Knowing the Father in Christ

"No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
--Matthew 11:27

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
--John 14:6-7

Knowing God the Father is at once the hardest and the easiest thing in the world. Hardest, because we only get to Him through Jesus, and easiest because Jesus has done all the work and calls us to just simply trust Him. Why is it that the Gospel seems to be at the same time the most difficult and the easiest thing there is?
The Reformers believed that the Bible claimed a stance that all men, in and of themselves, are spiritually dead. Passages they would cite to support this thinking include:

-Ezekiel 37--Ezekiel is called to prophetically preach God's Word to a field of bones and through it God shows Ezekiel that in the days of the Savior-Messiah He's going to raise many dead to life;
-Romans 3:9,5:12--Paul first writes that all people are under sin (slaves to it) and then that death spread to all men through this sin;
-Genesis 2:17--God tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die". Adam and Eve ate, and they didn't physically die, but since God never lies--Hebrews 6:18, James 1:17--they DID die in God's eyes. And as Romans said, this death spread to all men);
-Romans 6:23--Paul says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Since Jesus says knowing the Father is eternal life (John 17:3), and we know the Father now (John 14:7, above), then the eternal life we have is in the present, so this must mean that the death is in the present as well. And finally,
-Ephesians 2:5--Paul writes to Christians that they, being saved and risen with Christ Jesus, were initially saved and "made alive together with Christ" while they were "still dead in their trespasses" (to Paul, a Christian is converted into a Christian from the initial point of being dead).

This isn't the most popular part of the Gospel--who likes being told that they're DEAD? But the Bible seems to make pretty clear that outside of those who have Christ, there is only death.

Instead, most preachers and Christians in general will be content to preach to non-believers "God loves you" or "Let me tell you about God's love", and most of them are well-meaning and well-intentioned--they want people to come to the knowledge of the Living God. But if you look throughout the sermons in Acts, you never read anyone telling people that Christ died for them (as though Christ died for even those who will never turn to faith), nor do you ever read anyone preaching that God loves them. This isn't to say the Bible never says these things--it does: John 3:16--"for God so LOVED the world...", 1 Timothy 2:4--"God desires all people to come to the knowledge of the truth...". But to the early Christians, the message wasn't "God's love" or "How much God loves you". The message was Christ and Him crucified, to the glory of the Father. Everything else was a branch-off of that message. If God's love was preached, it was His love revealed through Christ's work which was the primary agenda. Christ was always the primary agenda. The spiritually dead world with its secular misunderstandings of love doesn't need to hear that God loves them because they'll put this message up next to Glee's or Jersey Shore's or the latest Nicholas Sparks movie's understanding of love and since TV and movies' understanding of love is sexier and more visually stimulating, it'll win every time. What they need to hear is that Christ went to the cross to secure salvation for anyone who would believe and trust in Him. You can't misconstrue "Humanity's rebelled from God, and Christ substitutes Himself for for many who will put their trust in Him." That's the glory of the Gospel--its simplicity.

And yet, as we saw earlier, this is the hardest thing in the world to come to the knowledge of. Why is this?
It's because of the spiritually dead state of humanity. It's because without the Holy Spirit's initiating power bringing someone to repentance and salvation (see Acts 5:31, 11:18; 1 Timothy 2:25-26), repentance and salvation is too far off and unattainable. It's because everyone thinks that God is like them, and being like us, He thinks like we do, acts like we do, hurts like we do, and gets brokenhearted like we do.
This just isn't true:
-Isaiah 55:9--for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts
-Daniel 4:34-35--all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"

God is not like you. And yet everyone thinks He is. That's why the preaching in churches in a city like Pittsburgh with a strong religious background is increasingly going downhill as churches keep closing--in the minds of nonbelievers AND believers alike the transcendence of God isn't any different than the transcendence of the college professor compared to his intern. God isn't high and lofty in our minds, because we think he's like us, just a little bit better. Man continues to increase in his own eyes, and God decreases.
Do you remember what words Satan the Serpent tempted Eve with in the Garden?--"God knows that when you eat of (the tree) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God..." (Gen. 3:5). The temptation that brought sin into the world was the temptation for man that he might be like God. Is this not still the case today? And what did Paul say in Romans 5?--that through THIS, death spread to all men.

Friends, ask yourselves the honest question--do you think God is like you? Do you think He's like anyone? Your answer to this question is perhaps the most important answer you'll ever give.
This is because if you believe what the Bible says--that He's higher and greater than we can imagine and that He's beyond us--you'll see clearly that you miss this mark.
In seeing this, you'll listen to the words of Jesus we saw earlier: "Only through me do you get to the Father...no one knows the Father except those the Son chooses to reveal Him to...if you know me, you know the Father."
At this point, you'll throw yourself on Christ and learn that you have to trust Him for everything from first to last.
In seeing this, you'll read through the Gospel narratives and begin noticing the differences between Jesus and all the other characters of the Bible--every other character of Scripture made grave mistakes with important decisions, but the grave mistakes only served to show the content of their hearts to begin with: they were rebellious, sinful, and self-worshiping. Jesus was different--Jesus was the Father with flesh on. Being the Holy and transcendent God of all things, there was no possibility of a mistake or little sin, because the starting point for sin is a rebellious heart and He didn't (and doesn't) have a rebellious heart. Instead He was perfect. Because of this He's a faithful High Priest, "able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). He's secured "an eternal redemption" (9:12), to "purify our consciences from dead works" (9:14), to "perfect for all time those who are being sanctified" (10:14).

In this, you and I can know the Father. ONLY IN THIS can you and I know the Father. It's no coincidence that God the Father said in the Messianic-Prophetic book of Ezekiel that in the days when He pours out His Holy Spirit (the day of the Messiah), His people will "know that I'm the Lord". Why is this so important? It's because man's chief end is to fear God (Ecclesiastes 12:13), and the only way to fear Him is to know who He is. Thus in the days of Christ, His people will know who He is, and the nations will know who He is. Between Ezekiel 36 and 37, God repeats over and over again that the fruit of the pouring out of His Spirit will be that, in some variation, "people will know that I'm the Lord": 36:23, 36:36, 36:38, 37:13, 37:14, 37:28.

So who are those that know the Father? It's those that have the Holy Spirit. Who are those that have the Holy Spirit? It's those that trust Christ for their salvation from first to last. Who are those that trust in Christ? It's those who know that ONLY through Him can we be brought to the Father. What about you? Are you running from Him, hoping to escape His sovereign hand? On the other hand are you trying and trying and trying to trust Him and be obedient? The work of the Gospel is such that you can't do anything in salvation, save that you believe and repent of sin. What do you believe? And what do you need to repent of? I submit that the gravest of all sins we are to repent of is the sin of thinking God is like us and that He isn't higher and loftier than we can imagine. May we embrace the fact that God is beyond our initial capacity, and may we treasure both a) Christ for revealing Him and drawing us to Him through His finished work, and b) the Scriptures, for it is the revealed Word of God. The Gospel won't settle for anything less than this. Christians shouldn't settle for anything less either.