The Son And The Father
THE SON AND THE FATHER
LUKE 10:22-29
Notice (including verse 21) the three Persons of the Trinity. How much do we realize the privileges of verses 23-24?
Verse 22, which is found again in Matthew 11:27, is alone and apart from all other evidence proof that the three Synoptic Gospels do not present a different picture of Christ from John. John undoubtedly takes up the theme more fully. It required re-emphasis at the end of the century when he was called to write. But here in Luke, where it is an integral part of the text, these words are testimony to the Son’s oneness with the Father.
Such claims are not traceable to any accretion of myth or legend. They enter into the very substance of all he said. Consider, for instance, what is involved in his quiet use of the plural “We,” when he speaks of himself and God: “We will come unto him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). Consider what is implied in the necessity which he seems to feel to explain: “My Father is greater than I.” Whenever he mentions God it is in tones of unique and superhuman intimacy. If we seek to prune such words away, to remould his speech, and find the human Christ which some have imagined might be found, a holier John Baptist, a more homely Elijah, who speaks and thinks and acts like a saint of earth, nothing at all is left. This impossibility to reduce him to human proportions without obliterating him is an unanswerable argument for deity. Reject this simple conclusion and the alternatives are these. Either—and its impossibility has been demonstrated—four ordinary men created this astonishing character, and by four little books of simple Greek changed the history of the world, or else it was an unbalanced man who spoke like this, a deluded being for whom mankind’s best have lived and died, and from whose teaching the sweetest things of life have ever flowed. Yet, for nearly two thousand years, up and down a skeptical world swift to bring down in derision the airs of high conceit, these claims have been preached. Men have turned away, have blasphemed and rejected. None has called him mad. And the world shall one day bow the knee before the Son of God.
Notes 10:22: typical references in John’s Gospel—1:18; 14:6; 3:35; 6:44-46; follow these themes through with a concordance. 10:25: the lawyer’s aim was two-fold—to trap the Master and to justify himself. The second aim is often hidden in a seemingly objective inquiry about Christianity. “Inherit eternal life”—another Johannine concept. 18:18ff. shows it to be synonymous with entering the kingdom. 10:26: “how readest thou?”—implies a reproach.