Is not this answer very simple and very clear? Is there any good reason for mistaking this answer? You hear it said very often of a young man that he is the very image of his father. If you should some day say to a young man, "I should like very much to see your father," what should you think the father looked like, if the young man were to answer, "He that has seen me has seen my father"? Could you possibly in reason help thinking that the father and the son were alike?
We know what manner of man Jesus was. Jesus possessed a body of flesh and bones; or, as John the Beloved, said, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." Besides, Jesus was so much like other men that His own people could not see anything different in Him. When Jesus went into His own country and taught in the synagogue, the people were astonished. "Whence hath this man this wisdom," they asked, "and these mighty words? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?" To His own people Jesus was but an ordinary man.
The testimony of Paul.
But the disciples of Jesus learned to understand what Jesus meant by His teaching about God. Said Paul, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."
The truth about God.
It is not necessary, then, to go a round-about way to find out the nature of God. The simple explanation is the true one. The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob—the supreme God of this world—is a person. He possesses a body of flesh and bones. His Son is so much like Him that He could say in truth, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Jesus was the express image of God's person.
God is our Father.
Jesus's favorite name for God was Father. This beautiful word means many things to us in the teaching of Jesus. First, Jesus was really the Son of God, and could rightfully speak of Him as "My Father." But Jesus taught us more than that. Not only is Jesus the Son of God—the Only Begotten in the flesh—but we are all the children of God. He is the Father of our spirits, so that we may also rightfully pray to Him as "Our Father who art in heaven." Then, if God is really our Father, He must have the same kind of feelings for us that fathers always have for their children. Indeed, since He is God, His feelings must be deeper and truer than those of any earthly father. Jesus put it thus:
"What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"
A real joy to know the true God.