Category: The Good Father

Your Righteous Smile

Several years ago, when we lived in Houston, I went to visit our daughter, Bethany, on the job.  She was working at the time as a nurse on a medical-surgical floor at Methodist Willowbrook Hospital.  She didn’t know I was coming.  It was a surprise.

I made my way to the seventh floor and wandered through the labyrinth-like hallway.  I am sure I looked lost.  I came up to a nurses’ station and said to the secretary, “Can you tell me where I can find Bethany?”  As the secretary stared at her paperwork, she asked, “What room are you in?”  I guess she assumed I was a patient looking for my nurse.

As I pondered her question and before I could answer, she looked up.  I smiled.  She let out a quiet shriek.  “Oh, you must be Bethany’s dad!”  Which of course was what I was about to say.  But before I could say anything, she exclaimed, “I would recognize that smile anywhere.  You have Bethany’s bright smile.”

I did not correct her with the fact that actually Bethany had my smile since I had it first, but I did appreciate her making the connection.  As with most families, there are many physical and personality qualities that I share with my kids that point to a family resemblance.

Likewise, you have a family resemblance to God.  You have a “smile” of righteous character that looks like your Father.  Now that is not to say that your similarity in character is always obvious.  Just as a child can hide their family resemblance though how they wear their hair, or color their hair, or their dress, or other factors, we can hide our family resemblance to God though sin.

Because sin is not part of God’s character (I Jn 3:9), when we sin we are putting a blemish on that family resemblance.  We are hiding the fact of our resemblance.  The look is still there under the sin.  The look does not go away.  The look was given to us at our salvation.  Our role is to let the look fully shine forth.  Our role is demonstrate what a child of God looks like by the “smile” of our righteous character.

Living by Faith

It is a prominent theme throughout the New Testament that the Christian life is lived by faith.  One example of that is our current topic; our family resemblance to God.

The Bible teaches that believers are indwelt by the very seed of God.  His Spirit lives inside us.  As such, we have taken on a new nature; a nature prone to righteousness.  Now if righteousness is our new inclination, why do we struggle with sin?  If our family resemblance to God is in our moral character, why is that resemblance, at times, hard to recognize?  The answer to this question is multi-faceted and I have written on various aspects of this many times; Galatians 5 and the War with the Flesh, Temptation Vs Sin, and The Exchanged Life are a few examples for your perusal.  But for today’s post, our focus is on the role that faith plays in this conflict.

Walking by faith is essentially living as if what God says is true, even when our experience stands in contrast to God’s promise.  When my experience does not seem to line up with God’s promise, which am I going to believe?  I am going to believe and trust and rest in God’s promise.  And one of His promises that saturates the New Testament is a life set free from the power of sin.  How do we put this promise into action?

God says that I have a family resemblance to Him in my character.  I don’t always feel this in my sensory perception.  I sometimes feel sinful.  I feel evil.  I feel anger, malice, jealousy, and a host of other sinful passions.  But because the Christian life is lived by faith, God is asking me to confess those passions, push them aside, and cling to the promise of all that became new in me.

This is not just spiritual theory.  Once I take the very real first step of clinging to His promise, I take the next step of living into the promise.  We often put the cart before the horse here.  We try to live the Christian life by our willpower; by beating ourselves up about our performance and committing to trying harder.  Faith is something we see in our distant past when we first believed.

But living, active, daily faith must come first.  When we consistently believe that we actually have a new nature, a new disposition, and a new power, we can fully live into God’s commands.  Living by faith is not license to ignore God’s commands.  It is not thinking we somehow live above God’s commands.  Living by faith is believing that I have the power, by Christ in me, to live the life; to live into all that Christ commands.

I cannot emphasize the practical nature of this faith enough.  My practice when faced with temptation is to literally tell myself that failure is not who I am.  It is not my identity.  It is not my new character of righteousness.  It is not befitting a child of God.

Does this sound too simple?  Do I ever fail?  Yes, we all have our downfalls in our conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil.  But failure does not have to be our common experience.  And yes, it is that simple.  It is living by faith in God’s promise of a life set free from the power of sin.

Your Family Resemblance to God

“Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; and the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (I Jn 2:23).  If you have embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ, God is now your father.  And if God is your father, you share a family resemblance with Him.  This is not a physical similarity, but a resemblance of character.  You have a moral resemblance to the Father and the Son.

The apostle John spells this out in his first letter found near the end of the New Testament. Let’s review the highlights of this key passage from I John 2:29 to 3:9.  “Since you know that He [God] is righteous, you know that every one also who practices righteousness is born of Him” (I Jn 2:29).  This “since…then” sounds a little backward to our English grammar.  What the apostle is saying is that because God is righteous, it is natural for His children, those “born of Him”, to also practice righteousness.  When we do this, we are showing our family resemblance to God.

