The Father and His Children 2. The Purity of the Father 11.7.07

Introduction RF

- if you wanted to know about the holy things of God would you first of all think of going to the pastors of the largest churches you know about?

- the current crisis in the church e.g. rates of….compared with non- Christians is often the same, is essentially a crisis over holiness

- the problem of fatherly abuse e.g. indigenous communities history where “white Australia” has taken over the role of “father” provider by welfare (dependency) moving people off the land on to missions, “stolen generation” etc.

- 1 in x women and 1 in y men abused as children

 

Holiness

 

Since most people are immediately seeking comfort they gravitate to a father image that is full of pity, sympathy and affection. This is not a false image because the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (is) the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3). He is intimately, “Abba, Father”(Mark14:36; Rom8:15; Gal 4:6); but “Abba” does not translate to “Daddy”, it is the term an adult son would use in addressing their father.

 

Whilst the cry “Abba, Father!” is a profoundly deep one, its therapeutic use in the contemporary church has excluded another more foundational way in which Jesus spoke to God, “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (John 17:11). Unless we recover the meaning of “Holy Father!”, we will continue to reproduce kindergarten Christians.

Holiness loves all that is good and hates all that is evil[1]. In biblical understanding you must have the two together. Much of the church has confused issues of safety and goodness, only if we are clear in our consciences that God is good can we know he is safe, and it is holiness that persuades us that God is separated from all that is evil. (Holiness > goodness > safety)

This truth comes out early in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Susan asks Mr.Beaver whether Aslan is a safe lion. “’Course he isn’t safe,” replies Mr. Beaver. “But he’s good.” Peter also responds in the right way to this news that Aslan is not a nice pet who will coddle them with purring comfort, a sort of divine mascot who will assure them that all is well: “I’m longing to see [Aslan],” said Peter, “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”

 

The Human Condition

 

When Adam and Eve entered into the knowledge of good and evil by an act of their own willfulness, they initiated a form of understanding oneself that has created untold confusion. Every person born into this world (except one) has considered what they know about themselves, which is actually a definition of conscience (“to know together with”), as the final authority on their lives.

 

Yet since we are in the image of God who we truly are can only be known through God. I do not know myself through myself but in “being known” by God. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”(1 Cor13:12).

 

The more a society rejects what it knows about God through nature, history and culture, the more we find people confused about who they are e.g. EU constitution omits 1500 years of Christian history. Today, not only in Europebut in Australiathe meaning of the image of God is being redefined. The normalization of homosexuality and now gay families is a sign that we are losing our grip on God as heavenly Father[2]. This is why the apostles do not publicly preach at length against the vices of the Roman Empire, they knew its sexual confusion, which embraced paedophilia, was only a symptom of something far deeper, confusion about the identity of God[3].

Paul places divine -fatherhood at the foundation of his longest recorded sermon to pagans, “he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” (Acts17:27- 29).

The Indefectible Father

The language of divine anger is never used in the preaching to Gentiles in the New Testament because only when people first have a revelation of Fatherhood can their identity confusion be healed. Fatherhood imparts identity, because it imparts to us an awareness of that which precedes our awareness; it is the consciousness of God’s consciousness of us that is the source of our security, belonging etc.

In my language, God is an indefectible Father. (What do you think I mean by this?) The whole of his person is Fatherhood. This is why the ultimate question is not “What is the meaning of life?” or “Is there life after death?” but “Is God a Father and what sort of a Father is he?”

 

Scripture is absolutely clear on this: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6); Jesus said, “I live because of the Father” (John6:57); when 1 John 4:8, 16 says, “God is love” it means the Father is love. God is “pure Father”, he is wholly Father, he has never been a Son, he has no antecedent corrupting influences of fathering, he never became a Father, he has never been a part time or absent Father. He is absolutely Father.

 

In Australian culture generally men have defected their fatherhood to women/mothers, work, sport etc., and in the church we have a huge absence of spiritual fathers – not only in the realm of pastoring but especially in leading “worship” and intercession. This is assign that we do not know the indefectibility of God’s Fatherhood. In particular, we have lost sight of that most essential and unpopular aspect of fatherhood – judgement. “Judgement is an essential element in fatherhood and not a mere corrective device”
(P.T. Forsyth)

 

Let me illustrate this with a story: a mother said to her son as she picked him up from school, “How’s school?” “Bad!” “Why?” “The teacher’s terrible.” “Perhaps the problem’s with the student?” “No, the student’s the same as last year. My teacher doesn’t care, she never marks my work.” In other words, she doesn’t care enough to bring me to the test.

