"I and My Father are one." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." John 10:30, 14:9
What Jesus did, was what the Father is always doing; the suffering He endured was that of the Father from the foundation of the world, reaching its climax in the person of His Son. God provides the sacrifice; the sacrifice is himself. He is always, and has ever been, sacrificing himself to and for His creatures. It lies in the very essence of His creation of them.
The worst heresy, next to that of dividing religion and righteousness, is to divide the Father from the Son—in thought or feeling or action or intent; to represent the Son as doing that which the Father does not himself do. Jesus did nothing but what the Father did and does. If Jesus suffered for men, it was because his Father suffers for men; only He came close to men through His body and their senses, that He might bring their spirits close to His Father and their Father, so giving them life, and losing what could be lost of His own. He is God our Saviour: it is because God is our Saviour that Jesus is our Saviour. The God and Father of Jesus Christ could never possibly be satisfied with less than giving himself to His own! The unbeliever may easily imagine a better God than the common theology of the country offers him; but not the lovingest heart that ever beat can even reflect the length and breadth and depth and height of that love of God which shows itself in His Son—one, and of one mind, with himself.
The whole history is a divine agony to give divine life to creatures. The outcome of that agony, the victory of that creative and again creative energy, will be radiant life, whereof joy unspeakable is the flower. Every child will look in the eyes of the Father, and the eyes of the Father will receive the child with an infinite embrace.
George MacDonald
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