The author of the book of Hebrews writes that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact character of His nature. When Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, Jesus answered, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Then, in His prayer to His Father in today’s Gospel text, Jesus says, “I made known to them your Name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
With these words God teaches us that to know His Son, Jesus Christ is to know Him. Whoever knows Jesus knows the Father (and more importantly is known by the Father). Conversely, anyone who doesn’t know Jesus doesn’t know the Father. The Apostle John writes at the beginning of his Gospel account, “No one has ever seen God. The only-begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.” According to Jesus, the way He makes the Father known to us is by making His Name known to us. To know the Father’s Name is more than just knowing the title by which He calls Himself. It is to know what He does, what He says, and what His attitude towards you is. God’s Name reveals who He is, because He does His Name. And that is most perfectly seen in His Son, Jesus Christ.
What Jesus says and does is what the Father says and does through Him. Jesus says, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works.” Jesus, then, makes His Father’s Name known to you by His words and His works. To hear the words of Jesus is to hear the words of the Father, because Jesus speaks for His Father. Like an ambassador who speaks for a king who sent him, Jesus is the Father’s ambassador to us. And so Jesus says, “My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me.” To reject Christ’s words is not only to reject Him, but also the Father who sent Him. To receive Christ’s words is to receive both Him and the Father who sent Him. Jesus also speaks God’s final words to us. As the author of Hebrews writes, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son...” To go looking for words from God elsewhere apart from Christ, or to expect that God will speak to us through dreams or visions apart from the Word He’s already spoken to us through His Son, is to look for God’s Word where He has not spoken. Jesus Himself is called the Word of God. He is the fulfillment of the written Word of God, both Old and New Testaments, which speak of Him. Concerning the O.T., Jesus said to the Jews, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” Concerning the N.T., Jesus said to His disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth... He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” And so, we see that through the Word of God the Holy Spirit directs us to Jesus, who directs us to the Father. To hear the words of Scripture is to hear the words of Jesus, and to hear the words of Jesus is to hear the words of the Father.
But Jesus not only speaks the words of the Father, He does the words of the Father. The entire Bible speaks of the work of salvation that Jesus Christ would accomplish for us. He would do this by fulfilling God’s commandments for us, by giving His life as the sacrifice for our sins, by rising again from the dead, and by ascending into heaven, where He now sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty interceding for us with His blood. Jesus did all of this at the command of His Father. The works that Jesus did are the works His Father sent Him to do, works by which God makes Himself known to us in His Son. All the miracles that Jesus did, from turning water into wine, to healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the 5,000, and walking on water (among many others), were signs that the Father had given Jesus to do in order to reveal His character, His will, and most importantly His attitude now towards us. The ultimate work of Jesus was His crucifixion and resurrection. Of all the works that Jesus performed, His work on the cross most clearly makes the Father’s Name known to us. It does this by showing us what kind of God we have for Christ’s sake. Apart from Christ, we can only know God as all-powerful, glorious, and majestic. But we cannot know Him as merciful and forgiving. Apart from Christ, we only have a God whom we have spurned with our sin and rebellion, a God who is justly angry with us and threatens to cast us into hell, a God before whom we cannot stand and have no right to call our Father. This very God, however, does not want us to know Him that way. He wants us to know that He loves us and forgives us our sins, but only for the sake of His only-begotten Son, who shed His blood to atone for our sins and suffered the punishment we deserved, so that we might be reconciled to the Father and live under His grace now and forever. The only way we have a gracious God is by taking refuge in His Son, Jesus Christ. And so, He points us to Him, saying, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” At those times when your conscience bothers you on account of some sin you’ve committed and you wonder what God’s attitude towards you is, whether He’s angry with you and wants to punish you or whether He’s gracious towards you and forgives you, look to Jesus. There you will see God’s love for you expressed in the words and work of His Son on your behalf. If you believe Christ’s words that for the sake of His work on the cross you have a merciful heavenly Father, then not only does Christ dwell within you, but so also does the Father’s love for you.
