Thursday 19th October
Read John 8:17-20
“In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.’
19 Then they asked him, ‘Where is your father?’
‘You do not know me or my Father,’ Jesus replied. ‘If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’ 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.” (NIVUK)
The necessity of coming to the Father through the Son is spelt out as simply as possible. Calvin, in commenting on these verses makes this especially clear.
“Let us know that the same thing is spoken to us all; for whoever aspires to know God, and does not begin with Christ, must wander — as it were — in a labyrinth; for it is not without good reason that Christ is called the image of the Father, as has been already said. Again, as all who, leaving Christ, attempt to rise to heaven, after the manner of the giants, are destitute of all right knowledge of God, so every man who shall direct his mind and all his senses to Christ, will be led straight to the Father. For on good grounds does God declare that, by the mirror of the Gospel, we clearly behold God in the person of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). And certainly it is an astonishing reward of the obedience of faith, that whosoever humbles himself before the Lord Jesus, penetrates above all the heavens, even to those mysteries which the angels behold and adore.” (John Calvin, Commentary on John (Volume 1)).
