THE GREAT medium of revelation is personality. Even under the old dispensation, God spoke to men "in the prophets," as he has in the last days "spoken unto us in his Son." (Hebrews 1:1-2) As Christ is the only perfect character the world has ever seen, it follows that the only perfect revelation of God comes through him. As the author of the Hebrew letter tells us, he was "the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance." (Hebrews 1:3) Revelation, then, reaches its climax, its culmination, in Christ, the only perfect personality of all history.
Christ revealed the Father, first of all, by what he was in the perfection of his character, of his wisdom, and of his power. In his pure, sinless life, in his profound spiritual insight, in the transcendent influence he wielded over men, in his gentleness, in his divine compassion for the erring and the needy, in his clear and wide vision of the world's needs, men saw for the first time what is the human life of God, or the life of God under human conditions. To be holy while the companion of sinners, to be merciful while himself without sin, to be concerned most about those most in need, to have come into the world not to be ministered unto, but to minister--these were traits that marked him out from other men as belonging to a new order of humanity, even the Son of God. But if he were the Son of God, then these elements of character in him were the revelations of his Father in heaven.
Jesus revealed the Father by his works. His miracles, which many of us were taught in our earlier years to regard as simply credentials of his divine power, are an essential part of his revelation--the revelation of the heart of God. Read them again with this question before you: How does God feel toward our humanity? Does God care for the temporal wants of men? Read the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where Jesus taught that God cares for hungry men, and feeds them. Does he care for the sick, the lame, the blind, the halt? Let Jesus' works of healing be the all-sufficient reply. The miracles did, indeed, have evidential value, but their direct; and primary purpose seems to have, been to expose the heart of God toward our sinning and suffering race. They teach us, too, that the church is to concern itself not simply with the respectable and well-to-do classes, but with the outcasts, and the widow and the orphan. One of the hardest things for the average man to believe about God, is that he is concerned about the welfare of the lost and lowly classes of society, and that he has a heart of compassion for all classes and conditions of men. Jesus sought, by what he did, to convince men that God's heart was the heart of a Father toward his children. Incidentally, these works of Jesus indicate the kind of work by which the church can most recommend God and his religion to the favorable consideration of men.
Jesus revealed the Father by what he taught concerning God. It was his favorite designation of the Divine Being. Of all the names of deity which have ever been applied to him, there is none that touches the heart so deeply, and brings us so close to him as that of Father. Jesus spoke of "my Father," and "your Father." He claimed no exclusive right to call God Father. He wished all humanity to share with him in this glorious privilege. When the disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he said: "When ye pray, say, Our Father who art in heaven." There is more inspiration to real prayer in that one sentence than in all the homilies on prayer which have ever been written. Jesus' revelation of God as Father revealed the mighty possibilities of prayer.
There is nothing in all the treatises on theology ever written by man that will compare in beauty, and in the power to comfort the human heart, with that part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount where he dwells upon the care of God for mankind. (Matthew 6:25-34) In connection with that, read Matthew 7:7-12. Here is such a revelation of God's fatherhood, and of his tender care for his earthly children, as should touch every heart with a new sense of the value of Christ's teaching about his Father, and with the desire to be worthy children of such a Father.
Jesus revealed the Father, then, by what he was in his own perfect Sonship; by what he did to relieve the sorrowing, the suffering, and the anxieties of men, and by his wonderful teaching concerning God's care and compassion for all his earthly children. The revelation of this supreme truth about God has been of unspeakable comfort and strength to men and women struggling with poverty, with sickness, with sin, and with all the ills of life. Without it, Christianity would be shorn of its chief power, and it 'would cease to be the conquering religion which it is today. We can never repay Christ for this marvelous revelation, but we can accept it, and be grateful and obedient children of our heavenly Father.
