What did Jesus mean by calling the Father "my God and your God" (John 20:17)?

Then we get Christ presented distinctly in a double character - as Son of the Father and as Man - and that lies at the root of our whole condition too. He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as Man, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as Son. That runs all through. "My Father and your Father." During His life He always said Father, because He was a Son. On the cross, when He was dying, drinking the cup, He said, "My God;" but in Gethsemane He said "Father;" and at the end He says, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." But after He is risen (John 20) He uses both together - "My Father … my God" - as if He would say, "I have brought you in righteousness to God, and into the place of sons with the Father." And it is the first time He calls them "brethren." When the disciples found He was risen they were not gathered at all; it was Mary's message that practically brought that out. They were then gathered, and Christ with them.

Then we get Christ presented distinctly in a double character - as Son of the Father and as Man - and that lies at the root of our whole condition too. He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as Man, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as Son. That runs all through. "My Father and your Father." During His life He always said Father, because He was a Son. On the cross, when He was dying, drinking the cup, He said, "My God;" but in Gethsemane He said "Father;" and at the end He says, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." But after He is risen (John 20) He uses both together - "My Father … my God" - as if He would say, "I have brought you in righteousness to God, and into the place of sons with the Father." And it is the first time He calls them "brethren." When the disciples found He was risen they were not gathered at all; it was Mary's message that practically brought that out. They were then gathered, and Christ with them.

Now Christ stands in two relationships with God, His Father. He is a perfect man before His God; He is a Son with His Father. We are to share both these relationships. This He announced to His disciples ere He went back to heaven: it is unfolded in all its extent by the words He spoke, "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." This precious — this inappreciable truth is the foundation of the apostle's teaching in this place. He considered God in this double aspect, as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and our blessings are in connection with these two titles.

His Brethren. — He had brethren on earth. To them He sent this message. He had spoken before the cross of them as friends (15:15). He now owns them as His brethren. Would any presume on that account to think of themselves as on an equality with Him? His words uttered to Mary forbid such a thought. "My Father and your Father" — not our Father. "My God and your God" — not our God. He was the Son, and all true Christians are children, sons of the same Father. But He was Son in a way very different from any of His disciples, whether we contemplate Him as the only begotten Son of God, or as Son of God born in time. Believers have been born of the Spirit. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and so was as to His human person perfectly holy. "My Father and your Father" marks this distinction, though His Father is our Father. Then "My God" He could say, for He was and is a man, yet He ever reminds us of the great difference between Himself and His own by adding, "and your God." His full humanity we must ever tenaciously hold and confess, yet never dream of being on an equality with Him. We who believe are His brethren. He is not ashamed to call us that (Heb. 2:11). But who with right perceptions would call Him Elder Brother? Ps. 22:1, 7-8, 16, 18, had their fulfilment at the cross. Verse 22 began its fulfilment now.

I do not dwell at length upon the occasion of these great words of our Lord. We know that Mary Magdalene, in her most commendable love, would have detained the Saviour, not knowing that by her, as by the church at large in the sequel, Christ was to be known only after a heavenly sort. No contradiction between our Lord's manner here, and His permission subsequently to the other women to hold Him by the feet. For did not these typify how Israel will know Christ in the millennium? But Mary's was a higher privilege, though then she might hardly realise it. And so the Lord utters the magnificent words, "I ascend," etc. And is there not exquisite beauty in the fact that "Father" comes before "God"? It is doubtless the same divine hand that wrote, by the same St. John, "grace and truth." The tenderer relation comes first. Still, as more than one has remarked, it is not "our Father," nor "our God." That could not be. Whatever the grace, never can the interval between the Creator and the creature be bridged — not in that sense. The Lord could tell His disciples in that most comprehensive prayer, which He gave them, "When ye pray, say 'our Father.'" But His is a unique Sonship, though doubtless at the same time there is an emphasising of the truth that His God and Father is also ours.

God can, and this is what He does. Such is now the relationship of grace. It is not only that Christ called God His Father, but His Father is our Father; and He adds that "His God is our God," after He had borne atoningly the judgment of our sins and rose from out of the dead. For it is full of interest that Christ did not speak ordinarily to Him as God but as Father. When He rose from the dead, the work of redemption being accomplished, He says not merely "your Father" but "your God." The force is made exceedingly striking by comparison with the time when the Lord said "My God, My God." In the days of His flesh, and before this on the cross, it was always "Father" whether He spoke of Him or to Him. After being made sin, and hence forsaken by God, He comes to the "Father" again, even before death, that we might know that all against us was settled. For He had gone down with our sins laid on Him under that infinite judgment; and in His spirit He had the consciousness that it was finished and accepted so that He could say "Father" before the moment of death, because it was virtually ended. The resurrection was the public proof that all was peace; but before He departed, He said "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

But if one has to do with worldly men, they do not know what you mean when one speaks of God as his Father, save as the Father of everybody. They use this which is true to deny His special relationship to the Christian. It is then no small thing for the soul to know that "God is my Father," in the Spirit to cry, Abba Father; but it is another thing, where all questions are settled, and we are able peacefully to enjoy Him as God. This is assuredly of great moment and will be found to be true in the ways of God with our own souls. It is evident that our Lord Jesus meant that we should find and enjoy it; for if we refer to the message on the resurrection day, He says, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father" — but this is not all — "and to my God and your God." I do not believe it is possible to enjoy "His God and our God" until we have known what it is to look up with perfect rest in Christ and in conscious relation to God as "His Father and our Father." In short all true real believing enjoyment of God as such follows the enjoyment of the Father.

Secondly, the Lord can speak of His disciples as "My brethren". Never before had He spoken of His disciples as His brethren, but through His death, having sanctified them, He is not ashamed to call them brethren (Hebrews 2:11). Even as the bride, in the Song of Songs, can say, "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine", so Mary, in the love of her heart, says, "My Lord", and Jesus, in the greatness of His love, can respond by calling His own "My brethren".

Thirdly, we learn that His own are brought into new and heavenly relationships, for the Lord speaks, not only of ascending and thus leaving earth for heaven, but of going back to a Person — the Father, with Whom, by His work, He brings us into relationship, even His own relationship, and can say, "My Father, and your Father", "My God, and your God". He goes up to represent us before the Father, and we are left down here to represent Him before the world.

It was indeed the best portion a nation could have here below till Messiah reigns over them, and the new covenant be made with the houses of Israel and of Judah. But before that day Messiah came for a deeper, holier, and more wondrous purpose — to suffer for sin, and for the sins of all who believe, to the glory of God. The cross of Christ, where He suffered from God as well as from man, presents a work divine beyond all that ever was wrought or can be again. For in this way, so strange to human eyes, not only was the Son of man glorified, but God was glorified in Him Whom man despised and the nation abhorred. Therefore God glorified Him in Himself and glorified Him straightway, instead of in His kingdom of manifested power and might, which He awaits in due time. But in and by His sufferings on the cross atonement was made; and risen from the dead He could and did reveal in all its fulness the name of His Father and our Father, His God and our God; that we might ourselves call upon Him as such, in a blessed nearness never till then appropriated by the faithful, never even possible before save to our Lord Himself.

Representing the feelings of the godly Jewish remnant, she would cling to her risen Lord, with the thought that now that He has come back, no longer in humiliation but in resurrection glory, He will take His place on earth as the rightful Heir of all things. But Mary and the remnant are to learn that before the kingdom glories, God has yet greater glories for Christ, and far deeper blessings for His people. Thus the Lord can say, "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren, and say to them, I ascend to My Father, and your Father; and to My God and your God".