Thursday, August 6, 2015

The Love of a Father


 1 John 3.1  See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (1 Jn 3:1). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
John’s Revelation
John had a revelation of God and of himself that will revolutionize our thinking if we allow it to become our understanding as well.
John viewed God as a loving Father who generously gave his love to his children.  We as God’s children are the objects of his love.  True love has to be given to another person.  God created us because he wanted to share the love that existed in the Trinity with people he would create that could also be loved and give love. 
God did not create us to control us, force us to do his will, use us for his own purposes to accomplish what he wanted to do.  He created us for his pleasure, the pleasure of giving his love to us and calling us his children.
 When we respond to his love and return our love to him we bring glory and honor to him.  When a parent sees their child respond in a loving way to another person it brings joy to their heart.  The child is doing what the parent wants them to do without telling them to do it. What the parent has modeled and taught their child is now in the child and they are responding in a loving way to others.
Manipulation
God is love, it is his nature to love, to give of himself unselfishly, sacrificially and without expecting love to be returned.  It brings him joy when love is returned but he does not demonstrate his love for the purpose of receiving love.  If that were the case it would be a form of manipulation . God does not force people to love him just as he will not force people to go to heaven.  His love is so perfect that he can love all of mankind and not withhold his love in spite of it being rejected.  As our Creator, he created us to be loved by him and that will not change.  His love will always be demonstrated toward us even in our worst fallen state of rebellion against him. 

Identity
John saw the love of God being given to us that we would be called the “children of God.”  He saw himself in a Father-son relationship.  He was God’s child, God’s love child.  A child conceived in love and nurtured in love throughout his life.  John’s identity was found in his relationship to his father.  He was the son of his father.  Orphaned children struggle with finding their identity because they do not know their father.  The father image is so important in establishing our identity.  I remember growing up and being asked what my last name was followed by who is your father as there were other people with the same last name.  Once they knew who my father was then other things were automatically associated to me, good or bad.  Our identity is established through our heavenly Father who is perfect in all his ways. He is flawless and is the perfection of every good character trait that exists.  When we call him our Father we are also being identified with him in the way people understand what God as a Father is like. As his child, I am like him or have the capacity to be like him.  I have his DNA because I am made in his likeness and image. 

