God gave that twofold revelation in Christ Jesus, the God-man. Only the Son could reveal accurately and authoritatively the Father because He alone had seen the Father.

John 1:18

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

Matthew 11:27

“No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son.”

But how could the Son make known to sinners on earth the ineffable beauty, the infinite love, the immeasurable worth of the Father in Heaven if He remained in the Father’s bosom? There was but one way that the age-long cry of “orphaned humanity,” “Shew us the Father,” could be answered, and that was by way of the incarnation. This is the way the Lord Jesus took, and He told those who saw Him on earth that when they had seen Him, they had seen the Father.

John 14:9

“Jesus said unto him, “Have I been so long a time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, ‘Show us the Father?”

In the incarnate Son, the everlasting Father stooped to the level of man’s power to comprehend Him. “Jesus is God spelling Himself out in a language men can understand.”

God was manifest in the glorious person and the gracious work of the Son. What the Son was, God is. His character and conduct on earth are a mirrored reflection of His Father in Heaven. Blessing the little children and bidding them come unto Him; entering into the joys of the wedding feast and the dinner party; weeping with the bereaved sisters at the brother’s tomb; seeking the companionship of kindred spirits in the Bethany home; talking with an outcast woman at Jacob’s well; feeding the hungry multitudes who have followed Him into the desert; giving sight to the eyes of the man born blind; cleansing the temple of the avaricious moneychangers; denouncing the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the unbelieving Pharisees; suffering in Gethsemane; dying upon Calvary; in all these ministries the invisible God is made intelligible to men.

But Jesus Christ came not alone to reveal God to man but to reveal man to himself. Through sin, man was blinded both to the worth of God and the worthlessness of self. But in the man Christ Jesus, God revealed to humanity His perfect Man, the divine Ideal. In Him, man found all that he could ever want in God and all that God could ever want in man. What the God-man was on earth God desires every human being to be. “In him, we see in perfect form what man in the divine idea of him is.” By comparison of his life with that of the man Christ Jesus, each one may see the depth of sin into which he has fallen and the height of holiness to which he may rise.

The twofold revelation in the God-man of God as He is and of man as he may be is surely the preliminary purpose in the incarnation, but it is not the primary one. If the natural man had nothing beyond this revelation, it would do him very little good. In the first place, how could his blinded mind apprehend it? His darkened heart accept it? His biased will act upon it? And if he could apprehend, accept, and act upon this revelation of God and of himself given in Jesus, where would it bring him? Such a revelation does not touch the sin question except to reveal to what depths man has fallen. In no sense can it settle it. It would only leave the awakened sinner with a greater consciousness of condemnation and a deeper experience of despair. 

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

To the God of all grace. Thank You for revealing to us, through the incarnation, who You are and what man may be. We worship You, O God!!