Revelation & Love

The Father made known in the Son is the revelation: “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared [him] … The Son can do nothing of himself save whatever he sees the Father doing: for whatever things he does, these things also the Son does in like manner … I cannot do anything of myself; as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my will, but the will of him that has sent me … I am come in my Father’s name … As the living Father has sent me and I live on account of the Father … I do nothing of myself, but as the Father has taught me I speak these things … I speak what I have seen with my Father … The works which I do in my Father’s name, these bear witness concerning me … Many good works have I shewn you of my Father … If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not … believe the works, that ye may know [and believe] that the Father is in me and I in him … No one comes to the Father unless by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known also my Father, and henceforth ye know him and have seen him … He that has seen me has seen the Father … Believest thou not that I [am] in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words which I speak to you, I do not speak from myself; but the Father who abides in me, he does the works. Believe me that I [am] in the Father and the Father in me … the hour is coming that I will no longer speak to you in allegories, but will declare to you openly concerning the Father … I have manifested thy name to the men thou gavest me out of the world” (John 1: 18; 5: 19, 30, 43; 6: 57; 8: 28, 38; 10: 25, 32, 37, 38; 14: 6, 7, 9, 10, 11; 16: 25; 17: 6).

   What flows out of that revelation? Love. Hence: “And I have made known to them thy name, and will make [it] known; that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them” (John 17: 26). Again, “As the Father has loved me I also have loved you” (John 15: 9) and “he that loves me shall be loved by my Father … for the Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me” (John 14: 21; 16: 27). What do we know of such things? Not, simply, as words on the pages of our Bibles, but in living reality? Not only, as something in the future—as in the “Father’s house” (John 14: 2)—but now? “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him” (v23). May it be so!