Altered Image
Through the fall of man this image has been severely damaged and altered to the point of being in a state of depravity.  Our fallen condition makes us unacceptable to God. God knew that man would fail and fall into this state. He knew man would make the choice to make his own decisions rather than submit to the authority of God as his Creator.  He knew that man would choose knowledge over obedience.  In spite of the consequences of the decision which God clearly stated would be death, man chose to not obey God. Fallen man was now branded and driven out of paradise.  The unholy could no longer be in a place of perfection.  Man in his fallen state could never enter into a place of perfection where God dwells.
Restored Image
God had a solution before the problem came into existence and that was his plan to send Jesus to the world to be its Savior and restore man in his relationship with him.  Jesus as the perfect sacrifice would give his life in payment for the penalty of sin which was death.  God in his great love for man created a plan for his restoration. Through Christ we can now become a new creation in which the image of God is restored.
Man’s decision
Man is now faced with another decision to accept what God has provided for the reestablishing of our relationship with him or man can try to do what he thinks will make him acceptable to God.  The response of many people is to follow a set of rules or do good works so that God will accept them. 
A story is told of two brothers who were very wicked men.  When one of the brothers died he talked to a pastor to conduct the funeral for his brother.  He told the pastor he would pay him a large sum of money if during the eulogy he would refer to his brother as a saint.  The pastor agreed to do it. During the message he said of the deceased brother, “this man was evil, he was a liar, a cheater, an adulterer and a murderer but compared to his brother he was a saint.” Man wants God to accept him based on his good works but the problem is that man is not qualified to determine what is good.  Also the motivation of the heart is what God judges and often the motivation of doing what man thinks is good is influenced by selfishness and pride.
Fallen man wants God to accept him on his terms not God’s.  This is another form of manipulation, “If I do good works, God will have to accept me”.  Others invent rituals and ceremonies that they think will appease God and receive his favor and approval.  This can involve human sacrifices or self-inflicted pain that seeks to satisfy a need to purify oneself from the evil deeds they have committed. None of these man made solutions will ever be acceptable to God.  God as our Creator has set the terms for our reconciliation with him.   
When John declared, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us…” he was thinking of the greatness of God’s love for us that has provided a way for us to be restored in our relationship with him.  We were created by God’s love and we are redeemed because of his love and nothing will ever be able to separate us from his love. 
Adopted Children
We are now his children because we have been reconciled to him.  We are his adopted children which does not mean we are second class kids.  In the Roman world many slaves were adopted into the families of their owners.  They were given the exact same privileges as a natural born child, there was no difference but there was one privilege that they had.  An adopted child could never be rejected as a family member whereas a natural born child could be thrown out of the family.  We see this even today in the Jewish and Muslim culture when they become Christians or marry outside of their faith.  The Jews have a funeral service and the Muslims completely cut off the child from the family and strip away any inheritance they may have received.  As adopted sons and daughters in God’s family we will never be rejected by our Father.  We are in his family and no one can take us out of it.
As God’s children we are heirs or joint heirs with Jesus.  We have an inheritance that we will be given when our life on earth is over. But more than the future blessings that await us are the daily benefits we receive as children of God.  He is our loving Father who provides for our needs, protects us, guides our decisions, comforts us in our times of grief and loss, encourages us and constantly demonstrates his love for us.
Rejected by the World
John also recognized that we as God’s children are not accepted by the world.
 ” The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” 
The world does not know God as their Father and as a consequence they do not recognize his children.  Without the true knowledge of who God is, man can never recognize the children of God because they are like him.  As God’s children we are different than the world.  We have values that are different and we are seeing those values being tested and rejected by the world. One example was demonstrated in the news recently.  It is difficult to accept what the world values as courageous when they give an award to a man who went through sex change procedures so he could become a woman.  He is lauded for his courage to become something he was not created to be.  I can think of many other people who were more deserving of an award for courage.  His decision to become a woman has no biblical basis and is in defiance of God’s original design of male and female.  The acceptance of homosexual marriages and now the acceptance of transgenders is being forced upon the Christian community.  Our values as Christians seeking to uphold the values of the Word of God are being rejected and penalized.  We are being forced to condone behaviors that are not acceptable to God.  But when the world does not know God as a loving Father who is perfect they can do whatever is pleasing in their own eyes. It is no longer an issue of morality but of what brings man pleasure.  This has created a slippery slope that will have no end because the pleasures and desires of fallen man will lead him further into depravity.  We are heading to the same state of mankind before the flood.
5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Ge 6:5). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
As God’s children we will not be recognized or respected by the masses that are following after their own pleasures and have rejected the moral statutes God has given for the preservation of society.  God’s love for mankind established boundaries and morals that are for the good of mankind.  These were laws of love that God gave because of his love for mankind and his knowledge of what evil will do to a culture. 
God’s Counterculture
We are God’s counterculture in the world today.  We are his children who will reflect his character, his values, his priorities and his love for a fallen world.  We are to live as children of the light and not walk in the darkness of the world.  We are in the world but not of it.  Our identity is in our relationship to our Father who is perfect and just in all his ways.  We are to love as he loves but love does not mean we have to accept and approve of the ways of the world. To do so would be to deny our true identity and the values that God has given us as our Father.  We have to evaluate what the world is promoting as an anti-Christ spirit.  The spirit of the world is in complete defiance and opposition to the rule of God.  If we give in to the world we are also rejecting what God has ordained and declared to be Truth. The world evaluates the Bible by their experiences but we must evaluate our experiences by the Bible. We cannot live for the approval of the world.  We must live for the approval of our Father, it is his approval that really matters and has eternal consequences.

When we have the true revelation of God as our father it clarifies our identity as his children whom he dearly loves.  We are in him and he is in us.  The world needs to see the Father in the light of the Truth that God has revealed to us.  There are millions of people today who do not know their true identity because they have never met their true Father or have been given a wrong example of what he is like.  We as his children have the opportunity to show the world what God our Father is truly like.  We will not always be accepted by the world but we will always be loved and accepted by our Father and that is more important.