Day: June 8, 2012

Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

It is vital that we who call ourselves the children of God understand what the Fatherhood of God in our lives really means. Every one of us has had an imperfect earthly father. Because of this many of us seem to be always fighting the temptation to think that our Father above is somehow as imperfect as was our father “below.”

One of the best ways to combat such wrong conceptions about our heavenly Father is, of course, to realize that His character is perfectly reflected in His Son. One of the cardinal characteristics of Christ was and is His desire to help every hurting soul who comes to Him for help. It is clear from the Scriptures that Jesus wanted to heal, help, and save those who were lost, broken and desperate. If the Son deeply desired “to seek and save that which is lost.” We can safely assume His Father feels the same way. In fact our Lord feels this way even though those He desires to help are still people who sin.

If we have truly become blood-bought sons and daughters of our Maker then we have become the children of a Father whose every inclination towards us is purely benevolent. Most of us, though not all, have had earthly fathers who we can at least sense did not wake up in the morning with the conscious intent to hurt us. Even bad fathers often have some sense of love for their children, though it may be partially or even mostly buried under the effects of sin in their own lives. However God never has anything less than a perfectly loving intent towards us. You see, He can’t because His love, like Him, is perfect.

This does not mean that the love of our Father in Heaven will always feel like love in our sin-damaged hearts. Sometimes true love has to hurt or allow hurt in its object in order to help it. Perhaps you have heard the apocryphal story of the human father who had to hold down his toddler son while a doctor was forced to work on a deep wound without the benefit of anesthetic. The child cried out in pain and could not understand why his human daddy would not let him wiggle away from his “tormentor”. But it was love that caused the man to hold his son still, probably with tears in his own eyes, while the Doctor cleansed and stitched the wound. He knew that this kind of pain experienced then would prevent infection and possible death later. He also knew that his child would understand someday why he had to do it.

As long as we live in a fallen world, as people who still have bad things dwelling in us, our loving Father will sometimes have no recourse but to heal us with some pain involved. It is here we must understand that God may use such pain in our lives only as part of the process of preparing us to be with Him forever after we leave this life. God will never harm we who are His beloved children. There is a world of difference between harming and hurting. One can be curative, the other only malevolent and the Father of Jesus Christ is incapable of malevolence.

Our earthly fathers, for the most part, at least tried to love and help us. Yes, sadly some did not even try. This is the unavoidable legacy of being sinners born to sinners. In order to overcome the damage we have sustained, and the bitterness that so often accompanies that damage, we must come to know our new Father as He truly is. One of the primary ways we can do this is by looking to the truth of His word. The Bible again and again reveals to the earnest reader the benevolent and merciful character of the Son of God, the Son of the Father. In Scripture we are shown that, in His earthly pilgrimage, Jesus personally and deeply wanted to heal all those He met who were sick or oppressed, and heal them for good.

So, too, does His Father…and ours.