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John 16:14-15, “He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine…”
Short Thoughts:
This is how we know the One True God: the Holy Spirit shows us the glory of the Son who dies and rises again, whom to see is to see the Father (See also John 14:9, 2 Corinthians 4:6).
Long Thoughts:
This verse and the following one are two of the most critical, in my mind, for understanding how saving revelation works…the Holy Spirit reveals the Son (glorifying Him by taking what is His, that is, truth about Him, and declaring it to us), and to whatever extent the Son is truly revealed to us by the Spirit, the Father is revealed to us since “All that the Father has is mine” (v.15) and to see the Son is to see the Father (12:45-46, 14:9), etc.
So, the pattern we see is that the Spirit reveals the Son and the Son reveals the Father…Its telling, also that the Spirit is not sent to glorify the Son by making Him known (and so making the Father known in Him) until after the Son’s crucifixion and resurrection. Why is this? It is because the Son’s revelation of the Father, His “exegesis of the invisible God” (as John 1:18 would put it) is not finished until He has been lifted up as the curse-bearing sacrifice on the cross, and subsequently lifted up in resurrection from the grave. It is not until Jesus’ death and resurrection that Thomas can fall before Him and declare “My Lord and my God!”….it is not until God-Man has been crucified that He is raised to the highest place and given the name above every other name (Phil.2:9-11)…We cannot know the glory of the One True God in Jesus Christ unless we look on the crucified Christ who rises again. The slain and risen Jesus—and He only—is the Jesus whom the Spirit is sent to glorify, and in whose Spirit-illumined face we receive the knowledge of the glory of God (2 Cor.4:6).
The self-revelation of God is Trinitarian in its pattern. If we see the Spirit, He shows us the Son, in whom we see the Father. If we see the Son, we see Him by the Spirit and in Him we see the Father. If we see the Father, we see Him in the Son and only by illumination of the Spirit. We cannot see the One True God, we cannot know Him, apart from this Trinitarian revelation of Himself in the God-Man who dies on the cross and rises from the tomb. Awesome to consider.
