of the image of the eclipse is required, if you want to both look at the sun, and keep your sense of sight for another day.
God has provided the safety equipment to see God, the personal protective clothing to gaze at God. The safe way to do it is by looking at Jesus. Jesus as God the Son is the very image, reflection, and effulgence of God the Father. But Jesus is safe to look at, because he is God become human. He is one of us.
Now what Philip wants, at one level—to look full in the face of God—is a good thing. He wants what the created human heart should naturally long for—to know ultimate meaning in life, to know its creator, and to look at the one in whose image we have been made. Part of us as humans wants to lay eyes on God. We want to see our creator. That is understandable.
Of course, the other half of us as sinful humans wants to run away from God, and wants to take what is God’s for ourselves, and wants to be God. But exposing this aspect of sinful human nature is for another time.
But Philip’s request is dull, thick, and lacking in perception. It is, if I might say so, thoughtless to our Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because for the last three years, Philip has been staring with safety into the very face of God himself. Philip has seen the glory of God with his eyesight preserved and protected by the incarnation. Philip is the beneficiary of God’s decision to approach us and make himself known to us in a way that is safe for us, because God became one of us (John 1:14).
But clearly that is not enough for Philip. It is not enough because Philip doesn’t understand what he has been looking at. To understand Jesus’ response, we must understand Philip’s lack of understanding. Jesus’ astounded response to Philip is in verse 9:
14:9Jesus said to him, “I have been with you for such a long time, and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
Jesus exclaims, “Don’t you know me?” It’s a question that many children end up saying about their parents, or sons to their fathers. CS Lewis said of his father, “After having known me for so long, he knew me so little.” It’s sadly what many people can say after 30 years of marriage: “Don’t you know me even after I’ve been with you such a long time.”
The first thing we should notice is the astounding arrogance of what Jesus says—if it were not true. Jesus says, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”—that is, God. No wonder the Jews elsewhere picked up stones to stone him (e.g. John 8:58-59). However, from the mouth of Jesus, such words are only the unalloyed, simple truth, spoken with utter sincerity and genuine surprise. So pure, honest, and open is Jesus Christ with his disciples, that as he freely speaks with them of his intimate relationship with the Father. That is reality as Jesus experiences it. This is why Jesus is genuinely shocked that Philip cannot appreciate what is just normal and everyday for him—that he is the very image of God himself, Son of the Father, making God known.
But the second thing is that I as a sinful human cannot be too critical of Philip, because I’m really no different from him. I don’t like to see scary things, but like Philip I want to see more than what God has deigned to give me at this time. I don’t appreciate what I’ve been given, just as Philip didn’t. I don’t thank God for the safety equipment of the incarnation he has given me to keep me safe. And for us, we have another pair of goggles, the Bible, which reveals God to us so we don’t burn out our eyes. I’m too slow to believe, and thick headed to understand what has been given me in Jesus, just as Philip was. So we need to be careful in our condemnation of Philip.
But third, there is a poignant sadness in Jesus’ words here: “I have been with you for such a long time, and you do not know me, Philip? […] How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Philip knew Jesus well enough to get Nathaniel to come and see him. Philip told Nathaniel as soon as he met Jesus that he had found the one written about in the Scriptures (John 1:43-46). The feeding of the 5000 would have spoken loudly to Philip, given that Jesus had first tested him specifically about it (John 6:5-7). Philip has been there and seen it all. And yet, knowing so much, and seeing so much, he still knows so little.
Philip’s question was about the Father—“Show us the Father!” But Jesus’ answer ends up being about Jesus—“Don’t you know me.” At first, it looks like Jesus is not answering the question. It looks like he is deflecting. But his answer is perfectly relevant and on point, because seeing Jesus does indeed reveal the Father.
But seeing Jesus in the flesh does not necessarily lead to understanding what we are seeing. Jesus might rightly have retorted, “Philip, what do you think you have been looking at for the last three years.” Philip still doesn’t recognize the full divinity of the man in front of him. And again, this is understandable, and we are no better. This only shows how widespread and normal our sinful human thinking is, and our dullness of heart. We humans should be able to recognize our creator when he turns up and comes into our world, but we don’t, because we are malfunctioning because of our sin.
Think of a radio working properly. A radio we buy from the shop should pick up radio signals. That’s what it is designed to do. If it doesn’t do it, we should take it back to the shop and get a new one. Similarly, as humans in the image of God we were made to have relationship with God, to worship God, and to enjoy him forever. It is what we, as humans made in the image of God, should be fitted and able to do. A radio that doesn’t pick up radio waves is malfunctioning. And because of our sin, because we have been handed over to our disobedience, because we’ve wrecked ourselves, we can’t do what we were designed by God to do. We can’t recognize God when he shows up to walks with us in his world in the cool of the day—even though he has come to us in the safest and most unthreatening way possible.
