The Clearest Picture of God

Everyone carries a picture of God. For some it is a stern judge keeping score. For some it is a distant power, or a kindly grandfather, or a voice that sounds a lot like a parent. Most of us never chose our picture. We absorbed it from sermons, paintings, movies and the people who raised us.

Christians have a remarkable answer to the question of what God is like, and it comes from Jesus himself. This lesson asks you to set your picture of God next to his and see whether they match. If they don't, it is your picture that needs to change. Being Centered starts here: if you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus, not at whatever picture you were handed.

Read it3 min

On his last night with his disciples, Jesus told them he was going to the Father. One of them, Philip, asked for what every religious person has wanted.

The opening of John's Gospel says the same thing in other words. No one has ever seen God; the Son has made him known.

The letter to the Hebrews and the letter to the Colossians use two striking images: Jesus is the "radiance" of God's glory, and the "image of the invisible God."

The world behind the words4 min

Philip's request made sense. His Scriptures taught that no one could see God and live. When Moses asked to see God's glory, he was told, "You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live" Exodus 33:20. People knew God through the Law, through the prophets and through mighty acts in their history, but always at a distance.

So Jesus' answer was astonishing. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Philip had already been looking at God for three years: at the meals, on the roads, at the bedsides of the sick. He just hadn't recognized what he was seeing.

That changes how to read everything Jesus did. When he was "moved with compassion" for crowds who were "harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd" Matthew 9:36, that was God's compassion. When he grew indignant at disciples who shooed children away Mark 10:14, that was God's indignation. When he wept over Jerusalem Luke 19:41-42, those were God's tears.

One scene shows the point sharply. A Samaritan village refused to welcome Jesus, and two of his disciples wanted to call down fire on it. They had a precedent: the prophet Elijah had once called down fire on soldiers sent to arrest him 2 Kings 1:10. Jesus turned and rebuked them.

The disciples reached for a picture of God from an older story. Jesus corrected it with his own.

How it drifted5 min

If Christians agree that Jesus shows us what God is like, how did so many end up picturing God so differently from him? The history shows two drifts, in opposite directions, and the church itself named the first one a mistake.

Around the year 140, a wealthy ship owner named Marcion taught in Rome that the God of the Old Testament was a different, harsher god from the Father Jesus revealed. He threw out the Jewish Scriptures and kept only an edited Luke and ten of Paul's letters. The church in Rome rejected him around 144. Christians insisted that the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus are one and the same God. This book agrees with them: Jesus does not replace the God of the Old Testament. He shows us that God most clearly.

The second drift went the other way and lasted much longer. Over the centuries, Christian art and preaching often pictured God, and even Jesus, mainly as a terrifying judge. Medieval churches carved scenes of the Last Judgment over their doors. Michelangelo's great fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, finished in 1541, shows Christ with his arm raised to cast the damned down. In colonial New England in 1741, the preacher Jonathan Edwards delivered the most famous sermon in American history.

Generations of children learned to picture God that way. It is worth setting that picture beside the one Jesus gave of a father who sees his runaway son "still far off," and runs.

Honest objections3 min

"God is also a judge. Jesus himself warned about judgment." He did, and often. This lesson does not say God never judges. It says that the judge is the same one who wept over the city that would reject him, who refused to call down fire, and who prayed for the people killing him. If Jesus is the clearest picture of God, then God's judgment looks like his: honest about evil and full of mercy at the same time.

"Isn't this just Marcion again, picking a nice God over a harsh one?" No, and the difference matters. Marcion said there were two gods and threw out half the Bible. Christians have always said there is one God, and that Jesus is the clearest window onto him. When an older picture of God seems to clash with Jesus, the Christian answer has been to read the older picture through him, the way Jesus read it himself on the road to the Samaritan village.

Measured against the center2 min

Measured against the center, the angry-judge God does not hold. Jesus said that whoever has seen him has seen the Father. He refused to call down fire, wept over the city that rejected him, and described a father who runs to a son who wasted everything. A God who holds people over the fire like a loathsome insect is drawn from somewhere else.

This may be hard news if fear has been part of your faith for a long time. It does not mean God takes evil lightly. It means God is like Jesus, all the way through. Following him here means letting his face replace any other picture, and treating people the way he treated them, even the ones who reject you.

A keeper1 min

Be merciful. Jesus put the whole idea in one sentence, and it works whether or not you believe in the Father he mentions.

In practice it looks like the scene in the Samaritan village: when people reject you, don't reach for the fire. Treat the people who disappoint you the way you would want to be treated on your worst day.

For you as a believer, mercy is the family resemblance, and it takes sin seriously. If God is merciful, his children should be recognizable by the same thing.

Reflect2 min

1. What picture of God did you grow up with? Where did it come from?
2. Which scene from Jesus' life best shows you what God is like? Why that one?
3. Is there a way you treat people "in God's name" that Jesus would not recognize?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

This week, read one short scene from the Gospel of Mark each day. After each one, finish this sentence in writing: "If Jesus shows me what God is like, then God is…" By the end of the week you will have seven sentences describing God, all drawn from his life. Compare them with the picture of God you started with.

Talk it over1 min

• What picture of God were you handed growing up? Was it closer to Jesus or further away?
• Why do you think fear-based preaching has been so common, even among sincere people?
• If you started every conversation about God with "God is like Jesus," what would change?

A quiet moment1 min

Remember it

"Seen me, seen the Father." John 14:9. On his last night, Philip asked to be shown God, and Jesus told him he already had been.

A window to the center: a square cut through dark paper, and through it the center plainly seen. Seen me, seen the Father.

1. What did Philip ask, and how did Jesus answer?
   "Show us the Father." "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:8-9).
2. What did Jesus do when his disciples wanted to call down fire on a village?
   He rebuked them (Luke 9:55).
3. Why did the early church reject Marcion?
   He taught that the God of the Old Testament was a different god from the Father of Jesus.

Show the answers