We Can Know God the Father Through Jesus Christ
Have you ever wanted to meet a famous person for just one hour to learn from them and understand their path through life leading to fame?
How much greater is our privilege to know the God who created all things, and Scripture tells us exactly how we can know God the Father. John 4:24 tells us:
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
How do we become familiar with one who is spirit? We have never seen Him with our physical eyes nor heard His audible voice with our ears. We have not shaken His hand.
Jesus Is Our Access
In John 13 and 14, Jesus states that the disciples cannot go where He will soon be going. He speaks of His Father’s house where Jesus is going to make preparation for them.
Thomas asks how they can know the way He is going. Jesus answers, “no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).
Jesus is our access to the Father. Remember the temple veil that tore from top to bottom when Christ died upon the cross, picturing direct access to the Father for His children? This is how we know the Father, through the work Christ accomplished on the cross.
Knowing Jesus
Jesus continues in John 14:7, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.”
Here we find that to know Jesus is to know the Father. The Father and the Son are one, yet distinct. Jesus is the display to us of the Father.
Jesus Reveals the Father
Why did Paul preach of Christ? He explains in 2 Cor. 4:6,
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Jesus is the one who has come to reveal the Father. Christ’s presence has turned on the light, making us knowledgeable of the Father and His glory.
Christ Represents the Father’s Nature
The Father has not concealed Himself from man through the centuries. In fact, He has increased revelation of Himself greatly in the last two millennia by introducing His Son to the human race. In Hebrews 1:2, 3 we are told,
[God] in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.
The Father made the world through the spoken word of the Son. The Son is the out-shining of the Father’s glory. He is also the perfect representation of the Father’s nature. We learn to know the Father as we continue to learn of Christ who is the exact picture of the Father’s nature.
Understanding the Father
It is the Father’s intention that we know Him. That is a major reason He sent Jesus to earth. In 1 John 5:20 we are told,
And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
When we are in Christ we are in the Father. To know Christ is to know the Father. Christ came that we might understand who the Father is.
Summary
To know Christ is to know the Father. May we continue to know Christ more through His word, by prayer, and by putting what we learn into practice with others.
As we grow in Christ our understanding of the Father will expand. This growth will increase our compassion for the lost. There is great joy in seeing someone else begin to know the Father as well.