Matthew 11:27

Matthew 11:27

I. We can know Christ, and yet we cannot. It seems a strange contradiction to say so, yet it is a contradiction which applies to a great many even of created things. We know them, and we know them not. We know how they act; we have seen, or can image to ourselves a notion of them, but what they are in their very nature we know not. So it is with the sun in the heavens: we have all felt his warmth, and seen his brightness; we know how he ripens the fruits of the earth, and makes the world such as we can live in; yet what he is in himself, of what made, or how that we know not, and probably cannot know. And so it is much more with Him by whom the sun was made. His goodness we know, and His power; His love and mercy we have felt; and even of His very person, as it pleased Him to become flesh, and to dwell among us, we can readily conceive. But what He is in Himself the Eternal, the Incomprehensible that we cannot know. None but the Godhead knows what the Godhead is; none knoweth the Son, save the Father; none knoweth the Father, save the Son; none knoweth the things of God, save the Spirit of God.

II. In what sense is it true that none knoweth the Father, save he to whom the Son will reveal Him? or, in other words, what is the knowledge of the Father which we, as Christians, have gained? When I put myself in thought, even for a moment, out of the light of Christ's Gospel, when I fancy myself to be as one to whom the Son has not revealed the Father, it seems to heighten my sense of the happiness which it is to have been taught of Christ. For consider what it is to be told that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." In these few words there is contained all we need. Truly may we say that we know the Father, when Christ has revealed to us thus much of His infinite love and holiness.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 29.

References: Matthew 11:27. B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith,p. 205.Matthew 11:27; Matthew 11:28. Spurgeon, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 20.