John 14:8 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 14:8

Comments

This time it is Philip who falls for it and asks the question, representing the thoughts of all the disciples. ‘Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.’ We do not understand what you are saying. Grant us a theophany, an appearance of God the Father. If we could only see the Father, we would be satisfied, we would believe everything much more deeply that you tell us. He fell for it. They did not understand fully that Christ was virtually the Father, because he is God equal with the Father. They did not understand the status of Christ. He is a separate person from the Father, absolutely distinct, sharing the same divine essence: one God. But he is another, marvellous, distinct person within the one Godhead, sharing all the same thoughts and values and knowledge. So he is able to say, ‘If ye had known me,’ and there really was not any excuse for them. They had seen the miracles; they had seen his sinless character. They realised and said so that he knew all things, that he could read their thoughts, and he was all-powerful, invincible. And surely he described himself as the Son of Man from the book of Daniel. That is a divine title; that is a description of God, and yet, they still did not fully take it in. They said, ‘We believe thou art the Son of God’, but they somehow thought he was very distinct, not quite God.‘If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.’ And so this great third point is that they must grasp deeply and fully his true divinity. That he is just as much God as the Father and as the Holy Spirit.

Application

Mark you, it’s the same with us in a sense. We have not seen Christ in the flesh, we have not heard his voice, but we react to him in a similar way to the disciples. He saves our souls, he changes our hearts. When we are first converted we are very convinced of his power and his goodness; he answers our prayers down the years. He delivers us sometimes from such terrible predicaments and we praise him and we love him. But in no time at all we are taking him for granted. We are forgetting – my Lord, my Friend in heaven, the one who is near me, he is God. We forget him and his mighty power, so difficulties come and sometimes we are crushed by them because we are taking him for granted. The same as the disciples – what’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen now to the cause, to this great mission, to this crusade, if he’s going away? And they had forgotten. Oh, if you had only known me, you’d have known that I am one with the Father and nothing can possibly go wrong. So there’s an application for us.

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John 14:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of John 14:8