A portal is an imposing front entrance to a palatial home. In computer terminology a portal is the Home Page of a website that opens the way to numerous other websites. (Google.com and Bing.com are two well-known online portals.)
The first powerful portal believers pass through is God’s revelation to us that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter passed through this portal when he answered, in response to the Lord’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” — “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:15-16)
Jesus then said, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say also to you, that you are Peter (“petros”: small rock), and upon this rock (“petra: huge rock) I will build my church…” (Matthew 16:17, 18)
Contrary to popular belief, Jesus did not build his church on Peter but on the “rock” of divine revelation. Those who would enter the Church must receive the revelation knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This conversion portal is entered by every new believer. (1 John 5:20)
Millions who have read the New Testament think they know who Jesus is, but unless the Spirit of God reveals Jesus Christ to the heart, such knowledge is worth nothing. History may instruct the mind, but it cannot change the heart. Countless numbers of well-intentioned people call themselves Christians without ever having received the revelation knowledge that would enable them to pass through the salvation portal.
“No man can come to me,” said Jesus, “unless the Father who has sent me draws him.” (John 6:44) Without God’s guidance we cannot even find Jesus, much less know him.The second powerful portal every believer needs to enter (not for salvation but for Divine fellowship) is the revelation of the Father in the Son. “All things are delivered to me from my Father; and no man knows the Son but the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and the one to whom the Son reveals him.” (Matthew 11:27)
Jesus was quite surprised that Philip had not yet seen the Father in him. “Have I been so long with you and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father, so how can you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?”
The first to enter this second revelation portal was not the inspired Peter but the troubled Thomas. He had heard from his fellow disciples that Jesus was alive and had appeared to them, but without undeniable physical evidence had refused to believe them. Thomas knew that the terrible sufferings and death Jesus of Jesus made his physical reappearance impossible. But eight days later Jesus appeared to his disciples yet again — and this time the still unconvinced Thomas was present.
Quoting Thomas’ own words, Jesus invited the doubting disciple to feel his wounds, and to be full of faith instead of unbelief. Suddenly, Thomas saw something! (What we might call a WOW! moment.) Not that Jesus was alive, since that was obvious. In a moment of truth, Thomas saw the Father in the Son! We know this, because he said, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28)
Scholars of Ancient Greek inform us that Thomas’ words are not an exclamation but rather “a copulative and cumulative statement”; copulative, because “and” links “My Lord” with “my God”; cumulative because the short sentence gains in strength as it moves from its first to its second part. “Ho kurios mou ho theos mou” literally means, “The lord of me, the God of me.”
Jesus said that to see him was to see his Father! “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” No doubt the Holy Spirit has revealed to you that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, but have you also seen the Father in His Son? If you haven’t, a revelation of this glorious truth will enable you to pass through the second portal!
The revelation that Jesus is the Son of God is a salvation portal that allows the believer entry into eternal life. The revelation that the Father is in the Son is a supernatural entry portal that brings the Father into the everyday life of the believer. No one has seen the “eternal, immortal, invisible” God, who is Spirit, but in Jesus, His human image, we can see the Father’s nature, character and attributes embodied and expressed.
Imagine that you had read and heard a lot about a person but had never met him in the flesh. Then suppose that one day a young man introduces himself to you as the son of that man. Everything the son says and does matches up with what you have heard about his father. You might say to him, “I‘ve heard a lot about your father but have not actually met him. Tell me, what is he like as a person?”
“Well,” the son might answer, “he is just like me. So much so, that to see me is to see him – we are that much alike.” “Jesus is “the image of the invisible God…” (Colossians 1:15) He is “the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person”. (Hebrews 1:3) New Testament scholar Spiros Zodhiates defines the Greek word for “brightness” as, “Shining light, or splendor emitted or issuing from a luminous body.” In the Aramaic language, “the express image of his person” is translated: “the icon of his essence.”
The words “express image” are translated from the ancient Greek word “karakter”, which has been transliterated into English as “character”. Zodhiates informs us that originally it referred to an engraver or an engraving tool. “Later it meant the impression itself, usually something engraved, cut in, or stamped, a character, letter, mark, sign. This impression with its particular features was considered as the exact representation of the object whose image it bore.” (Spiros Zodhiates: The Complete Word Study Dictionary: World)
“No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” (John 1:18) To know Jesus really well is to know the Father also. God is a Spirit, and Jesus said, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones”. (John 4:24; Luke 24:39) “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself…” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
The invisible God revealed Himself in His visible, touchable, and approachable human Son!
Has the Father led you to His Son? Well and good! Have you also seen the Father in His Son? God’s revelation of His Son to us resulted in our salvation. Our discernment of the Father in the Son will result in a clear perception of God Himself.
Many Christians pray to the Son — even though Jesus told his disciples to ask the Father in his name. (John 16:23-24) It may surprise you to learn that nowhere in the New Testament are Christians instructed to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, people did implore him to heal them and to rescue them. On the road to Damascus, Paul addressed him as Lord. Stephen did also while he was being stoned. But when the disciples of Jesus asked him how they should pray, he began his model prayer with the words, “Our Father, who is in heaven…” (Luke 11:2)
The “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” is “the Father of glory”. (Ephesians 1:17) After his resurrection, Jesus said to Mary, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
Peter had “seen” that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God”, but Thomas saw God in Christ. He saw that Jesus was, as the Apostle Paul would later put it, “the image of the invisible God” — God made known in the flesh – and the insight caused him to utter the unforgettable words, “My Lord and my God.
Christians understand the significance of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, but more of us need to have Thomas’ vision of the Father in the Son! “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared (unfolded) Him.” (John 1:18)
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)
As we behold that face, as in a mirror, we are changed, from glory to glory. (2 Corinthians 3:18) Stephen’s face shone like that of an angel! That was one degree of glory – reflected glory. The face of the risen and glorified Lord Jesus shone on Paul and on John with the brightness of the noonday sun — a far greater degree of glory!
Most Christians quote Peter’s statement often, knowing how essential this revelation knowledge portal is to salvation. But the importance of Thomas’ words, “My Lord and my God” is less understood. Yet it is as essential to those who would know the Father as Peter’s confession is to those who would know the Son.
Seeing the Father in the Son is a revelation portal we enter to know the Father as intimately as we know the Son. “And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3
“And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and [our being in the Father by being in His Son] eternal life.” (1 John 5:19—20)
The revelation of the Father in the Son is so wonderful that only a doxology of the highest order can express the joy it brings to the heart! “For of (from) Him and through Him and to Him are all things” — to whom be the glory forever. Amen.