What God Has Done

No 7: Father/Child Perhaps the most fabulous and unfathomable of God’s wonders is that he has identified himself to us as our Father and by implication our parent. God as our Creator is certainly described in the Bible and God is beyond our understanding and also is much different from us Yet, at the same time, he identifies himself in terms that are very comprehensible to us and most particularly with the concept of father. This great revelation of who God is in relationship to us is seen or hinted at in the Old Testament but is truly brought out and magnified by the teachings and statements of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. In some truly marvelous way, God has now been brought clearly to our heart and mind by the way Jesus identified his father as not only as his father but also our father. While it is very appropriate to describe God in terms that clearly show us that God is much beyond us in our qualities and also much beyond our ability to understand, it is equally true that God has identified himself personally to us and most specifically he has done this through his son Jesus who was in constant relationship with his father and who now has acted so that we can have a full relationship with our heavenly Father. Jesus and his teaching brought this great revelation to us very early in his ministry when he spoke on the Mount. There he stated that we would praise our Father who is in heaven, that we could be sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, that our Father sees us and will reward us, that we should pray to our Father in private, that we should act in ways which are not boastful for our heavenly Father will be able to see all the good we do, that our prayers are to start with our Father in heaven, and most importantly that our heavenly Father seeks to forgive us of our sins along with also providing all our earthly needs. And Jesus concludes this Sermon on the Mount saying that we are to seek to do the will of our Father who is in heaven. The apostles picked up this truly great insight of Jesus by expressing their wonder that God is Father of all of us. And when we personally come to know him as our father, our life can greatly change for the better. Paul in Romans chapter 8 goes so far as to describe this relationship coming from our father by saying that we can cry Abba Father in our times of distress, and in our longings for relationship with our Father. The apostle John perhaps more forcefully than any other of the writers of the New Testament brings out the love the Father has for us as he writes in First John 3:1 “how great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God!” And then John in a burst of amazement adds “that is what we are!” Surely John’s enthusiasm truly captures the immensity and joy of being a child of God and that God is our Father. Bringing home this wonder of God as our Father may be difficult for some of us and in fact perhaps all of us because we realize that our own earthly fathers had various degrees of shortcomings and failures as our father. Of course, behind this idea of God as father is the idea that he is our parent which would include, of course, our mothers also. Some of us have had in effect a situation where we hardly knew our parents at all or at least it felt that way to us. While on the other hand some of us have been blessed with very fine parents. And then some of us had several different, in effect, parents. That is, we had several fathers and mothers who were not our biological parents who became our parent as we either had situations where families broke up and a new person became a part of that family as a parent or we formed associations with people that were very close and important to us in a way that we described it as a fatherly or parent like relationship. Given our wide range of experiences therefore we certainly can look at this idea of God as father in a variety of different ways. But at this point, biblical and Jesus’ teachings are extremely important for our heart and our mind so as to radically change our sense of God from our earthly parents and to gain the insight of what a true parent is like. Having a better parent may make this process easier of understanding God as our parent but it might also cloud our thinking by seeing God is some type of benevolent being that ignores all of our shortcomings and our failures and our sins. But then there may be tendencies to understand God in a harsh light where he is dictating to us what our life should be like with a threat hanging overhead if we do not obey this God who claims to be our father. Beyond our impressions from our experience with our parents that may shape our heart about God as parent, we have also been affected by what our parents taught us directly or indirectly about what is the best in life or what life is like. They taught us what to value and what to seek and how to see ourselves and though this teaching may have been very well thought out or not thought out at all, we, being very impressible beings, were stamped with their ideas and actions. God as our father opens the door for a new understanding of our life. As is true of the Bible in general, it does really reveal new understandings to us in any number of different ways and this revelation coming from God’s word as to the fatherhood of God is one that is new and different from our understandings of normal human life. We never had a father that could see all things, nor did we have a father who would expend himself to the point of sending his own son to die for our sins-- that is, what father sends their child because of all of the sins other people have committed. Even in our great rebellion against God, he is continuously seeing us as his child, and he is seeking us through the actions of his son Jesus and through the Holy Spirit that he gives to us as we come to accept God as our father. He in fact is waiting for us to return him and when we do, he is happy for us and will give us a great reception. (see the story in Luke 15: 11-31 of the lost son) In effect, we have to relearn what parenthood is all about by looking at our heavenly father and we must do this not with many references to our earthly parents but rather by understanding that God as father has lavished his love on us and because of this love of God for his children there will be continuous aid coming to us so that we can have a life that is full of richness and good for other people. This does not mean that our Father will ignore our wrongs or our indifference to him for as the writer of Hebrews states, he will discipline us for our good. With a deep understanding of the fatherhood of God, one that is gained by prayer and study of God’s word and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts we will undoubtedly move into a new awareness of our life. Our Father has given us many different insights into himself as revealed in his word the Bible but also most personally through Jesus Christ who lived among us. But surely this way of thinking of God as father is a deeply wonderful understanding of God.