THE FATHER IS THE SOURCE!

NOW FOLLOWING ON!

In my last blog I sought to show how Jesus’ life of humility, obedience and dependency on the Father could be seen as a paradigm, an example for how we should seek to live our own lives of faith.

I want to pick up on one of the points I made there, and elaborate on it somewhat. That point is that in Jesus, like Jesus, we should make the Father our source for all things!

MANY GODS

There were many gods and goddesses in the world of Paul and John. Temples and sanctuaries to the Greek deities Apollo, Hera, Aphrodite, Asclepius and the rest, littered the Roman Empire and constituted a highly esteemed and respected part of the matrix of life. Add to this the veneration and worship of Roman emperors – the imperial cult.

In particular, both Paul (see Acts 19,21-41) and John would have known well the cult of Artemis of the Ephesians. Ephesus had been the headquarters of Paul’s missionary work in Asia Minor in the 50s of the first century A.D., and was the place where John lived out his days and published his gospel in the 90s. Artemis of Ephesus was a hybrid goddess; an amalgamation of the Greek Artemis of the woods, pictured as a young girl in hunting gear armed with a bow, and the ancient fertility goddess Cybele, the Magna Mater (Great Mother) of Phrygia.

This is the environment in which the gospel was first preached.

ONE GOD, THE FATHER, AND ONE LORD, JESUS CHRIST

So Paul could write:

“For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “Lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. 1 Cor.‬ ‭8,5-6‬ ‭

(See my blog: A REFLECTION ON 1 CORINTHIANS 8,6!)

And John writes in his gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
‭‭Jn.‬ ‭1,1-3‬ ‭ESV‬‬

For John, as for Paul, the Father is the SOURCE OF ALL BEING, and the Son is the AGENT OF CREATION.

“THE FATHER IS GREATER THAN I”

John continues:

“…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jn.‬ ‭1,14‬ ‭

In his deity, as the Word, Jesus is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but in his humanity, Jesus shows us what it is to be truly human. It is in his sinless humanity, in his humility, obedience and dependency on the Father, that Jesus is a paradigm for our own lives of faith!

When Jesus says in John 14,28 that “The Father is greater than I”, he is expressing this dependency on the Father, in his incarnate state.

Barrett puts this brilliantly when commenting on that verse:

“The Father is God sending and commanding, the Son is God sent and obedient. John´s thought here is focused on the humiliation of the Son in his earthly life, a humiliation which now, in death, reached its climax and its end”

THE FATHER IS JESUS´ SOURCE

This sending and commanding; this dependency, is clear from the gospel:

Jesus knows where he has come from and where he is going (8,14 and 16,28). The Father has sent him. He does and says what he has seen from the Father (5,19 and 8,38) – from whom also he receives his authority (5,27 and 8,28)! It is the Father in him who does his works (14,10). Jesus knows that the Father always hears him when he prays (11,41-42), and at the last; when everyone will leave him, and Jesus remains alone to face the Roman and Jewish authorities, he knows that he is not alone. He does as the Father has commanded him (14,31). The Father is with him (16,32).

Jesus looked to the Father as his source in all things!

In ways appropriate to our humanity – in Jesus – we live our lives in obedience and dependency on the Father for our needs.

THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE BELIEVER

But what part do you and I as believers in Jesus have, in his relationship with the Father?

In what is known as the Farewell Discourses (chs.14-16), Jesus prepares his disciples for what is to come; he is now returning to the Father.

He will not leave them alone, he will send the Paraclete to them (14,15)

If they love him, they will keep his word, the Father will love them and they will both come and make their abode with the believer (14,23). The believer is therefore included in the wonderful fellowship of the Father and the Son. This is a fellowship which is made possible by the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, who makes the presence of Jesus and the Father real to us in our lives. It is a fellowship characterised by the disciple keeping the words of Jesus – the commandment to love (13,34)! In that context, the Father and the Son will reveal themselves to us and will abide with us! And when we fail to keep this word of love, that fellowship is swiftly restored, when we confess our sins (read 1 John 1,1-9 most carefully)

Indeed, we are even promised that, “he who believes in me, the works that I do, will he do also, because I am going to the Father” (14,12)

THE NEW SITUATION

In that day (that is, when Jesus has returned to the Father), they will ask nothing of Jesus, for

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (16,23-24‬)‭

And:

“In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”” (16,26-28)‬ ‭

So here we have Jesus clearly teaching his disciples to look to, count on, trust in and depend on the Father for their needs. They are directed to pray in his name, in Jesus’ name!

PRAYING TO JESUS

Does this mean that we are not to pray to Jesus?

To this we have to say that prayer is much more than just petitioning! It includes worship, praise and thanksgiving, it includes just plain fellowship – talking over things with the Lord. Jesus is our Saviour and Lord, the second person in the Trinity, and Head of the Church (Eph. 1,22; 5,23 and Col. 1,18), which is his body! Of course we we need to pray to him.

When it comes to petitioning Jesus in John’s gospel, there is 14,13-14 which states that we can ask him. So we should not be dogmatic in saying that we only pray to the Father in Jesus´name.

UNDERSTANDING THE FATHER’S LOVE

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 Jn.‬ ‭4,16‬ ‭

‘Knowing God’s love’ needs to be understood here not in the Greek sense of intellectual speculation, but in the Semitic sense of experience. When Adam knew his wife and she conceived and bore Cain (Gen. 4,1), he had sexual intercourse with her.

‘Knowledge of God´s love’ – a completely different context – involves the experience of a personal relationship.

The Father’s love is like no earthly love, which is contingent upon something loveable in the object of that love.

God’s love by contrast, is wholly contingent upon himself, and not upon anything loveable in us; the reason he loves us, is in him – not in us!

Such unconditional love is impossible for the mind to fully grasp and accept. But it must be accepted and believed, and trusted in by the heart. And then it can be experienced – day by day as we trust – and growing in trust we grow in our knowledge of God and of his love. The love of the Father is a vast and deep ocean which I believe it will take eternity to fathom.

And life will threw plenty of things in our path which will cause us to doubt that love; but that’s how we grow. We daily put one foot before the other and trust his love for that day!

αγάπη/agapē love:

The Greek word for God´s kind of love in the New Testament is αγάπη/agapē. Nowhere is this sacrificial αγάπη/agapē love of the Father so beautifully described than in the writings of John:

““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John‬ ‭3,16‬ ‭

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John‬ ‭4,9-10‬ ‭

THE END PURPOSE

With Paul:

We are ‘from the Father’, and created ‘for him’. He is the ground of our being!

It is the Father’s desire and purpose for us that we should not fear in his presence. For he who fears is not perfected in love. Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment (1 John 4,18). A corollary to that end is that we should fear nothing when we know his presence with us. We need fear neither the face of man, nor death, nor anything in between, for our Father is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch us from out of the Father’s hand (10,29).

Truly, we are created for the Father, and knowing his love is the end purpose of our lives!

BE BLESSED!😊

Note:

The teaching on prayer in this blog is of course consistent with the Synoptic gospels, where Jesus teaches the disciples to address God as Father: See e.g. The Lord’s Prayer, Mt. 6,9-15 and 7,7-11. We might also note that Paul’s use of the Aramaic word Abba, meaning Daddy, in Rom. 8,15 and Gal. 4,6 (written of course before the gospels) most likely reflects an early tradition that Jesus himself taught his disciples to address God with Abba – Father! This was how he himself prayed, see Mk. 14,36. What is added to this from John´s gospel, is that we are to pray to the Father in Jesus´name!