When we encounter Jesus, we encounter God. People who say they know God but refuse to know Jesus—who is the only way to know God—actually know nothing at all. But the good news for those who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), is that having looked full into the face of God in the person of Christ, there will be no surprises on the last day. If you have known Jesus here and now—for us, through the Scriptures illuminated by the Holy Spirit—you will not be surprised when you meet the Father. This is because you have already met the full and perfect image of the Father in God the only begotten Son. God has made God known, the one in the bosom of the Father has fully exegeted and explained him (John 1:18).
Philip wants to see the Father. But both we and he must look for God not where we want to find him, not where we arrogantly demand him to be, but where he has revealed himself. And God is found in Jesus. And you don’t have to be really clever to find him, because God has used neon lights to point out where to search, with arrows saying “Look Here”.
John the Baptist sees Jesus walking past and says, “Look, the lamb of God”. We must come to Jesus to find God, and we can follow the signs and the pointers—the Old Testament, John the Baptist, the signs Jesus himself performed—to find Jesus.
So Jesus is challenging Philip—and you and me—to trust that he and the Father are one. Jesus is also challenging us as readers that the revelation of God in himself, Jesus Christ, is not only adequate for us to know God, but it perfectly reveals God in the safest and most appropriate way for us. And the reason this is the case is that both Father and Son mutual indwell one another. Verses 10 to 11:
14:10You believe, don’t you, that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? […] the Father who remains in me is doing his works. 14:11Believe me that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me. […]
Father and Son are distinct divine persons, but each person indwells the other—the Father indwells the Son, and the Son indwells the Father. Did you notice all the language of “I m in the Father” and “the Father is in me”? They are distinct persons of God, but not separate or distinct gods. And as eternally distinct divine persons, they mutually indwell each other. That is why when we see the Son, we also see the Father. And of course, the Spirit indwells the Father and the Son as well, and the Father and Son indwell the Spirit—and thus the Spirit is both the Spirit of the Father, and also the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Christ.
“I am in the Father and that the Father is in me.” That is why when you see Jesus, you see the Father. It is not modalism, which would say “I am the Father, and the Father is me”. Modalism—or Sabellianism or Patripassianism—is still held by ‘United’ or ‘Oneness’ Pentecostals’ today. They do not hold to a permanent distinction between the persons of the Godhead (e.g. http://calvarychapel.com.au/foundational-truths/). Instead, the true position is that there are permanent personal distinctions within the Trinity, that each divine person has from eternity. The Son is still, only, and always the Son, and never the Father, from whom he is personally distinct.
So the Son is not the God. The Son is in very nature God, and God himself, but to say that the Son is the God excludes the Father and the Spirit from being distinct persons of the Godhead. That is why John 1:1 says that “the Word was God” not that “the Word was the God”.
However, here Jesus is saying that the Son is indwelt by the Father. Theologians have described this reality as the mutual inter-penetration or indwelling or circumincession of the persons of the Trinity.
Another ancient description of this teaching uses the metaphor of ‘perichoresis’, a choreographic term describing a dance. But this dance is not the solo, head-banging, individualistic dancing of the modern Western rock concert. Such dancing is a bastardized and frankly selfish expression of western individualism. The logical extension is the violent slam dancing of punk rockers, or the self-destructive head banging of heavy metal.
Nor is it the dancing that we see in movies like ‘Strictly Ballroom’ or in shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, where there is a man and a woman who are romantically and erotically entwined in their dancing. Nor is it a dance like in ‘High School Musical’ or ‘Grease’, where a great chorus line of dancers face the camera, high kicking in time.
Rather, it is more like the dancing in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. It is the Middle Eastern or Mediterranean traditional dancing, where three or more people hold hands, and focused on one another (they are facing and oriented inwards) and on where they put their feet, they move around in a circle, in step, in harmony, in perfectly choreographed unity. That is the image evoked by Trinitarian theology when it talks about ‘perichoresis’.
Where are you looking for God? Outerspace? Science? Beauty? Art? Experiences? Euphoria? Bliss? All of these are God’s gifts, but you won’t find God himself there, for God himself lives in unapproachable life.
To find God, you need to look at Jesus. In him, all the fullness of God dwells. When you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father. For the Son dwells in the Father, and the Father lives and remains in the Son. No need to go anywhere, just pick up your Bible, and look at the Gospel of John, and we find God in Jesus.
My Translation
14:8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us.” 14:9Jesus said to him, “I have been with you for such a long time, and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 14:10You believe, don’t you, that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words which I am saying to you, I am not speaking from myself, but the Father who remains in me is doing his works. 14:11Believe me that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me. But if not, believe because of the works themselves.