Tie that together with Matthew 11:27. Those who can know the Father are those who are having the Father revealed to them by the Son.
It is through the life, the works, and the words of Jesus Christ that we come to know the names of God. Moses asked God to show him His way. "If you want to see what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, if you want to see the nature of God, if you want to see God's whole attitude," Jesus Christ is saying, "look at Me!" He is the way because, of all of mankind (all who have ever lived), He is the only one who has intimate knowledge of the Father that is totally, completely, unmarred by sin. His vision of God is absolutely perfect and accurate.
Jesus Christ shows the way men should walk. Actually, I should not say, "should." The way men must walk. He shows us the direction, the manner, the method of doing things. The way to God lies in knowledge of the Son. This is exactly what Christ has done, in declaring the glory of the Father to mankind.
In addition to that, He is truth. There are people who can speak truth. They can teach us truth. I can teach you truth. Many others can teach us truth. But Jesus Christ was truth. He embodied it! Everything that He did and said was absolutely right on the mark—every time, without fail. No misleading, no shadow of turning. No time, at any time in His life, was there ever even the tiniest hint of deception about God, about what He is, or the way to go, or the way to do things. Everything is right on the mark.
That is important, because I could get up here and I could teach you things—let us say about geometry. Whether I am a man of integrity, of responsibility—and what my character is like—does not matter a great deal. It does not affect the mathematical truth of geometry. But if a person is going to teach you moral and spiritual and ethical truth, what that person is makes all the difference in the world.
Would you like to receive a lesson on purity from an adulterer? There is an inborn resistance to that kind of thing. But it is awfully hard to refute and to find fault with the words of a person who embodies truth, and he is teaching truth—because you know that person is living it. Then those words carry weight and authority.
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.
