The Surprise Christ felt
I. To Christ, that He was the revealer and the image of the Father was the one foremost truth of His life. Ever since He had sense, He had felt that, and it had grown with His growth and been the one proclamation of His ministry. The blind and the deaf in heart might, He thought, see and hear it, so intense, so vivid, was it to Him. And now one of His hearers asks a question, which suddenly makes Him feel that what is to Him as the sun in heaven is not perceived at all. What wonder that we hear in the question the note of wondering surprise? "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?" At such a time our tendency is to be angry, or to turn aside with scornful silence, or to be filled with the sense of wrong; mark in contrast with his, the tenderness of Christ, a tenderness which we hear in every word of the reply. There is a faint touch of reproach in it; but it is the reproach of love, and it would not hurt the most sensitive heart. And this was said at a time when irritation might have been indeed excused, when His whole soul was darkened with pain and presentiment when He felt with exquisite surprise that all He had ever said had been mistaken.
II. The answer itself to Philip's question comes before us now, and is a striking answer, astonishing, indeed, from its sublime boldness, and separated by that from the utterances of every other prophet, none of whom dared to say anything like this: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Who knows Me, knows God; who hears Me, hears God. Nor is this an isolated saying; it is the constantly repeated thought of Christ, repeated in fifty different ways. That was Christ's teaching concerning God and Himself, and therefore concerning God and man. All our life is God's life. We are in His hand and abide in Him, and no one can pluck us out of His hand. We are eternal because He is eternal; and when all mankind shall have arrived at likeness to Christ, it will have arrived at likeness to God. He who shall see the perfected humanity shall say, "He who hath seen humanity, hath seen the Father."
S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life,p. 123.
References: John 14:9. H. S. Holland, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,Nov. 22nd, 1883? A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry,2nd series, p. 59; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 307; S. Green, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 261. Joh 14:10-14. W. Roberts. Ibid.,vol. ix., p. 250. John 14:10-28. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 309. John 14:11. W. M. Taylor, The Gospel Miracles,p. 29. John 14:12. C. Wilson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 241; J. Aldis, Ibid.,vol. xi., p. 376; Homilist,vol. iii., p. 49 3 John 1:14 :12, John 14:13. A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer,p. 140. John 14:13. Ibid.,p. 48; E. W. Shalders, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 298. John 14:13-14. Ibid.,p. 180. John 16:14. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x. p. 33 3 John 1:14 :15. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxii., No. 1932; G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends,p. 177; Parker, Christian Commonwealth,vol. vi., p. 347; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 199.