Just hours before the Lord Jesus would experience the most difficult time of His redemptive work, He instructed His disciples about the Father’s mission, and His gracious gifts that would be poured out on them through His Spirit. Jesus knew His Father’s heart and that His mission was to draw the objects of His love to Himself. Because of His love for the Father, Jesus willingly became the means for the accomplishment of this mission. He came to show us the Father and reconcile us to Him – the very purpose of our creation.
In our limited and distracted human perspective we might miss the point of seeing the Father by being focused on earthly matters. The disciple, Philip, represent us well when he asks Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8). Jesus’ response was a gracious rebuke, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (v.9).
The Father and the Son are one in essence therefore They are one in heart and mind. They relate and work in perfect oneness, so Jesus was, as the writer of Hebrews put it, “the exact imprint of His nature” (Heb. 1:3). Jesus Himself described it by saying, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. 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” (John 14:10).
Just a little while later in the garden, Jesus would pray that the same would be true of us His followers, “The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me” (John 17:22–23).
Because Jesus knows the Father’s heart perfectly, He delights in His Father and obeyed Him fully. He loves His Father’s family business of reconciliation, so He willfully invested Himself. He also asked the Father to send the Spirit to His followers for our transformation – a key part of the Father’s family business. AND because Jesus prayed to the Father to make us one in Him, in Christ we too can know the Father’s heart and delight in Him and love the Father’s family business. So we invest ourselves in His mission of reconciliation and transformation.
Lets never forget that the Father’s heart is good, kind, loving, gracious, holy, and beautiful. The more we walk with Him by following in the steps of Jesus, the more we will know His heart. Then the more we will think His thoughts and love what He loves, and the more we will reflect His character. We will – in our oneness with the Christ – be able to say that “Itis no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). This is the light that the world around us needs, because it is God’s goodness that leads people to repentance.
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