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.  For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God…and every one who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (I Jn 3:2-3).  Because we are children of God, we are to emulate our Father by purifying ourselves; by living out the new life He has given us.  Just as God is pure in His moral character, we should practice purity in our moral character.

“And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.  No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He [God] is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.  The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.  No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in Him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I Jn 3:5-9).

When “Jesus appeared in order to take away sins”, He not only took away the penalty of our sin, but defeated the power of sin in our lives as well.  One of the “works of the devil” that Christ destroyed was the power of sin.  And the New Testament makes clear, over and over, that the way God accomplished this was to nail our sin nature to the cross with Christ and to raise us with Christ to live a resurrected life; to live into a new nature, Christ’s nature, a divine nature infused with the righteousness of God.

The key word in this passage is practice.  The believer, because of his new identity as God’s child, does not practice sin on a regular basis.  Sin is not our regular habit.  Do Christians commit sins?  Yes, and when we do, we have an advocate in Jesus who forgives our sins.  What these verses emphasize is that sin is not our natural course as a child of God.

So yes, you do have a moral resemblance to God by virtue of your new identity in Christ.  But what about the times we fail?  What about when sin does seem to be our practice?  What about when, quite frankly, we see no family resemblance?  We will answer these questions next time.

Children of Israel, Children of God

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are” (I Jn 3:1).  And such we are!  If you have embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ you are, in fact, a child of God.  Do you know that?  Do you sense that?  Do you feel that?  It is easy to see ourselves as God’s children on a theological or intellectual level, but are we experiencing its impact?  Are we connecting to our identity as God’s child on an emotional or spiritual level?

Following Christ’s ascension, the initial group of Christ-followers were almost exclusively Jewish.  And for these “children of Israel” to now be “children of God” was a radical change in identity.  Throughout the Old Testament, God’s chosen people were known as “the children of Israel.”  The children of who?  Not the children of God, but the children of Israel.  They were known by their earthly father, Jacob, who was renamed Israel in Genesis chapter 32.

In the gospels, the Jewish leaders saw themselves as God’s chosen people, identified by their connection to their forefathers.  In their interactions with Jesus, they identified themselves as children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  But this all changed when Jewish believers went from children of Israel to children of God.

What about us, 2000 years down the line?  We too have become the children of God.  Do we celebrate and rest in this incredible truth?  These are facts, after all, not just opinions. If you are a believer, you are a child of God.  You are adopted with full rights and privileges into the family of God.  God is your Father.  The seed of God dwells inside you.  You now have a family resemblance to God your Father.  Whoa, is that taking things a little too far?  A family resemblance to the God of the Universe?  Can this be true?  We will explore that topic next time.

Your Heavenly Father

Now that I am in the mindset of reading Scripture in light of all that became new when Jesus initiated the New Covenant, the discoveries have been eye-popping.  For example, have you ever thought about what changed in our connection with God as our Father when the arrival, death, and resurrection of Jesus put the New Covenant into action?

In the entire Old Testament, God is referred to as Father seven times.  In the New Testament, God is identified as our Father over 150 times!  And even one of those seven Old Testament references is looking ahead to our New Covenant relationship.  “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6).

Moving to the New Testament, God’s expanded relationship to us as our Father is just one more of the incredible provisions of the New Covenant.  And God, our Father, does not leave us to wonder about what this father – child connection looks like.  Throughout the New Testament, God explains what and how His specific Father attributes play out in our lives.  This explanation is so critical because on an intellectual level it is easy to accept that once we receive Christ, God becomes our Father.  But do we really embrace all that “God is my Father” entails?  Do we, on an emotional and spiritual level, accept and explore and cling to all that being God’s child includes?

For example, do you believe that the seed of the God of the Universe actually lives inside you, His child? (I Jn 3:9).  Do you believe that God is a good Father who trains us for our own benefit? (Heb 12:5-11).  Do you believe that our heavenly Father showers us with good gifts? (Mt 7:9-11, James 1:17).  Do you believe that God, your Father, does not tempt you to sin? (James 1:13-15).

As we begin to grasp the idea that God is our Father, it is easy to evaluate that relationship through the lens of our experience with our earthly father.  We often ascribe attributes to God that we saw – for good or for bad – in our natural father.  But we must, through the power of the Spirit, cast those limitations of our heavenly Father aside.  We must see God for who He truly is – just as He has revealed Himself – through the lens of His Word.

If your childhood experience was with an emotionally distant or stern or angry father, you may have some distance to travel in recognizing all that is good and loving in God, your Father.  May I encourage you?  Ask Him to open your heart to the truth of the Father that we see described in Scripture.  Over the next several posts, we will explore what the Father looks like.  And we will see that God is a good Father who always draws near, never pulls away.  God is not the distant, cold, arms-crossed, frowning Father.  No, God is the holy, compassionate, tender, loving, kind, righteous, warrior Father who is on your side; revealing His glory through His children.