The history of heathendom shows us that, in every land men have said,
'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.' And the highest
cultivation of this highly cultivated and self-conscious twentieth
century has not removed us from the same necessity that the rudest
savage has, to have some kind of manifestation of the divine nature
other than the dim and vague ones which are possible apart from the
revelation of God in Christ. A God who is only the product of
inferences from creation, or providence, or the mysteries of history,
or the wonders of my own inner life, the creature of logic or of
reflection, is very powerless to sway and influence men. The
limitations of our faculties and the boundlessness of our hearts both
cry out for a God who is nearer to us than that, and whom we can see
and love and be sure of. The whole world wants the making visible of
divinity as its deepest want. And _your_ heart and mind require it.
Nothing else will ever stay our hunger, will ever answer our
questioning minds.
Christ meets this need. How can you make wisdom visible? How can a man
see love or purity? How do I see your spirit? By the deeds of your
body. And the only way by which God can ever come near enough to men to
be a constant power and a constant motive in their lives is by their
seeing Him at work in a Man, who amongst them is His image and
revelation. Christ's whole life is the making visible of the invisible
God. He is the manifestation to the world of the unseen Father.
That vision is enough—enough for mind, enough for heart, enough for
will. There is none else that is sufficient, but this is. 'How sayest
thou, Shew us the Father?' If we can see God it suffices us. Then the
mind settles down upon the thought of Him as the basis of all being,
and of all change, and the heart can twine itself round Him, and the
seeking soul folds its wings and is at rest, and the troubled spirit is
quiet, and the accusing conscience is silent, and the rebellious will
is subdued, and the stormy passions are quieted, and in the inner
kingdom is a great peace. The sight of God in Christ brings rest to
every heart, and, Oh! the absence of the vision is the true secret of
all disquiet. We are troubled and careful, and tossed from one stormy
billow to another, and swept over by all the winds that blow, because
we see not God, our Father, in the face of Jesus. 'Show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us,' is either a puerile petition, or the deepest and
noblest prayer of the human heart. Blessed are they who have learned
what it is to see, and know where that great sight is to be seen!
Our present knowledge and vision are far higher than that mere external
symbol of God which this man wanted. The elders of Israel saw the God
of Israel, but what they saw was but some symbolical manifestation of
that which in itself is unseen and unattainable. But we who see God in
Christ see no symbol but the Reality, and there is nothing more
possible or to be hoped for here. Our present manifestation and sight
of God in Christ does fall, in some ways unknown to us, beneath the
bright hopes that we are entitled to cherish. But howsoever imperfect
it may be, as measured against the perfection of the vision when we
shall see face to face, and know even as we are known, it is enough,
and more than enough, for all the questionings and desires of our
hungering spirits.
II. Our Lord goes on to a further answer, and points to the divine and
mutual indwelling by which this sight is made possible.
'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The
words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that
dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' There are here, mainly, two
things, Christ's claim to the oneness of unbroken communion, and
Christ's claim, consequently, to the oneness of complete co-operation.
'I am in the Father' indicates the suppression of all independent and
therefore rebellious will, consciousness, thought and action; 'And the
Father in Me' indicates the influx into that perfectly filial Manhood
of the whole fullness of God in unbroken, continuous, gentle, deep
flow. These are the two sides of this great mystery on which neither
wisdom nor reverence lead us to dilate; and they combine to express the
closest and most uninterrupted blending, interpenetration, and
communion.
And then follows the other claim, that because of this continuous
mutual indwelling there is perfect cooperation. This is also stated in
terms corresponding to the preceding double representation. 'The words
that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself,' corresponds to, 'I am in
the Father.' 'The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,'
corresponds to 'The Father in Me.' The two put together teach us this,
that by reason of that mysterious and ineffable union of communion,
Jesus Christ in all His words and in all His works is the perfect
instrument of the divine will, so that His words are God's words, and
His works are God's works; so that, when He speaks, His gentle wisdom,
His loving sympathy, His melting tenderness, His authoritative
commands, His prophetic threatenings, are the speech of God, and that
when He acts, whether it be by miracle or in the ordinary deeds of His
life, what we see is God working before our eyes as we never see Him in
any human being.
And from all this follow just two or three considerations which I name.
Note the absolute absence of any consciousness on Christ's part of the
smallest deflection or disharmony between Himself and the Father. Two
triangles laid on each other are in every line, point, and angle
absolutely coincident. That humanity is capable of receiving the whole
inflow of God, and that indwelling God is perfectly expressed in the
humanity. There is no trace of a consciousness of sin. Everything that
Jesus Christ said He knew to be God's speaking; everything that He did
He knew to be God's acting. There were no barriers between the two.
Jesus Christ was conscious of no separation—not the thinnest film of
air between these Two who adhered and inhered so closely and so
continuously. It is an awful assertion.
