Sent From The Father

In referring to God, Jesus almost always said, “the Father who sent me” (5:23, 37), or simply “him who sent me” (5:24, 30; 6:38). Just as Jesus designated God as the sender, he designated himself as the one sent. Instead of “I” he spoke of “he that the Father sent”: “This is the work that God requires: believe in the one whom he has sent” (6:29). . . .

But Jeus was never meant to be the only missionary; John says that God explicitly did not intend Jesus to be unique. On the contrary, Jesus’ mode of existence as mission made manifest furnished the model for all the disciples. We must understand in their fullest and most radical sense Jesus’ words: “As thou hast sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (17:18); and after the Resurrection: “As the Father sent me, so I send you” (20:21), that is to say, “As the Father made me a missionary, so I make you missionaries.”

Jose Comblin in Sent From The Father: Meditations on the Fourth Gospel