John 1:18

“No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.”

               John has just made the comparison between the law that came through Moses and Jesus who brings the grace and truth of that law. Now John is making another comparison, between God the Son and God the Father. The comparison John is making, here, is between how God is in heaven, not physically seen, and how Jesus can be physically seen. When reading this verse, it is important to keep it in context with the rest of the paragraph where John has made other assertions of God and Jesus. He has shown Jesus coming from the Father full of grace and truth, that the grace Jesus is full of extends to everyone like an overflowing river into a waterfall, and how the law was brought by Moses and Jesus brings the grace and truth of that law. In this last verse of the paragraph, we see how Jesus is not just one sent from God, but it is again shown that He also is God and visibly showing God on the earth.

               John makes a comparison between Jesus and God the Father where He used to not be seen. In the Old Testament, people did not see God; they had to bring their sacrifices to the priest who would perform the ceremonies. John is getting at the fact that God was not physically before the people every day. The closest people came to seeing God back in the Old Testament was Moses who turned away when God passed before him and Isaiah who went to the throne of God in a vision. John is showing that now Jesus is making God visible, more tangible to our human consciousness.

               The important piece of this verse is that Jesus has made God known. Jesus has not just made God known to a select few people but to the whole world. John is saying that we no longer have to wonder how God would react to a certain situation because we have Jesus to be the visual presence of God making Him known to us all.  This knowledge of God is not just physical but extends to His very nature—Jesus shows us the nature of God. This is what confuses some people. They might think that Jesus and God are different because Jesus is revealing the aspects of God that have not been made known before this.

               We as Christians can take this understanding to help us come to terms with the harder aspects of the Old Testament. Sometimes we who live in a post Jesus world find it hard to understand the God of the Old Testament, yet that God is the same God. We should not shy away from every aspect of God because Jesus, full of grace and truth, makes our job easier. We will be spending the rest of eternity with the God of the Old Testament as well as of the New Testament. We can rejoice in God for what He will do in grace to a sinful people. When we read about God sending the Israelites into exile, we can see the hope that God is designing through that struggle. In the same way, Jesus makes known the God who is sometimes hard to see in our own struggle. The one with the eternal perspective working all things towards our good and not evil.

               For those who are not Christians, Jesus is God who reveals a God with more depth than the ocean and more vastness than the universe. When we call you to know Jesus, it is not because Jesus is the end of the journey but the beginning bringing you to the starting point to know not only your savior but the creator, the sustainer, and the end of everything. He is calling you now to know Him because He has been revealed to you.