Did I say before that the God of glory is desirous to be seen of us?  Even so also have the pure in heart a desire that it should be so.  “Lord,” say they, “show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.”  And therefore the promise is for their comfort, that “they shall see God.”  But how then must they see him?  Why, in the person, and by the life and works of Jesus, When Philip, under a mistake, thought of seeing God some other way than in and by this Lord Jesus Christ, what is the answer?  “Have I been so long time with you,” saith Christ, “and hast thou not known me, Philip?  He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?  Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?  The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; hut the Father, that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.  Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very work’s sake.”

See, here, that both the words and works of the Lord Jesus were not to show you, and so to call you back to the holiness we had lost, but to give us visions of the perfections that are in the Father.  “He hath given us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  And hence it is that the apostle, in that brief collection of the wonderful mystery of godliness, places this in the front thereof:  “God was manifest in the flesh”—­was manifested in and by the person of Christ, when in the flesh he lived among us; manifest, I say, for this as one reason, that the pure in heart, who long after nothing more, might see him.  “I beseech thee,” said Moses, “show me thy glory.”  “And will God indeed dwell with men on the earth?” saith Solomon.

Though Adam be called the image or similitude of God, yet but so as that he was the shadow of a more excellent image.  Adam was a type of Christ, who only is the express image of his Father’s person, and the likeness of his excellent glory; for those things that were in Adam were but of a human, but of a created substance; but those things that were in Christ, of the same divine and eternal excellency with the Father.

Is Christ then the image of the Father, simply as considered of the same divine and eternal excellency with him?  Certainly not; for an image is doubtless inferior to that of which it is a figure.  Understand, then, that Christ is the image of the Father’s glory, as born of the Virgin Mary, yet so as being very God also:  not that his Godhead in itself was a shadow or image, but by the acts and doing of that man, every act being infinitely perfect by virtue of his Godhead, the Father’s perfections were made manifest to flesh.  An image is to be looked upon, and by being looked upon, another thing is seen; so by the person and doings of the Lord Jesus, they that indeed could see him as he was, discovered the perfection and glory of the Father.  “Philip, he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” Neither