The Fathering of God, Part 5





My wife and I lived in Oregon for several years and developed a friendship with an older couple from our church. We enjoyed the time spent with them at their home. What we did not expect is just how much our dog “Max” was to enjoy these visits. They had chickens, dogs and Nubian goats. For some reason our dog immediately loved these goats and they loved him. He would recognize the property and get very excited when we arrived and the first thing he did was bolt from the car to go greet them. This was a very unlikely but wonderful bond between these animals. And it was instructive for us too.  

As God “fathers” us he draws people of very diverse backgrounds and worldly interests into unlikely abiding fellowship and deepening commitment to love and care for one another. This is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. This is evidence of the Kingdom of God being present on earth.

As God “fathers” us he leads us to care for one another and to be fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and friends to one another. This means exhorting one another to do what is right and avoid sin (see Hebrews 12:14-17). It also means that we willingly share our sorrows, grief and pain so that other believers can become agents of healing in Jesus’ Name. And it means encouraging each other to do those things (practices) that will lead to being holy and spiritually healthy with God.

As God “fathers” us he gives us true identity as royal sons and daughters together in the family of God. Together we learn to live out the teachings of Jesus. Together we learn to listen to the Holy Spirit as he guides into all truth. Together we learn to exercise spiritual authority and to wield the delegated authority of the Kingdom to bring spiritual freedom to people.

For to us it is of the greatest importance to be happy (whatever form that takes for us). God, however, has little interest in our being happy if that means we do not desire to be holy above all else. For making us progressively holy from the inside out (character to outward behavior) is the end for which we were created and recreated in Christ. All of God’s fathering is aimed at his so we can live in God’s radical freedom—just as our Lord did when we walked as one of us on earth.

In order for us to appreciate and understand what kind of character God desires to form in us it is essential to have an accurate understanding of who God is. One’s perception of God will either inhibit or foster an openness of heart to the Father. With this in mind, I end this blog series with listing (not exhaustive) of key images of God’s self-presentation through Scripture. May the truth move us to worship, adore, love and receive all the good gifts of the Father, in accordance with the Lord’s promise, through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

God is Self-existent and not to be thought of as a creature (Exodus 3:13-15; Deuteronomy 4:15-20)

God employed multiple metaphors to describe himself and actions in relationship to human beings:
o   Creator and Redeemer (Deuteronomy 4:32-40; Psalm 34:15-22; Isaiah 45:18-19; 2 Corinthians 4:5-6; Revelation 4:11)
o   Father to People of Israel and individuals (Deuteronomy 32:1-6; Psalm 68:5-6; 103:8-14; Isaiah 63:15-16; Malachi 2:10)
o   Mighty Rock and Strength (Genesis 49:24; Psalm 18:2; Proverbs 18:10)
o   God who takes “mothering” role towards own people (Deuteronomy 32:10-14, 18; Isaiah 66:13; Psalm 132; Luke 13:34)

God’s actions flow from his eternal Being and character as he has covenanted to relate to his creatures (Exodus 2:23-25; Psalm 25:8-10; Isaiah 43; Jeremiah 31:31-37; 33:14-26; Matthew 26:26-29; Hebrews 13:20-21)

The Lord Jesus primarily understood his own relation to God as uniquely to his Father and that his disciples relate spiritually to God as Father through him (Luke 2:48-49; Matthew 11:25-30; John 14:8-14; Galatians 4:1-7; 1 Peter 1:17-21)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Theophan the Recluse on Combating the Passions

  “Keep to one thing: When the passionate is detected, immediately arm yourself against it with wrath and hostile anger. This anger in spiritual warfare has the very same significance as when an evil person is assaulting you; you have to strike back at him hard. . . . What does the victim of an assault by an evil person do? After striking the person, he calls for help. The watchmen answer his call and save him from trouble. This is also what must be done in spiritual warfare with the passions. Once you have become angry at the passion, you have to call out for help: Be attentive to my help, O Lord of my salvation! O Lord, be attentive unto my help, make haste to help me! When appealing to the Lord in this manner, do not fall away from Him through attention toward what is going on inside of you, but keep standing before the Lord, imploring Him for help. Run at once from this enemy as from a blazing fire.  There is something others have done, and perhaps do even now. That is, once they
Read more

Christendom, Converts and Spiritual Conversion

  “Through all those centuries of clashing and changing frontiers, Christendom in terms of time and space extended itself. Its missionaries succeeded among the barbaric as they had among the cultured, and such gatherings as the Synod of Whitby, far by the North Sea and almost on the edge of the ancient Empire, repeated, to their degree, the Council of Nicaea. Both the Gospel and the Creed mastered the new world. But the method of conversion had perhaps changed somewhat. In the old days it had been individuals who had been converted, either by intellectual persuasion or spiritual violence, by grace, by intellect, or (at lowest) by fashion. But now it was whole communities which were abruptly annexed. The prestige, the power, and no doubt sometimes the piety of Christendom subdued one dynasty after another; a sudden rain of culture and Christianity descended over their territories, and the Christianity was often no more than the chief interference of the culture. The mass of the converts
Read more

The Charisms of the Holy Spirit in the Life of Churches

The affirmation and exercise of charisms has varied over time and been shaped by the prevailing theological assumptions about formal church structure and leadership of a given tradition. Theological assumptions are, as a matter of course, profoundly colored by the perspectives of the people developing them in the context of the current hegemonic cultural presuppositions. This is especially true of ecclesiology and pneumatology. Indeed, the ways in which different Christian traditions have come to counterbalance these two categories of Christian theology speaks volumes about their fundamental views of God and human salvation. The different intellectual categories which systematic theologians attempt to describe are all intertwined in people’s actual thought and practice.  In churches with a traditional emphasis on the Episcopal model of leadership and ministry the focus of thought has been on the position and work of formal leaders. The ministry of laypersons was not emphasized becau
Read more