What the God-Man reveals of God and man.
I. The Man Christ Jesus came expressly to show us the Father. That is, He came to teach us that God is our Father, that whatever we see or can imagine of pure parental love holds good of Him. Now we have known parents who would suffer anything, make any sacrifice, endure any pain for the welfare of their children, who would correct their faults with an untiring patience, who would confront the most shameless ingratitude with a constant and forgiving love, who would even die to save them from harm. And this, said Christ, is what God is, and is like. He is our Father your Father and Mine His love is stronger than death and without a bound. Sin cannot alienate it; hatred cannot alienate it. And here is the proof. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. And while you are yet sinners, yet enemies, I lay down My life for you. Thus God, My Father and yours, reveals and commends His love for you.
II. But again. He who reveals God to us also reveals man,and God's will concerning man. He calls Himself "the Son of Man," and that, according to the Hebrew usage of speech, means that He calls Himself "the Man" the real, the perfect Man. Man as God conceived, and will yet make him to be. We may be, we are to become, such men as He was. That is precisely God's intention concerning us. The world is to be redeemed, humanity is to be transfigured so at least Christ the Interpreter of the Divine Will affirms; while in His own Person He shows us what that redemption and transfiguration involve. According to Him, the end which God has set before Him, and to which His Providence is conducting the story of time, is a regenerated race dwelling in a renovated world.
III. But what most of all gives these revelations power over us, more even than their very reasonableness, is the fact that Christ Jesus does not make them in words only, or in looks, but in Himself, in His own Person, character, life. He is not simply One who speaks of life, or One who teaches us how to live. He isour life the Life indeed; for it is only as we become one with Him, who is one with God, that we truly live at all.
S. Cox, Sunday Magazine,1886, p. 658.
References: John 1:18. W. F. Moulton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 349; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 338; Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 385; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 216; Homilist,3rd series, vol. x., p. 86; J. Caird, Sermons,pp. 101, 121; J. H. Thom, Laws of Heaven,vol. ii., p. 361.