God's Exact Image

Philip's request that the Lord would show the Father to the disciples and the Lord's question in response combined to underscore the truth that Philip and the disciples had spent three years in the company of Jesus of Nazareth without grasping the essential truth concerning Him--that He is God in the flesh. The Lord focused on this superficial knowledge of Him by the disciples to stress that superficial knowledge of Christ is never enough. The disciples had to get beyond the surface. They had to grasp the reality that when they had seen Jesus, they had seen the Father, for in Christ is all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form.