The Father - John 14:7-11

There are several verses that Jesus talks about His relationship with the Father. I had an interesting learning experience yesterday. I went to a temple dedication for a while before I got called in to work, and before I went I watched on the Mormon channel some Church discussions about temples and one of the major themes that kept coming up was vicarious works, even during the temple dedication. They said that Jesus performed the ultimate vicarious act during the atonement, he did for us what we can’t do for ourselves. One of the points someone made was that Jesus’ mortal ministry was a vicarious work for Heavenly Father. They said that the Savior came down as a representative for Heavenly Father and did everything so that we could know the Father through the Son. I thought that that was an interesting analogy.

 
Philip asks the Lord “shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Heavenly Father didn’t appear, but Jesus taught His disciples that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father… the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” To me, this begs the question, why was it so important that the people knew who God the Father was? Let’s think about who they believed He was and why it made a difference. From what I can recall, the ancient Jews at the time of Christ believed that God chose them to be a special people, more important and more favored than anyone else. This would have led them to a feeling of superiority and a hatred for all other people. It could even get so far as to condone mistreating those who were not Jewish. This belief also implied that their salvation was assured and determined by birth, therefore what they did really didn’t matter, so really all that mattered was being born a Jew, which is something that no one can control. This makes God appear as one who bases salvation on things beyond people’s control, therefore we are not in charge of our own destiny.
Another aspect of the belief of being the “chosen” people was the belief that they were to suffer. As people, we all know that this life sucks, having a belief that God has chosen us to receive even more suffering than everyone else in the whole world justifies an attitude of pessimism, and negativity. We are told that “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.” God is telling us here that he wants us to be happy, but the belief that this life is meant for suffering is so prevalent that people can’t really understand a God who isn’t calling for their blood all the time.
 
Many of Jesus actions was to improve people’s circumstances such as when he healed the sick, fed the hungry, and served when he saw a need. Jesus didn’t have to do any of those things, he could justifiably said, “I’m too good to do those things,” and he’d be right, but he did them anyway. He did what he could, whenever he could to improve the lives of the people around him, and this was contrary to what people believed God would do. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why people had such a hard time believing in him, because they expected the commanding, vengeful God, not the serving one.
The Torah and “Old Testament” were the only records of scripture ancient people had to derive God’s character from, and there is a lot of fire and brimstone, death and destruction, and anger in those accounts, it would be easy to understand why the people thought that God was an angry, violent guy. But why did Jesus want to change that understanding? Why did he want people to love God instead of fear Him?
If you’re afraid of God, much of what you do would be done our of fear of punishment, or nervous to upset him. It would make God seem temperamental, impulsive and unreasonable. This is definitely the way that I viewed God for most of my life. So I have to ask myself, how has my life changed from when I believed that God was an angry, disinterested, unbending, judge of my eternal existence to the knowledge now of who he is, the best grandpa and Santa Claus combined times 10? How has my life changed?
I was definitely more high strung and nervous before hand because I didn’t think that anyone cared. It’s one thing to have your family not care about you, but to believe that the very creator of the universe is irrational and personally irritated with you is crippling. Whereas to know that the very creator of the universe is patient and will move heaven and earth for you and loves you, it’s changed my life. I have a reason to keep trying when I fail, whereas before I would simply obey because I didn’t want God to keep making me suffer, and I thought obedience would appease him. I now have patience with myself while striving to grow, whereas before I was almost panicky at any mistake.
And there is the fact that you can only act out of fear for so long before you give up and do whatever you want. If I didn’t truly believed that God loved me, I would have told myself, “Whatever you do is not going to be good enough for God, so why bother trying to make him happy when he’s just going to be mad anyway?”  If you’re going to suffer no matter what, may as well do whatever you want and at least enjoy some of it. If God is viewed as being oppressive and sadistic, then all God’s rules will appear oppressive and sadistic. If we know that keeping the commandments is the path of happiness, and God wants us to be happy, then he will tell us to follow the commandments. But if God doesn’t care about our happiness, then his rules won’t lead to our happiness either, they will be more about control or coercion.
If we are not willing to keep the commandments because we don’t believe that God has our best interests at heart, then we go off the path of happiness. Therefore, we must learn and understand that God does have our best interests at heart so that we will be willing to keep the commandments so that we can be happy. Knowing that God loves me has changed my thinking, my actions, my feelings towards others, my inner peace, my outlook on life, my ability to see the eternal perspective, and my self-worth. These have brought me happiness, comfort and joy. God wants all of us to have the happiness that comes with who we can become when we are not always trying to play defense against a God that we believe hates us.
The IM quotes Elder Jeffrey R. Holland as teaching, “In all that Jesus came to say and do, including and especially in His atoning suffering and sacrifice, He was showing us who and what God our Eternal Father is like, how completely devoted He is to His children in every age and nation. In word and in deed Jesus was trying to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven. He did this at least in part because then and now all of us need to know God more fully in order to love Him more deeply and obey Him more completely… God in His ultimate effort to have us know Him, sent to earth His Only Begotten and perfect Son, created in His very likeness and image, to live and serve among mortals in the everyday rigors of life…
Jesus (came) to plead with (man) to love their Heavenly Father as He has always and will always love them. The plan of God, the power of God, the holiness of God, yes, even the anger and the judgment of God they had occasion to understand. But the love of God, the profound depth of His devotion to His children, they still did not fully know- until Christ came. So feeding the hungry, healing the sick, rebuking hypocrisy, pleading for faith- this was Christ showing us the way of the Father, He who is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long-suffering and full of goodness.’ IN His life and especially in His death, Christ was declaring, ‘This is God’s compassion I am showing you, as well as that of my own.’”
I think it’s very interesting that he says that the plan, power, holiness, anger, and judgment of God was well known in ancient times, but the love of God was not known until Jesus came to earth and demonstrated it. I wonder why that is? Was it because the law of Moses, the lesser law, the physical law required physical restraints but the higher law of Jesus required emotional and spiritual restraint? Was it because the hearts of the ancient Israelites were too hardened to accept love? It’s a really interesting concept.
When I consider my life before and after discovering who God is and who I am to Him, I can now fully understand why Jesus would want that for everyone. When he was trying to teach the people of His time that God, His Father, loved them and wanted them to be happy and would bless them, he was doing it so that they could believe him and accept the goodness God wanted to bless them with. This was a difficult concept for me to understand, but I think I get it a lot more now.