HERE CHRIST SUMMARIZES in one verse his work completed on earth, “I have made you known to them.” In the case of Christ’s disciples, knowledge of the mysterious Christian understanding means he revealed to them the truth of the Father. Here revelation does not merely mean teaching a fact but also delivering truth. The Father was revealed to the disciples as fatherly truth because, as with the Son, the Father entered into the disciples as the revealed, divine, paternal truth.

The phrase “and will continue to make you known” shows Christ’s care for them from heaven, from his most brilliant glory, where knowledge, or revelation, become acceptance and entrance into communion with the Father. The clearest work of the Father, the power of his revelation, is on the level of love which binds together hearts and spirits. What the Son here means by the love of the Father is what existed before eternity past. In this dimension, what binds the Father with the Son is beyond time and beyond what is ascertained by the mind. It is capable of imprinting the image of the Father onto the Son, filling the Son's being by the Spirit.

So separating the Father from the Son becomes impossible, as does the Son from the Father, and in this way God was one “and the Word was God.” 1

The love of the Father for the Son was a full being, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” 2 Such was Christ, in whom we were chosen and filled with his fullness before the creation of the world.3 Pursuing the return of the full presence to us, Christ returns to before eternity past, where he was in us with the divine fullness; “that I myself may be in them” with the fullness of the deity and the love of the Father.

3 See Eph. 1:4.

4 John 1:1.

5 See John 14:23.

6 Eph 3:19.

When Christ says, “I have made you known to them,” he is talking about making known what is unique to God, his personal identity, that is, evidence about it and the extent of his actions. All things are brought into existence by the Father but nothing brought him into existence. Nothing can approach him, but he is close to all things and closer to each thing than it is to itself. The Father is close to man, but man is incapable of drawing near to him, even though he is closer to man than man is to himself.

The name of God is in itself an overwhelming force. Even from the lips of a child, it is terrifying to Satan. So to define man using the name of God the Father is strength and a fortress against evil and the evil one. To define man using the name of God is to gain an opening into the love of God, and the love of God cannot be counted, nor can it be added to or taken from. The love of God is the greatest expression of his satisfaction, for he fully indwells man, surrounding and keeping him. God loved his Son from eternity past, so the Son and God are one, “and the Word was God.” 4 By him the Father created all things, and “without him nothing was made that has been made” and “in him was life” from the beginning. When the Son took on flesh, life became the light of men and, in fact, the light of the world. When the Son made known to man the Father and his name, man became the joy of God which in turn draws man near to him. As a result, when a man keeps the commands of Christ, the Father comes with the Son to make their dwelling with man.5 When the Father and Son make their dwelling in the heart of a man they never leave him but remain in him, so that he is “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” 6

This is not just an image of reality but itself living reality which man lives by faith, love and joy.

July 26, 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 John 1:1.

2 Col 2:9.  

 

 

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