Doesn’t John 14:9 teach that the Father has a body of flesh and bones since Jesus said, “[H]e that hath seen me hath seen the Father”?

What is the context here? It has nothing to do with whether or not the Father has a body of flesh or bones or not. The context makes clear what Jesus meant. He wasn’t attempting to say that He was the Heavenly Father contrary to Modalism, and contrary to Mormonism, Jesus wasn’t attempting to say that the Father has a body that looks like His.

The immediate context is clear that the disciples were to have seen the Father “in” Jesus (vs. 7). The Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father (vss. 10-11). Verse 11 says the disciples were to believe what Jesus was saying, because the works done in Jesus testify that the Father is in Him.

Suppose a white daughter is asked to show her black father, who adopted her. The daughter could pull out pictures, she could physically present him, or she could say the same thing Jesus did in Jn. 14:9. In other words, the daughter could be so influenced by her adopted father that every move she makes reflects her father in her. It has nothing to do with what her dad physically looked like.

Finally, the previous extended context of Jn. 4:21-4 should also be taken into account. Jesus already taught here that the Father is an omnipresent spirit. It doesn’t matter what location He is worshipped, because He is spirit. He is not limited to a location. This is why the Bible further teaches that God is the creator of everything outside His own being, and thus, His nature is such that He is not a containable being that can fit into temples (1 Kings 8:27; Jn. 1:1-3; and Acts 17:24-5).

R. M. Sivulka


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