Glory Brought Down to Earth

A disciple once requested of Jesus, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” But Jesus answered, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?”* (John 14:8-9) Likely Philip craved to see some great glory, some great glory, a dazzling splendor, a blinding transfiguration; some such display as was made to Moses on Sinai—clouds and thick darkness and flashing lightnings. Instead of that, however, Jesus told him that in his quiet, common life, all the three years he had been with Jesus, Philip had been seeing the Father. All the glory of God was in the face of Jesus Christ.

What is the glory of God? When we think of God, what are the features or qualities that rise up in our minds? What sort of vision glows before us? If we were asked to name the one time in all our Lord’s life when He revealed the most of God, perhaps we would suggest the transfiguration, or the miracle of the feeding of five thousand, or that of the raising of Lazarus. But when Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,”* (John 14:9) He did not refer merely, or even primarily, to these great, startling manifestations of power, but to His daily quiet life of gentleness, kindness, patience, thoughtfulness, compassion, and love.

Sometimes we hear people speaking of the life of Jesus as if it were two distinct lives instead of one. They go over the wonders that He wrought—He changed water into wine; He touched and cleansed the leper; He gave sight to the blind; He healed the sick; He quieted the storm and the sea; He raised the dead. “These are divine works,” our friends say; “these are proofs of His deity.” Then they go over other portions of His life in which appear only kindness, thoughtfulness, sympathy, helpfulness—the common things of His everyday life, in which there seemed to be nothing supernatural. “These,” they tell us, “are the manifestations of the humanity of our Lord; things He did merely as a man.”

But that is not a true view of the life of Jesus. He was not sometimes revealing His divine nature and sometimes His human nature. Always, in all His words and acts and dispositions, He was manifesting His divine-human life. Always He was “God… manifest in the flesh.”* (1 Timothy 3:16) In telling His disciples that when they saw Him they saw the Father, He did not refer to His miracles only. This was as true of the time when He took little children in His arms and blessed them, or when He sat resting in the Bethany home, or when He was talking with the woman at the well; when he was transfigured on Mount Hermon, or when He was raising the young man at Nain. The glory of God was revealed in His commonest kindnesses as really as it was in His most stupendous miracles. All the glory of God shone in the face of Jesus Christ. If we would see God, we have only to look at the face of the Master. The benignity, the goodness, the compassion, the peace, the joy, the graciousness we see there are outshinings of deity.