The day after Jesus calls Peter and Andrew to follow him, Jesus sees Philip and tells him to “follow me.” Then Philip goes and finds his buddy, Nathanael, and tells him about Jesus.
The next time we see Philip is at the miracle feeding of 5,000 men (plus women and children), and then he’s in the story about the Greeks who want to see Jesus. We already covered these when we talked about Andrew.
Later Jesus says, “I’m the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to Papa except through me. If you know me, you know my father.”
To this Philip replies, “Show us the father, and that’ll be good enough.”
Jesus scolds Philip. “After all this time, you still don’t know me? If you see me, you’ve seen Papa.”
Philip may wish he hadn’t opened his mouth. His words just proved that he doesn’t know Jesus as well as he thought he did. Ouch!
How well do we know Jesus? What would be Jesus’s answer to that question?
[Discover more about Philp in John 1:43–46, John 6:5–7, John 12:20–22, and John 14:6–11.]
Read more about other biblical characters in The Friends and Foes of Jesus, now available in e-book, paperback, and hardcover.
A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.
