T.F. Torrance said that, “There is no God behind the back of Jesus.”  In other words, there is no other God than the one we see in Jesus.  

Jesus plainly tells us that when we see Him, we see the Father (John 14:7-9).  Jesus, His Words, and His actions are a complete revelation of God the Father.  Jesus is God, and to suggest that there is another aspect to God or a hidden God who acts differently than Jesus did, is to detract from the deity of Jesus.  It minimizes Him and implies that He is less than God.  All that Jesus did on earth (healing the sick, showing compassion to outcasts and sinners, etc.) is representative of God the Father's will. 

Many of the ideas and images of God that are promoted here in the West are products of our cultural ideologies, philosophical constructs, and mindsets, and are not accurate. Because of this, the image of God has been distorted in the minds of many people.  For instance, there are a considerable amount of people who believe that Jesus (God) causes evil and heartache, does harm to people, makes people sick, kills family members, and brings calamity and destruction to people.   Insurance companies even blame him for disasters by labeling them “acts of God.”   This is wrong.

As I said in a previous blog, Jesus calmed the storm; he didn't bring it.  He didn't send a hurricane to New Orleans, He didn't have people crash planes into buildings to bring judgment, He didn't cause the loss of a family member, and He didn't give you that illness. Jesus did nothing of the sort in the Gospels.  Jesus represented the Father in all that He did on earth, and nothing He did would indicate that God the Father operates in evil ways.

I think this idea of how God operates comes from a lack of understanding of the true nature of Jesus as both God and man.  The Scriptures reveal the need for repentance.  In the Bible the word used for repentance is Greek word “metanoia.”  The literal translation of “metanoia” is “change of mind.”   Repenting and coming to know Jesus and consequently, the Father, changes our whole way of thinking.  This is the true meaning of conversion.  Without such a conversion and continual transformation (changing) of the mind, the Word of God cannot be understood and Christ cannot truly be known.  When this is not accomplished, people are easily swayed by our cultural biases to believe things about God that are not true.

Jesus is fully God, thereby his actions on earth demonstrated the true nature of God.  He is also fully man and saved us from the evil that abounds.  The Father is not different in character than the Son.  The Son came and represented the true nature of the triune God.  It is error to separate the Son and the Father and act as if they have two different agendas.  All of what we understand of God the Father must now be filtered through the lens of what we learned of Him through Jesus Christ.

We must use this understanding of God that we see in Jesus as we look back into the Old Testament and see how God dealt with His own people and other nations.  He was not a different God in the Old Testament than the one He is in the New. He is the same. We must interpret and understand the Old Testament in a way that  lines up with the revelation of God in Jesus.  This must also be done as we choose what teachings about God we adhere to.  If whatever you learn or choose to believe about God is inconsistent with what Jesus did or taught, it must be discarded.  The writers of Hebrews made it clear that Jesus is the exact representation of the nature of God.   To suggest that there is any aspect of God that has not been revealed in Jesus is to say that the Scriptures are in error.

It is time for Christians to question what they have been taught and decide what is and is not consistent with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.  Many teachers, although sincere, have contaminated the beauty, majesty, and glory of God by injecting man-made religious traditions, subjective opinions, and secular philosophies into the Christian faith.  It is time for Christians to renew their minds to the truth Jesus presents when revealing the Father to us.  We need to repent (change our mind) about how we view God.  He is not the source of our problems; He is the answer to them. He is not the cause of trouble and distress; He is the one who rescues.  He is not presently pouring out His wrath on peoples and nations; that will come when Jesus returns, until then, it is His kindness that leads men to repentance.  God is for humanity, desiring to save, not destroy and so He sent His Son to bring to us an opportunity to enter into an eternal fellowship with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2 But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. 3 The Son reflects God's own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God of heaven.  Hebrews 1:1-3

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  John 3:16-18

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  John 17:3