If You've Been Watching Me, You've Been Watching the Father

 "The person putting their trust in Me isn't putting their trust in Me but in the One having sent Me. And the person watching Me watches the One having sent Me." - John 12:44b

"The person having seen Me has seen the Father; ... Don't you trust that I am within the Father and the Father is within Me? The words which I speak to you I don't talk from Myself, and the Father making His home within Me does His works." - John 14:9b, 10

     How many times did Jesus say this in John? A lot. He went out of His way to emphasize that He didn't say or do anything which the Father wasn't saying or doing through Him. If you were watching Jesus, you were watching the Father, it was as simple as that. If you were observing Jesus, you weren't observing Jesus' own EMI (ego/mind/identity), His own self-identity per se (son of Mary, born in Bethlehem, native Aramaic speaker, Jewish by birth, potential heart problems etc.), you were observing the Father acting and speaking through Jesus, and Jesus surrendering wholly and totally to Him. Jesus was already doing what He taught His disciples to do. He was making His Home in the Father just like He taught His disciples to make their home in Him, thus making Himself the go-between, the Mediator, the "adaptor" so to speak. And His making His home in the Father formed the basis of every action He took and every word He spoke.

     This is the basis of everything Paul taught as well, though He went into much more excruciating detail so that he wouldn't be misunderstood (though sadly he was anyway): Submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of the One who was submitting to and cooperating with the Father. Imitating Him, just as He was imitating the Father. And later, as Paul wrote, "Imitate me, just as I imitate Christ," who was imitating the Father. "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." "If you have seen me, then you have seen Christ." But the absolutely fundamental understanding here is the Father ultimately acting and speaking through the human being through Jesus Christ as a conduit.

     John knew Jesus the best of any of the disciples. He was his cousin at least through his mother, and His best friend likely from childhood. He recorded what he thought were the most important things about Him, His life, and His teachings, and the hill John chose to stand and die on in his writings was that if you saw and heard Jesus, you saw and heard the Father, and Jesus taught His disciples to do and be the same thing.