The Glory of Sonship in the Son (5)

 

 

“…but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’” (John 20:17b).

 

Is this the message which the Eleven expected to hear? After all, they had deserted Jesus and one of them had explicitly and vehemently denied Him. They might not have been surprised to hear Jesus speak to them of God, but how could Jesus speak of God as their Father considering their abandonment of Jesus? Friends do not abandon friends, brothers do not abandon brothers, how then could Jesus say, “My Father and your Father?”

 

Not only that, but that evening in the Upper Room Jesus says, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). That is, as the Father has sent His Only Begotten Son, He is also sending His many sons and daughters; indeed, the sending of the Father’s Only Begotten continues, just as the Incarnation continues. The Elder Brother is sending His younger brothers and sisters. “As the Father sent me,” Jesus is saying in a sense, “This is how it’s done, now go.”

 

Jesus is saying, “I’ve manifested the Father’s Name to you, now go and manifest His Name to others. I’ve suffered for others, I’ve laid down My life for others, now go and do the same. I’ve spoken the Word of Life to others, indeed, I’ve been the Word of Life for others, now go and do the same in Me.”

 

I know a family in which the children never use the terms, “Dad, Daddy, Papa,” or even father when speaking to or referring to their father. They call him “Mr. Smith.” Mr. Smith once boasted to me that he never played with his children when they were growing up; this was a boast, it was not a regret. Perhaps this is along the line of, “Being a male is a matter of birth, being a man is a matter of choice.” That is, there are biological fathers, and then there are biological fathers who are also fathers in the moral and spiritual sense of the word.

 

How do we see the Father? Is He Mr. God or is He our father in the sense that we cry out, “Abba (Daddy)! Father!”? (Rom. 8”15; Gal. 4:6). When I listen to the language of Christians, including pastors, I often hear the language of a Mr. God relationship – He is a God far away and not near; He is a God who has erected barriers between us and Him, He is remote. We speak the language of distance, we live lives of distance; the language of Fatherhood and Sonship is foreign to our thinking and speech.

 

This is a tragedy, for Jesus Christ came to proclaim sonship to us, He came to bring us into an intimate relationship with “His Father and our Father, with His God and our God.” Jesus came to proclaim the Father’s heart to us, that the Father’s purpose is to bring “many sons to glory” that Jesus Christ might be “the Firstborn among many brethren” (Heb. 2:10 – 11; Rom. 8:29).

 

And yet so many professing Christians can only speak of God as if He were at a great distance, as if He is remote; they have been taught to reject their identity as sons and daughters and instead live as slaves, as sinners, as those outside of the glorious inheritance that they have in Jesus Christ and their Father.

 

How many Sunday school classes and small groups have I been in, in which people speak of God as if they do not know Him? Too many to count. They speak this way because they think and live this way, because they have been taught this way. O dear friends, the veil of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, on the Day Jesus Christ was crucified to demonstrate that the Holy of Holies is now the place where we are to live, in communion with the Trinity and with one another (Heb. 10:19 – 25).  

 

Just think, from all eternity God our Father has desired intimacy with us, and in Jesus Christ He has destroyed all barriers between us and Himself so that we may freely and in joy live in koinonia with Him – and that we may do so now, right now, not tomorrow but now.  This is the Gospel, this is what all preceding elements of the Gospel lead to; this is what Jesus is teaching us in John chapters 13 – 17. O how glorious and wonderful to live with one another in the koinonia of the Trinity!