An Exact Likeness
Jesus, at no time, did anything that was out of step with His Father.
When the Bible says that if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father, it does not just mean that Jesus is in some vague way similar to the Father, like I am to my earthly father. The similarity between Jesus and His Father runs much deeper than this. I am like my father because I share his DNA and grew up in his household. But I am also very different to him. I learned much from my dad, but I live a life independent of him. In contrast to this, Jesus totally represented the Father in every way and lived every day in total dependence on Him.
Jesus Himself made this clear in the verses below.
John 5:19-20a (ESV) So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing."
According to these verses, Jesus did nothing that was out of step with His Father. Everything He did was in line with the will of the Father because He did what He saw the Father doing. Although He had an independent will, He always aligned His will to that of the Father. Consequently, His day-to-day activities were governed by His ongoing, minute-by-minute relationship with Him. The Father initiated everything Jesus did, and in every situation, Jesus understood the heart and will of the Father and carried it out.
This means we can understand what the Father is like by looking at Jesus.
Australian theologian Geoffrey Bingham summarised the similarity between Jesus and the Father in this way:
If we were to take the gospels and cross out the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘the Lord’ and substitute ‘the Father’ in every case, then we would see who the Father really is. 1
I love this statement. It shows me how I can understand the Father. I am not suggesting that we follow Geoffrey Bingham’s advice literally. Jesus and the Father are two different members of the Trinity. We know that they are not the same person. Jesus, however, so followed the will of the Father and so reflected His character that everything Jesus did and everything Jesus said truly represented Him. This means the more we understand Jesus, whom we have seen, the more we can understand the Father whom we have not seen.
In our next few studies, we will examine samples of what Jesus said and did, and discover what these sayings and actions reveal about the Father.
1 Bingham, G. C. Oh, Father! Our Father! [Blackwood, South Australia: New Creation Publications, 1983]
Further reading: Jn 12:44, 45; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3
Spend a moment reflecting on the truth that everything Jesus did and said represented the heart and will of the Father.
This is an extract from my free book Knowing God as Father, which is available for download at Knowing God as Father.