John 1:17-18

¹⁷For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known.

The law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John, as any Messianic Jew would, contrasts Moses and Jesus to show not the weakness of Moses but the greatness of Christ. The author of Hebrews goes to great lengths to show Jesus’ superiority to Moses. This statement feeds from v16, where Jesus is shown to be the fullness of true grace. Even the patriarchs were extended grace, and this grace came from Jesus Himself, even prior to His Incarnation. Calvin offers great insight here, saying, “Grace, in which the truth of the Law consists, was at length exhibited in Christ.” The point is not that Christ and His truth and grace dominate any talk of Moses and the law, but that the true law pointed to grace in Christ, and that Christ by His fulfillment of the law, exhibits true grace (Colossians 2:17). Furthermore, Moses revealed God’s glory in his shining face after seeing God’s backside in Exodus 33:18-23. But Christ reveals God’s glory in His entire life, death, and resurrection as One who is God and as One who is with God. As the author of Hebrews declares, Christ is better.

No one has ever seen God the Father, but God the Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known. How could we miss the clear declaration that Jesus is God? I have a tape of a Muslim caller to the Hank Hanegraaff’s show (The Bible Answer Man), and he asks for evidence of Jesus’ claim to Deity apart from the Gospel of John. He didn’t accept the Gospel of John, because it wasn’t a synoptic Gospel. But we saw it in Romans repeatedly; we saw it in Mark 6:50 when Eric led Coram Deo through Jesus’ walking on water. Jesus is “I AM.” We can see Jesus’ claim to Deity elsewhere (Titus 2:13-14), but it is no doubt most evident in John’s Gospel. And we might expect this, as no human knew Jesus more intimately than John, the one Jesus loved.

One important thing here is that if “no one has ever seen God,” how can anyone prove or deny that He exists? God revealed Himself through Moses in the law. God revealed Himself in a greater way in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who pitched His tent in our midst. In Jesus, we see God’s full image and know what He is like. And finally, we don’t just see what God is like; we experience the fullness of true grace in His presence by His indwelling Spirit.

The simple point here is that Jesus is the only way to the Father. And He has done that work which brings His people to the Father. Jesus has made the Father known, as He has taken all of the qualities of the Father and wrapped them in Himself in bodily form in order to reveal the Father to the world. When John says that “no one has seen the Father,” he refers to God’s existence as unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16). But there’s more to it than that. We have an experience in knowing the Father through Jesus Christ that the patriarchs before Christ did not have. They knew the Father only by His mysterious revelation – in the storm, the cloud, the fire, the whirlwind, the dreams, etc. We know the Father by the Son and the Spirit who dwells within us. That’s the only way to know the Father since the Incarnation.

And finally, “at the Father’s side,” shows a position of authority and involvement. The Son is not just about the Father’s business without being privy to His eternal purposes and expectations. The Son was acquainted with His Father, in order to inform us that we have this same closeness with God laid open to us in the Gospel. Jesus has explained the Father; Jesus has given His earthly life as an expository sermon on God the Father. It is in that sense that Jesus is the Word made flesh. Psalm 138:2 declares that God has “magnified His Word above [or according to] His Name.” In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, in the final book (#7), The Last Battle, Tirian and Lord Digory are looking into a stable, and there is an astonishing statement that the inside of the stable was bigger than the outside. And Lucy says, “In our world, too, a stable once had something in it bigger than the whole world.” This prologue is meant not meant to bring full comprehension, but to bring wonder, awe, reverence, a sense, a sight, a little glimpse of the glory of Jesus Christ. And so it does. And we’ll continue the journey as John reveals Christ and His purpose more fully throughout this glorious Gospel, and as Christ makes the invisible God visible.