And Jesus continues to fill you with that love as He continues to make His Father’s Name known to you through the Word, your Baptism, and His Holy Supper today. Through these means the Holy Spirit gives you more Jesus, and with more Jesus comes more knowledge of the Father and His love for you. The more you are on the receiving end of these gifts, the more He will fill you with His love. Such means will also work to prevent you from trying to get to know God some other way. Rather than looking to Jesus, many try to get to know God through nature. Others try by means of their own reason and rational thinking. Still others think they can gain knowledge about God through visions and dreams. Even Christians can get carried away in this things, with the result that they come up with a lot of misinformation about God. Christians need to repent of their attempts at knowing God apart from Jesus and learn to look to Him and His Word alone for God’s final and perfect revelation of Himself. The only way to know God is to know Jesus. The more you know Jesus, the more you’ll know the Father. And the only place He’s revealing Himself to you is in His Son through His Word and Sacraments.
Not only will God’s Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper keep you from trying to gain information about God from other sources, but they will also keep you from trying to obtain God’s love apart from Christ. It is through the knowledge of the Father that Jesus Christ gives you through His words and works alone that you are filled with God’s love. Some Christians, though they believe they are saved by their faith in Jesus in the beginning, behave as though for the rest of their lives they must now earn God’s love through their works. Because they do not stay with the words of God which He speaks to us through His Son, they believe that God will be less angry with them and love them more the more they obey His commandments. Christianity is then turned into a religion that’s all about moral living and our love for God, rather than His love for us in Christ and how Jesus did the moral living that we fail to do and can never do on our own. God’s love is not earned but given freely as a gift in His Son, Jesus Christ. To know Him is to know that God loves you no matter how great of a sinner you are. Your good works don’t make God love you any more than He already does in Christ. They are simply sacrifices of thanksgiving for all that He has done for you in Jesus.
Finally, the Word and Sacraments of God will remind you that the only way to stand before God is clothed with Christ and washed in His blood. By nature we want to try to work off our sins, clean ourselves up, and make ourselves presentable to God. Rather than simply cling to the Father’s declaration that we are righteous, holy, and blameless by faith in Jesus Christ, when faced with the guilt of our sin, we seek other ways to ease our consciences. Rather than trusting in Christ’s once for all sacrifice on the cross as the perfect payment for our sins, we try to work off the guilt ourselves. Sometimes this is done by trying to make deals with God, by promising Him that we’ll do better, by vowing to off-set our bad deeds with good ones. Behind all this is the belief that God’s forgiveness is only fractional, that He only forgives the sins we mention by name, and that we have to ask Him for forgiveness before we’ll be forgiven. Our consciences are then tortured by the thought that there are some sins we’ve committed that haven’t yet been forgiven, which leaves us in doubt as to how we stand before God now and where we will stand on the Last Day. But looking to Jesus, His Word, and His work we can know for certain that in Him and for His sake the Father has taken care of all of our sins - past, present, and future, the ones we remember as well as the ones we can’t, the really big ones as well as the “little” ones, the ones we ask forgiveness for and the ones we don’t. God doesn’t give you partial forgiveness. He gives you 100% and more. The blood of Jesus, His Son cleanses you from all sin. That blood atoned for your sins on the cross, it was sprinkled upon you at your Baptism, and now it speaks you righteous before the Father. Baptized as you are, you not only stand before God clothed with Christ now, but you will stand clothed with Him on the Last Day. God no longer sees you in your sins, but in His Son and His Son in you. Because of that He pours His love, not His wrath, in you. Because of Jesus, you are His beloved child, with whom He is well-pleased.
Jesus makes His Father’s Name known to you, so that you might know Him as your loving and merciful heavenly Father, who forgives all your sins, declares you righteous, and grants you eternal life with Him, all for the sake of His Son. Jesus makes His Father’s Name known through His words and His works, the words and works His Father gave Him to say and to do, the words and works recorded for us in the Bible. To know Jesus in this way is to know the Father. To know Jesus is to know Him as the Savior of the world, whom the Father sent to be the sacrifice for your sins, in order to reconcile you to Himself. To know the Father through His Son is to know His love for you. Be filled with that love again today. As the Spirit delivers the Son to you through His Word and Sacraments, the love of the Father will also be poured into you, so much so that with David you too can say, “My cup overflows.” Amen.