The prospect of any man, at any time, ever seeing God in His glory, is virtually non-existent. But for those who were privileged to live back then, they had a flesh and blood witness—God incarnate. And for those of us who live now, we have His Word that is based upon eyewitnesses of His glory, of His grace. This is why Jesus said what He did, in John 14, when He was asked to show us the Father. In John 14:6, Jesus said:
Grace incarnate arrived before men. The great gift, you see, that gives us delight from which we receive salvation; from which, as we just saw, we receive the calling. No one can go to the Father except through Him.
So God uses this introduction to the book of John to make clear a very important fact and concept. The fact and concept are one and the same, and that is that God is not a being detached and separated from His creation. He is not merely exalted and worshipped, but God is involved. He takes part in the process. He loves, He yearns, He suffers, He gives, He corrects, and He saves. He enters right into the storms and conflicts of life on earth, and in the life of Jesus, He was subject to all of its conditions and He rose above it. He conquered sin and Satan. It says in Hebrews that "He was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin."
And so in Christ, then, in a life lived, God ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a reality. The incarnation, then, was the fullest manifestation of grace and truth because it was the greatest expression of God's concern and compassion for people, and the clearest way of conveying for our understanding. No one can ever forget the power of an example.
Let us add to this a verse in John 14:6, where Jesus said of Himself: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." We have got three things linked here: (1) Deuteronomy 32, where God used "true and faithful," (2) Revelation 19 where Jesus Christ is "Faithful and True," and (3) John 14:16, where Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life." All of these are in contrast to the people who call themselves by the name of God, saying that they are Christians.
So Jesus is "Faithful and True"—and that second word, true, seemingly doubling the affirmation that He is faithful. That is, He always sticks by His Word. His character never deviates from that which is true. In Revelation 19, "faithful" means reliable, trustworthy. He is one of unswerving integrity. In actual practice, He is trustworthy.
Jesus is the truth, and we are given the spirit of truth to dwell within us, to take up residence within us, and there is a practical reason why that is done. Jesus is the Second Adam. He is the beginning of a new order of an entire race—a Family of beings just like Him. Right now all of mankind is in the image of our forefather—the first Adam.
Many people can say, "I told you the truth," but there is a difference between them and Jesus. Many people can tell the truth, but Jesus did not just tell the truth, He embodied it. Notice He said, "I don't tell you the truth. I am truth." This becomes very important. In His life He put truth into a visible, concrete form so that all who want to see it can. What accountability that gives to anybody who follows the same order in their life.
Another way of looking at it is this: as light is to a flower. Flowers will not bloom without sunlight. They open up and become beautiful. It is the same with light in relation to our life. We cannot really blossom as a human being; we cannot have an abundant life unless the light shines in.
Light is nothing more than a symbol of God’s truth. Jesus put it another way in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In the place of truth, He could have put light. “I am light.” But He said there “truth.” He is truth; He is light. It is the truth of God, in relation to life, that gives form, shape, and substance to our lives.
So what Jesus was in effect saying, “You look at Me, and you look at the way that I live, and you will be able to avoid running into many of the obstacles of life. You will have proper guidance.” Another way of saying it is, “If you listen to what I say, you will be guided around life’s difficulties or you will be able to handle life’s difficulties.”
Somebody must have understood, at least in a surface way, what He was getting at, when He said, “I am light.” He was claiming to be the Messiah. He was claiming to be the embodiment of truth.
He draws the direct contrast and the comparison to what the world and these false teachers are offering, which is absolutely nothing, to what God is offering to us for acknowledging and living the way of the Father and the Son. What it really amounts to is this: there is no real doctrine of the Father, and of God, except in terms of Jesus Christ.
Without this truth we would be living with some vague belief in God as a power or force, or someone who could intervene for us in a moment of need, but the teaching of Jesus Christ and the apostles is that there is no such thing as a true knowledge of God apart from Jesus Christ.
We can believe in a Creator, we can believe in some unseen influence, but we will never know the Father except through the Son. "He that has seen Me, has seen the Father," Christ said. That is why John calls this strange teaching a lie, and that is why he brands these people as liars.
