Jesus Shows Us How to be Children

This week I will quote once more on the topic of child likeness from George MacDonald's book, Discovering the Character of God. I'm taking this from a section in the book called "Jesus Shows Us How to be Children."

"(In Matthew 11:25-30) having thanked His Father, Jesus turns to His disciples and tells them that He knows the Father, being His Son, and that He only can reveal the Father to the rest of His children: '...no man knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.' It is almost as if His mention of the babes (earlier in the passage) brought His thoughts back to Himself and His Father, between whom lay the secret of all life. The relation of the Father and the Son contains the idea of the universe.

"No man, when he first comes to himself, can have any true knowledge of God. He can have only desire for such knowledge. The Father must draw nearer to him. He therefore sends His firstborn, who does know Him, is exactly like Him, and can represent Him perfectly. Drawn to the Son, the children receive Him, and then He is able to reveal the Father to them.

"No wisdom of the wise can find out God. The simplicity of the whole natural relation is too deep for the philosopher. The Son alone can reveal God; the Child alone understands Him.

"The Elder Brother accompanies the younger, and makes him yet more a child like Himself. He interpenetrates his willing companion with His obedient glory. He lets him see how He delights in His Father and lets him know that God is his Father too. He rouses in his little brother and sister the sense of their Father's will. And the younger, as he hears and obeys, begins to see that his Elder Brother must be the very image of their Father. He becomes more and more of a child, and more and more the Son reveals the Father to him. For He knows that to know the Father is the one thing every child of the Father needs, the one thing to fill the divine gulf of his necessity. To see the Father is the cry of every child-heart in the universe of the Father.

"Comfort yourselves then, brothers and sisters. He to whom the Son will reveal Him shall know the Father, and the Son came to us that He might reveal Him.

"'Eternal Brother', we cry, 'show us the Father. Be Thyself to us, that in Thee we may know Him. We too are His children. Let the other children share with Thee in the things of the Father.'"