Show and tell.

Jesus didn’t come to change God’s mind. He came to show what’s been there all along.

Giovanni Lanfranco, “Miracle of the Bread and Fish”

A few months ago, I wrote a brief reflection on the Incarnation of God’s only begotten Son from the standpoint that the Son came to show us, not just tell us, what the Father is like. Indeed, I’ll repeat myself in saying that Christ’s mission in coming to earth was not to make up for his daddy’s orneriness. The New Testament Jesus isn’t the “good cop” who comes in after the Old Testament “bad cop” exits the stage left. That’s a silly and superfluous wedge that is sometimes driven between those two members of the Trinity. But it’s more than silly, it’s imbecilic and frivolous. Jesus Christ is, to use the words of G. Campbell Morgan, “the Revealer.” He didn’t come to change God’s mind. He came to show what’s been there all along. Here’s Morgan:

This gospel of the grace of God, which is the gospel of the Son of God, is the declaration of the attitude of God toward men. In this regard Christ is Revealer. Christ did not come into this world of ours in order to create a new attitude on the part of God toward man. He did not come to change the mind of God. He did not come to persuade God to be gracious. He did not come to propitiate God, and turn Him back again to the sons of men. He did not come to reconcile God to man. There is never a note in all the New Testament that declares He did. I care nothing for the casuistries in which you tell me that if I am reconciled to God is the same thing. It is not the same thing. It is a fundamentally false conception of the mission of our Lord and of the terms of the gospel to declare that Jesus Christ came into human history to change the mind of God. He came to reveal to man the mind of God, to reveal the abiding attitude of God toward men. In Him God was unveiled, not changed. Through Him God spoke no new message, but the perpetual message of His heart. The gospel of the grace of God is first of all a declaration on the part of our Lord of the attitude of God toward men. (7.133–34)

To quote myself: “Jesus is the revelation of the Father, the unveiling of the depths of his heart in the form and fashion of a man. Jesus lets us put a face to the name, Jehovah.” Or, in Jesus’s own words, “He that seeth me seeth him that sent me” (John 12:45; 14:9).

Grace and peace, friends.

Works cited:

G. Campbell Morgan, The Westminster Pulpit: The Preaching of G. Campbell Morgan, Vols. 1–10 (Fincastle, VA: Scripture Truth Book Co., 1954).