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The question carries a lesson —

I. AS TO WHAT IGNORANCE OF CHRIST IS. Our Lord charges Philip with not knowing Him because Philip had said, "Lord! show us the Father." And that question betrayed Philip's ignorance of Christ, because it showed that he had not understood that "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Not knowing that, all his knowledge of Christ — howsoever full of love, and reverence, and blind admiration — is but twilight knowledge, which may well be called ignorance.

1. Not to know Christ as the manifest God is practically to be ignorant of Him altogether. This man asked for some visible manifestation, such as their old books told them of. But if such a revelation had been given — and Christ could have given it if He would — what a poor thing it would have been when put side by side with that mild and lambent light that was ever streaming from Him, making God visible to every sensitive and responsive nature! The revelation of righteousness and love could be entrusted to no flashing brightnesses, and to no thunders and lightnings. Not the power, not the omniscience, are the Divinest glories in God. These are but the outermost parts of the circumference; the living Centre is a Righteous Love, which cannot be revealed by any means but by action; nor shown in action by any means so clearly as by a human life. Therefore, above all other forms of manifestations of God stands the person of Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh.

2. This is His own claim, not once or twice, not in this Gospel alone, but in a hundred other places. And we have to reckon and make our account with that, and shape our theology accordingly. So we have to look upon all Christ's life as showing men the Father. His gentle compassion, His meek wisdom, His patience, His long-suffering yearning over men, His continual efforts to draw them to Himself, all these are the full revelation of God to the world. They all reach their climax on the cross. "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us." There are some of you who admire and reverence this great Teacher, but who stand outside that innermost circle wherein He manifests Himself as the God Incarnate, the Sacrifice, and the Saviour of the world. But not to know Him in this His very deepest and most essential character is little different from being ignorant of Him altogether.

3. Here is a great thinker or teacher, whose fame has filled the world, whose books are upon every student's shelf; he lives in a little remote country hamlet; the cottagers beside him know him as a kind neighbour, and a sympathetic friend. They never heard of his books, his thoughts, his worldwide reputation: do you call that knowing him? You do not know a man if you only know the surface, and not the secrets of his being. You may be disciples, in the imperfect sense in which these apostles were disciples before the Ascension, but without their excuse for it. But you will never know Him until you know Him as the Eternal Word, and until you can say, We beheld His glory, etc. All the rest is most precious; but without that central truth, you have but a fragmentary Christ, and nothing less than the whole Christ is enough for you.

II. AS GIVING US A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAINED AND LOVING HEART OF OUR LORD. We very seldom hear Him speak about His own feelings or experience, and when He does it is always in some such incidental way as this. So that these glimpses, like little windows opening out upon some great prospect, are the more precious to us.

1. In another place we read: "He marvelled at their unbelief." And here there is almost a surprise that He should have been shining so long and so near, and yet the purblind eyes should have seen so little. But there is more than that, there is the pain of vainly endeavouring to teach, to help, to love. And there are few pains like that. The slowness of the pupil is the sorrow of the honest teacher. If ever you have bad a child, or a friend, that you have tried to get by all means to take your love, and who has thrown it all back in your face, you may know in some faint measure what was at least one of the elements which made Christ the "Man of Sorrows."

2. But this question reveals also the depth and patience of a clinging love that was not turned away by the pain. How tenderly the name "Philip" comes in at the end! It bids us think of that patient love of His which will not be soured by any slowness or scantiness of response. Dammed back by our sullen rejection, it still flows on, seeking to conquer by long suffering. Refused, it still lingers round the closed door of the heart, and knocks for entrance. Misunderstood, it still meekly manifests itself. Surely in that we see the manifested God.

3. Remember that the same pained and patient love is in the heart of the throned Christ today. We cannot understand how anything like pain should, however slightly, darken His glory; but if it be true that He in the heavens has yet "a fellow feeling of our pains," it is not less true that His love is still wounded by our lovelessness, and His manifestation of Himself made sad by the slowness of our reception of Him.

III. AS BEING A PIERCING QUESTION ADDRESSED TO EACH OF US.

1. It is the great wonder of human history that, after eighteen hundred years, the world knows so little of Jesus Christ.

(1) The leaders of opinion, of literature, the men that profess to guide the thoughts of this generation, how little they know, really, about this Master! Some people take a great deal more trouble to understand Buddha than they do to understand Christ.

(2) How little, too, the mass of men know about Him! It is enough to break one's heart to look round one, and think that He has been so long time with the world, and that this is all which has come of it. The great proof that the world is bad is that Christ has stood before it for nearly nineteen centuries now, and so few have been led to turn to Him with the adoring cry, "My Lord and my God."

2. But let us narrow our thoughts to ourselves.

(1) Many of you have known about Jesus Christ all your lives, and yet, in a real, deep sense you do not know Him at this moment. Do you know Christ as a man knows his friend, or as you know about Julius Caesar? Do you know Christ because you live with Him and He with you, or do you know about Him in that fashion in which a man in a great city knows about his neighbour across the street, that has lived beside him for five and twenty years, and never spoken to him once all the time? Is that your knowledge of Christ? If so, it is no knowledge at all. People that live close by something, which men come from the ends of the earth to see, have often never seen it.

(2) And, to you who know Him a little, this question comes with a very pathetic appeal. If we know Him at all as we ought to do, our knowledge of Him will be growing day by day. But how many of us stand at the same spot that we did when we first said that we were Christians! We are like the Indians who live in rich gold countries, and could only gather the ore that happened to lie upon the surface or could be washed out of the sands of the river. In this great Christ there are depths of gold, great reefs and veins of it, that will enrich us all if we dig, and we shall not get it unless we do. He is the boundless ocean. We have contented ourselves with coasting along the shore, and making timid excursions from one headland to another. Let us strike out into the middle deep, and see all the wonders that are there. This great Christ is like the infinite sky with its unresolved nebulae. We have but looked with our poor, dim eyes. Let us take the telescope that will reveal to us suns blazing where now we only see darkness.

(3) This knowledge ought to be growing every day; and why does it not? You know a man because you are much with him. And if you want to know Jesus Christ, there must be a great deal more meditative thoughtfulness, and honest study of His life and work than most of us have put forth. We know people, too, by sympathy, and by love, and by keeping near them. Oh, it is a wonder, and a shame, and a sin for us professing Christians, that, having tasted the sweetness of His love, we should come down so low as to long for the garbage of earth. Who is fool enough to prefer vinegar to wine, bitter herbs to grapes, dross to gold? Who is there that, having consorted with the king, would gladly herd with ragged rebels? And yet that is what we do.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.

WEB: Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."