The Son best reveals the Father. Jesus glorified
His Father and made Him known. Jesus brought the
Father to us and seeks to bring us to the Father. He
celebrated that the heavenly Father is intimate and
accessible.
It was the Father’s love that Jesus was
demonstrating to us. Jesus loved the Father, but through
Jesus, the Father loved us. Jesus came to bring us to the
Father. Have you come that far with Jesus? Jesus claimed
He was the way, and no one comes to the Father except
through Him. Jesus wants to bring us to the Father. This
is an essential quality of our redemption, for it is the
Father who assures us of provision, protection, adoption,
comfort, tenderness, and care.
Jesus wants us to pray to the Father and has
given us access to the Father through His Name; this is
guaranteed to believers through covenant and adoption.
The assurance of the Father’s benevolence to humanity
is that He has already given His beloved Son, Jesus,
offering Him up as a sin offering for our transgressions.
Through His Son, the Father extends to all people the gift
of eternal life, which in its essence is most wonderful,
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”
(John 17:3).
Though humanity has rebelled against the
Father, He continues to demonstrate love and
forgiveness to us all. He causes His mercy to rain upon
the just and the unjust. He wants all men to be saved
and does not delight in the death of any.
How glorious to know the Father and the Son,
through an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit. It is
beyond human capability to imagine the world we shall
live in with the Father. The gratification and joy He will
provide for all who have trusted in His Son Jesus: “But as
it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him” (1
Corinthians 2:9). If God gives us such delight in the world
we cursed, imagine the glory we shall have in the world
He has blessed!
All nature is a revelation of the Father’s goodness.
The beauty we behold – God made it good … not painful!
Look at the beautiful creation. The varieties of things on
earth. What if everything were a desert? Or if everything
were a garden? What if there were no mountains? What if
there were no swamps? What if God enjoyed toying with us
and caused the climate to be unpredictable – if one day it
snowed and the next day it was scorching hot. What if there
were no seasons but drastic shifts of each season on each
day?
Consider your own physical organism, the numerous
senses and organs. God might easily have made every sense
of your body to be a channel of anguish, as they become
when distorted by disease. But instead, He has made them to
be the vessels and channels of pleasure.
He might have made the food you eat merely to
nourish you without gratifying you, but He has created you so
that it ministers the keenest pleasure to your taste.
He might have made everything taste alike, but
instead of this, He has created innumerable varieties of fruits
and food for your gratification. Or what if He wanted to
torment us and we didn’t know what it was going to taste
like? What if the first bite of ice cream was sweet and
delicious, and the next was bitter?
What if your nose couldn’t smell, only breathe? What
if your nose could smell, and He created a world filled with
unpleasant aromas? Instead, He has filled the air with sweet
odors that satisfy the sense of smell. What if you didn’t hear
in stereo? What if you didn’t see in H.D.? What if you didn’t
see in color, and everything was grey?
But the Father is so gracious and good that He has
adopted the blue of heaven and the green of earth to soothe
and satisfy your eye. He has adjusted your ear for all the
delicate varieties of sound, and He has fitted the external
world to minister to this sense with a thousand melodious
notes. But what if He toyed with you and one day you could
see, and the next day you could not?
God made us in His image, and even after the fall,
with corrupt bodies, God allows us to have our senses
delighted and to experience love in our hearts.
The very men and women who are disobeying Him
and blaspheming Him and doing all in their power to grieve
and dishonor Him owe to Him every thrill of joy that stirs
their being, every physical enjoyment even in their sinful
pleasures, every delight that comes to them in the
friendships and affections which they prostitute to His
dishonor, and which He yet allows to minister as far as He
can to their gratification.
Jesus portrays the Father as incredibly worthy. For
the Father, Jesus would joyfully lay down His life in
sacrifice on the cross. Jesus describes the Father as exciting
and joyful; He loves to celebrate and throw parties for
those who have been converted from sin. The Father’s love
is demonstrated through great self-sacrifice; He gives His
all to give you a chance. He became sin for you that you
may become righteous through Him. The Father bestows
grace and personally will honor His Son by sanctifying
believers. Hebrews 13 reveals that it is the Father Who
personally takes upon Himself the responsibility OF
MAKING US PLEASING TO HIM: “Now the God of peace,
that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that
great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the
everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good
work to do his will, working in you that which is well
pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be
glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:20-21).
Ephesians demonstrates that it is the Father who
saves us by His grace and does the work of sanctification in
our lives, who carefully fathers us into honorable children:
“That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding
riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ
Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not
of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any
man should boast. For we are HIS WORKMANSHIP, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before
ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:7-10).
Do you see that it is the work of the Father and not
your works? Do you have a relationship with the Father
that allows you to rest in the finished work of the Son? Can
you live with joy knowing that the Father of our Lord Jesus,
who possesses all power and love, can perfect you and will
perfect you? Many believers do not experience this rest
and work feverishly to please the Father. But read
Hebrews 13 again. Who is pleasing to the Father? The ones
He has worked in!