*sermon notes*

What kind of a father is our God?

John 1.12-13 tells us that all who believe in Jesus become children of God. God adopts us as His children—we take on His name, receive the blessings (and responsibilities) of family membership, and are granted a share in His inheritance, which is the future new heavens and new earth. Some people have the idea that everyone is a “child of God,” because God created us, but the Bible tells us that only those who believe in Jesus are God’s children; the rest are children of the devil (1 John 3.10).

All Christians have God as their Father, but we would do well to understand what kind of Father God is. The Bible is clear about the kind of Father God is, but many Christians fail to comprehend just how wonderful He is towards us. Many Christians have wrong ideas about the kind of Father God is, and we must ask why. One reason is that we look to our own fathers not merely as examples of fatherhood but as templates of fatherhood; when we hear that God is our father, we understand that through the lens of our experiences with our earthly (and sinful) fathers. A second reason is that many Christians don’t read the Scriptures as they should; the Bible tells us quite clearly what sort of Father God is, but if we don’t read the Bible, we’re left to our own ideas (and the often wrong ideas of others) about God. A third reason is that we have an enemy who wants us to believe lies about God. If he can deceive us into believing wrong things about our heavenly Father, He can hinder us in growing in our love for God.

There are a lot of wrong ideas about God’s Fatherhood, but there are three that run rampant within Christianity today. The first idea is that God holds our sins against us. Many earthly fathers exasperate their children and hold onto their mistakes, bringing them up time and again. But God isn’t like that! In Lamentations 3.22-23 we’re told that God’s mercies are new every morning. If we are in Christ, our sins (past, present, and future) have been forgiven. God knows the ways that I will sin tomorrow, and He has already forgiven them because Jesus already paid for them! In Psalm 103.8-12, we find a beautiful promise of the extent of God’s forgiveness:

The LORD is compassionate and gracious,

  slow to anger, abounding in love.

He will not always accuse,

  nor will he harbor his anger forever;

he does not treat us as our sins deserve

  or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

  so great is his love for those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

  so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Another wrong idea a lot of Christians have is that God expects perfection and punishes us severely when we don’t measure up. In the next two verses following the passage above, the psalmist tells us that “[as] a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear them; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (vv. 13-14) God knows that even though we have new hearts and new desires to obey His will and grow in Him, we won’t do it perfectly. All of us will stumble in many ways. Just as I don’t expect my daughters to act like adults, so God doesn’t expect us to live as if we are already glorified. Just as I know my girls are just kids, God knows we are living on this side of heaven and constantly in conflict with our sinful inclinations, the allures of the world, and the deceptions of the devil. As a father it’s my job to train up my girls so that when they come to adulthood they can flourish, and this often involves discipline; in the same way, God’s aim is to train us up in righteousness to develop us into the sort of people He created us to be, the sort of people who will flourish in His new heavens and new earth. Just as discipline is integral in the raising of my daughters, so God disciplines us when it’s needed. When we persistently disobey God and live in ways that are contrary to His will, He disciplines us, and His discipline is a mark of family membership.

A third wrong idea that people often have regarding God’s fatherhood is that He will eject us from His family if we don’t measure up. Some people believe that though we are saved by grace through faith, we have to stay in faith by works. There are those who don’t believe this but still fear it and live in fear of being ejected from God’s family if they mess up too badly. Sometimes we treat our relationship with God like a contract; “God will save me so long as I do A, B, and C.; if we fail to uphold our part of the contract, the contract is null and void.” But our relationship with God isn’t contractual; it’s foundation isn’t a business-like contract but a family adoption! When I adopted the girls, the lawyer told me that there was no going back. I would always be their dad. There’s nothing the girls can do to not be my daughters. It doesn’t matter how much they mess up, they’ll always be mine; for the rest of their lives, I’ll always be their father. End. Of. Story. And it’s the same when God adopts us—there’s no external force, no sin we can commit, that will eject us from His family. The story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 paints a beautiful portrait of God’s love for His children even when they mess up horribly. The Prodigal Son ran off, disobeying his father and living life his own way, even though he hated it; and all the while he remained his father’s son. When he returned to his father saying, “Wow, I messed up, can you at least let me just crash here in the servant’s quarters?” his father didn’t have to re-adopt him—he embraced his son and celebrated. The son belonged to his father, even if he didn’t act like it, and the father never stopped loving him.

It can be hard to be a Christian. It’s a fight. We have to fight against our sinful desires, a culture that hates God and wants us to buy into their damnable lies, and we fight against spiritual forces that seek to destroy us at worst and render us impotent at best. There are times when we sin, and we sin greatly; there are times when we struggle to live the life that God wants us to live; there are times when we go our own way for a season; there are things we struggle with on a daily basis. But none of this—NONE OF THIS—changes who we are if we have faith in Jesus. The devil points out our sins and condemns us; God forgives our sin, prompts us to repentance, and loves us even when we don’t have it together.

These three wrong ideas about God—that He holds our sins against us, that He expects perfection and punishes us severely when we mess up, and that God will reject us if we don’t measure up—are damnable lies straight from hell. Our enemy the devil wants us to believe these lies, because he knows that if we begin to grasp who we are in Jesus, we’ll be empowered to stand against him and grow in Christ.

At the heart of our identity as children of God is the precious reality that God loves us. And even more than, He actually likes us. He likes you. He likes me. His love isn’t some contractual obligation; He doesn’t love us because He has to. His love is genuine and real. God didn’t have to send Jesus. He didn’t have to save us from our sins. He didn’t have to adopt us into His family. He didn’t have to give us the gift of His Spirit. He didn’t have to welcome us into His inheritance. He could have condemned us all to hell, and who could say a word against Him? He would’ve been right to do so. The fact that He didn’t is evidence of His great love for us, a love that led Him to call His people “his portion” and the “apple of His eye” (Deut 32.9-10).