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Jun 29, 2020 08:00am

Jesus Wants Us to Know His Father as Our Father

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“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” (A.W. Tozer)

What we think and believe about God can’t be overstated, because what we believe about God determines our identity, and our identity dictates how we view ourselves and those around us. Our identity determines our philosophy of life, ethics, behavior, and how we make all our decisions.

Thus, nothing will influence our lives more than how we think about and relate to God. The question is: How can we relate to God?

Not Everyone Knows God as “Father”

By nature, we are not children of God. He created everyone, but only some have a special father/child relationship with him. To call God “Father” is to connect with him in a unique way. What makes God “Father” isn’t that he created us; it’s that he adopted us, and now we belong to God as His own.

Adopted children are often rescued from ill circumstances. Before adoption, children typically yearn to be loved and known. Something is missing; they long for completion. Our adoption by God gives us a new life, a new family to belong to, new wisdom to grown in, new freedom, and a new future. We are no longer alone or incomplete.

We can always find our completion in Christ regardless of whether we have family here on earth. Through Jesus, we have access to God as “Father.””

Jesus (Perfectly) Knew God as “Father”

Jesus did nothing, said nothing, thought nothing apart from his Father. He often withdrew for several hours in the night, in solitude, to be alone with his Father. His relationship with God is clearly unique. No one has ever been known for loving and serving God as much as Jesus because Jesus thought of himself as one with God and equal to God.

And that is the claim that Jesus made – that he is God, bringing God’s kingdom to the world, taking it back by adopting his people as sons and daughters, so they too can know God as “Father.”

Jesus Gives Hope to the Fatherless

With the world we live in today, odds are you don’t have a father, or at least one that is present in your home. By present, I don’t mean physically present. I mean, relationally present. It’s true that a father and child can live in the same house and still not know each other. Thus, a child grows up (effectively) without a father.

But Jesus gives hope to the fatherless. While many (if not most) people have a poor view of “dad,” Jesus brings us into the family of God, giving us a perfect Father.

God Our Father

God, our Father, eagerly meets us at the end of ourselves. At our lowest point, the Father is there, present and ready to heal. Showering us with the gift of grace, God cleans us by the washing of His Spirit, clothes us with the righteousness of Christ, and calls us his sons and daughters.

Now adopted and made new, through Christ we can now call him “Father,” a privilege once given only to Jesus Christ – until now . . . if we will only surrender our lives completely to him.

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God” (C.S. Lewis).