V. W. J. H. Lawrence
Matthew 11:27; John, 1:18; 3:35; 5:19-23; 14-17; Ephesians 3:14; 4:6; Colossians 1:12. Christianity is the revelation of the Father in and by the Son. Not only does the Son make known the Father's name; He alone can say: "He that has seen me has seen the Father." The love, glory, and perfections of the Father have been the subject of a true revelation (apocalypse). That proves their prior and eternal existence; just as the mystery, hidden from eternity in God, has now become to us the subject also of a real apocalypse. If that purpose and mystery were eternal realities, how much more so the Father's love which gave them being, which was their eternal Source, indeed, the Source of all.
There is what comes into existence yet will endure to eternal ages. As creatures we have had a beginning of existence: as redeemed creatures we shall dwell in life with God and with His blessed Son for ever. But the Father's love had no beginning of existence. Nothing has brought, or could bring, that love into existence. It is inherently and essentially DIVINE; it reveals what GOD IS IN HIMSELF, in His Nature, not anything that He becomes. It was the eternal Source of those purposes which gave us sonship's place, that on account of which He both foreknew us and predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son. But only the Father's love could possibly be the source of an eternal counsel which actually willed sonship for us. Hence it was the Father's love, active in past eternal ages, which could alone be the utterly Divine Source of that purpose, and of all the unmingled blessing enshrined in it.
Thus will the Father's love fill the eternity to come, even as it filled the eternity that is past. Flowing out of one eternity, it is known to our poor hearts through the grace and humiliation of the Son in this lower world, only to find its full fruition in an eternity to come, in scenes which will be the reflex of its own perfections, the home of its unsullied blessedness and of its incorruptible glory.