Now I pray you to ask yourselves the question: If this was what Christ
said, what did He think of Himself? And is this a Man, like the rest of
us, with blotches and sins, with failures to embody His own ideas, and
still more to carry out in life the will that He knows to be God's
will? Is this a man like other men who thus speaks to us? If Jesus had
this consciousness, either He was ludicrously, tragically,
blasphemously, utterly mistaken and untrustworthy, or He is what the
Church in all ages has confessed Him to be, 'the Everlasting Son of the
Father.'
III. Lastly, our Lord further sets before us the faith to which He
invites us on the ground of His union with, and revelation of, God.
'Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, or else
believe Me for the very works' sake.' Observe that the verb at the
beginning of this last verse of our text passes into a plural form. Our
Lord has done with Philip especially, and speaks now to all who hear
Him, and to us amongst the rest of His auditors. He bids us _believe_
Him, and believe something about Him on the strength of His own
testimony, or, in default of that, and as second best, believe Him on
the testimony of His works. I gather together what I have to say about
this point into three remarks.
The true bond of union between men and Jesus Christ is faith. We have
to trust, and that is better than sight. We have to trust _Him_. He is
the personal Object of our faith. In all faith there is what I may call
a moral and a voluntary element. A man believes a proposition because
it is forced upon him, and his intelligence is obliged to accept it. A
man trusts Christ because he _will_ trust Him, and the moral and
voluntary element carries us far beyond the mere intellectual
conception of faith as the assent to a set of theological propositions.
Faith really is the outgoing of the whole man—heart, will, intellect,
and all—to a person whom it grasps. But the Christ that you and I have
to trust is the Christ as He Himself has declared Himself to us.
'Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' There is a
bastard, mutilated kind of thing that calls itself Christian faith,
that goes about the world in this generation, which believes in Jesus
Christ in all sorts of beautiful ways, but it will not believe in Him
as the Personal Revelation and making visible of the unseen God. Jesus
Christ Himself tells us here that that is not the kind of faith which
He invites us to put forth. If we put forth that only, we have not yet
come to understand Him. Oh, dear friends! Christ as here declared to us
by Himself is the only Christ to whom it is right to give our trust. If
He be not God manifest in the flesh, I ought not to trust Him. I may
admire Him as a historical personage; I may reverence Him for His
wisdom and beauty; I may even in some vague way have a kind of love to
Him. But what in the name of common sense shall I trust Him for? And
why should He call upon me to exercise faith in Him unless He stand
before me as the adequate Object of a man's trust—namely, the manifest
God?
And then, further, note that believing in the sense of trusting is
seeing and knowing. Philip said, 'Shew us the Father.' Christ answers,
'Believe, and thou dost see.' If you look back upon the previous verses
of this chapter, you will find that in the earlier portion of them the
key-word is 'know'; that in the second portion of them the key-word is
'see'; that in this portion of them the key-word is 'believe.' The
world says, 'Ah! seeing is believing.' The Gospel says, 'Believing is
seeing.' The true way to knowledge, and to a better vision than the
uncertain vision of the eye, is faith. In certitude and in directness,
the knowledge of God that we have through faith in the Christ whom our
eyes have never seen is far ahead of the certitude and the directness
that attach to our mere bodily sight; and so the key to all divine
knowledge, and the sure road to the truest vision of God, is faith.
Further, faith, even if based upon lower than the highest grounds, is
still faith, and acceptable to Him: 'Or else believe Me for the very
works' sake.' The 'works' are mainly, I suppose, though not
exclusively, His miracles. And if so, we are here taught that, if a man
has not come to that point of spiritual susceptibility in which the
image of Jesus Christ lays hold upon His heart and obliges him to trust
Him and to love Him, there are yet the miracles to look at; and the
faith that grasps them, and by help of that ladder climbs to Him,
though it be second best, is yet real. The evidence of miracles is
subordinate, and yet it is valid and true. So our Lord contradicts both
the exaggerations of past generations and the exaggerations of this,
and neither asserts that the great reason for faith is miracles, nor
that miracles are of no use at all. Former centuries in the Christian
Church reiterated the former exaggeration, and thus partly provoked the
exaggeration of this day. Let us keep the middle course: there is a
better way of coming to Christ than through the gate of miracles, and
that is that He should stamp His own divine sweetness and elevation
upon our minds and hearts. But if we have not reached that point, do
not let us kick away the ladder that may help us to it. 'Believe Him
for the very works' sake.' Imperfect faith may be the highway to
perfection. Let us follow the light, if it be but a far-off glimmer,
sure that it will bring us into noontide day if we are faithful to its
leading.
On the other hand, dear friends, let us remember that no faith avails
itself of all the treasures laid up for it, which does not lay hold
upon Christ in the character in which He presents Himself. The only
adequate, worthy trust in Him is the trust which grasps Him as the
Incarnate God and Saviour. Only such a faith does justice to His own
claim. Only such a faith is the sure path to vision and to knowledge.
Only such a faith draws down the blessing of a questioning intellect
answered, a hungry heart satisfied, a conscience, accusing and
prophetic of a judgment to come, cleansed and purified.
To each of us Christ addresses His merciful invitation, 'Believe Me
that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' May we all answer, 'We
believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!'