CrossTalk: Seeing God

It is certainly true to say that Jesus is God. But there something even more beautiful to be said: God is Jesus. To say this is to see God in the fullness of His glory.

The statement: Jesus is God, immediately brings us to ask: who is God? Here our minds spin off into a thousand directions offering all kinds of theories about who God is and what He is like. Then, each of these different answers are simply imported into our picture of Jesus.

Not surprisingly, we construct in our minds a “Jesus” who is exactly like the “God” that we imagined before we ever knew of Jesus. From this direction, Jesus forever remains in second place and irrelevant to our real understanding of God. That’s a big mistake.

Jesus Himself wants us to turn this thinking completely on its head. “He that has seen Me (Jesus says) has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Bible teaches that Jesus “is the express image of His (the Father’s) Person” (Hebrews 1:3). If we want to know anything at all about God, we must fix our eyes on Jesus—His words, His works, His personality.

When we take our eyes off of Jesus and seek to know something about God before—or beside—or in addition to Jesus, our view of God will be confused and off the mark. Imagining a God apart from Jesus, we can easily accuse God of being unjust or evil when He warns us against death and hell as He so often does in the Bible. And thinking of God in such terms makes it impossible to put our trust in Him or in His gracious Words.

Such ungodly thoughts, however, simply cannot enter our minds so long as we are standing at the foot of the cross and looking up at God. It is impossible to look upon God as He hangs on the cross and say, “How can you be so evil as to condemn people to hell?” This accusation is unthinkable for the simple reason that you are accusing the very One who is giving His very life to rescue the world from death and hell! Such an accusation can only make sense as long as we are thinking about some other God out there who is not Jesus on the cross or, at least, not fully Him.

This is the reason why the Apostle Paul was determined to know and speak about nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Only in Jesus—and, most especially, Jesus on the cross—does God reveal Himself fully and truly. Jesus on the cross is not only one face of God among many. This is not one way of seeing God among a number of possible alternatives; rather, “Truly, this Man is the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

We are quickly approaching the observations of Holy Week and Easter (March 28-April 4). These are the most important and oldest celebrations in the Christian calendar. They focus our attention on the main point of the Bible narrative: that Jesus, the God who became a man, came down from heaven in order to suffer and die and rise for you. Keep your eyes fixed on Him and you will know the One True God.

I invite you, this season, to come and hear the very center of the Bible’s message. Have your attention once more focused on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Here you see the One True God for who He is and what He is truly like. Here you will truly gaze upon the glory of God and be given Life in His name (John 20:31).