In my last post, I ended saying, “In a day when so many of us long for a return to family values, it is disappointing to discover that a good dad is hard to find in the Bible.”
But maybe this is a disappointment that can work in our favor.
A Different Kind of Father
A woman I know told me that she turned to the Father in heaven looking for a parent who was different from her biological father. She echoed the hope of the songwriter David, who wrote, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me” (Psalm 27:10).
David repeated the idea that God is a “Father to the fatherless” in another song (Psalm 68:5), but it was Jesus who gave us the most personal understanding of the Father in heaven.
The Father of Jesus
Scripture doesn’t tell us much about the relationship between Jesus and Joseph, the man who married Jesus’ mother and raised Jesus as his son.
Instead, even at the age of 12, Jesus is found relating to His eternal Father. After staying behind in Jerusalem following the Feast of the Passover, Jesus said to Mary and Joseph, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49).
Years later when Jesus went public at about the age of 30, He talked a lot about the Father. He told His disciples that He had come to bring them to His Father who was speaking and working through Him (John 14:8-11). When one of them asked Him to show them the Father, He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (v.9). Then, as He was about to complete the work that He said His Father had given Him to do, Jesus told His friends that He was leaving to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house (John 14:2). He said, “I am going to the Father, for My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).
From all that Jesus says about His Father, it’s clear that He wants us to love and trust His Father as He does.
So now, what are you thinking?
Don’t feel limited by the following. But here are some questions I’d like to hear some comments on:
In what ways does it help or not help you to see that to know Jesus is to know the Father?
What if any danger do you see in identifying the Son so closely with the Father?
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