 

How different it is with God and us, “What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,18 visit him every morning and test him every moment? 19 How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit? never marks my work.” Job7:17- 19

 

Holiness Hidden

 

Someone once said, “Glory is holiness revealed, holiness is glory concealed” (Oehler). Since human beings were made to live in the glory of God[4], the most terrible thing that can happen to us is for God’s glory to be concealed by his holiness, this is what scripture means by the wrath of God. The prophets lament when God hides his face[5], and Isaiah says, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (45:15)[6].

 

When God hides from a society that he is the Father of glory[7], his holiness has placed that society deeply under wrath. When in Romans 1 Paul[8] lists the vices of the Gentiles as “dishonourable passions”, “unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossips, slander, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Rom 1:26, 29- 31), he explains they are the place where “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven” (Rom1:18). The punishment for sin is more sin. When sin is unrecognized (as sin = rebellion against God), wrath is revealed.

 

As “saints”, literally, “holy ones” (63x in N.T.), we should be able to discern the work of the Holy Father in pouring out his wrath on our culture by hiding his glory and giving it up to all manner of inglorious and shameful things.

 

Yet a terrible thing has been overtaking both our nation and the church – men and women feel God is unconcerned about the things that are destroying them, sin has been redefined as a mistake and radical forgiveness is replaced by therapy. The preaching of the judgement of God has been largely abandoned in the church.

The people of God have become almost as worldy as the world, because deep in their hearts they believe that God has abandoned them! Only the revelation and proclamation of the judgement in the cross is sufficient to reveal that God is an indefectible Father. P.T.Forsyth says, “The holy is the final moral authority. And the supreme revelation of the holy is in the harmonized judgement and grace of the cross.” It is not simply love that we need, but holy love, a holy love that will never let us go. Only holy love can assure us that sin is extinguished “once and for all”(Heb7:27;9:12, 26;10:10)

Holiness Revealed

 

In Jesus cry of dereliction, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34) we are taken into the depths of the heart[9] of the Son of God. In this experience of Fatherlessness we discern not primarily the absence of emotional comfort, or physical strength, or an intellectual emptiness, but an abandonment to the presence of sin. If wrath in the present age means God hiding his opposition to evil, then this is what the holy spirit of Jesus has to endure on the cross. Jesus must be left alone without the assurance of the triumph of good over evil, God over Satan, holiness over impurity. For him, the moral anguish of being left alone with the wickedness of the world is unbearable. This is the endurance of the world’s punishment, of hell, to be left with its evil and to have no experience of a holy power sufficient to bring deliverance from it. The cry in the darkness of death, “Why?” is both an entry into the identity confusion of lost humanity and the gateway to the restoration of human wholeness.

 

When Jesus triumphantly cries, “It is finished!” (John 19:30), he knows that the wrath of God is satisfied and his own holy spirit is united with the Holy Spirit of God in the perfection of his Sonship[10]. The prayer, ““Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”” (Luke 24:46) assures us that through Jesus will to die, our flesh with its susceptibility to temptation and death[11] has been so wholly united to God’s destructive will against all evil that our old humanity has been destroyed[12]. In Christ, there is no essential barrier between us and God.

 

Since God has totally poured out his himself in wrath once for all in the cross, since he has fully hidden himself as the Holy Father whose will it is to destroy all that destroys us, we are now assured that he will show us who he is, he will reveal himself to his children as the Holy Father[13]. He does this by crisis and process.

 

Growth in Holiness : Crisis and Process

 

a. Crisis

To be confronted by God’s holiness provokes a terrible crisis. When a sinful person “sees God” they feel as if they are about to die[14].

Isaiah 6 is one of the most famous passages in scripture about the holiness of God,

“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”” (Isa 6:1- 7)[15]

Peter likewise is overcome by a sense of his unworthiness and unbelief, ““Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.””(Luke 5:8) Charles Finney describes the turning point of his conversion, ““What!” I said, “such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; …The sin appeared awful, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord.”

Only by such a confrontation with holiness do we see sin as totally hateworthy, so that we want sin to be destroyed in us, whatever the cost. Holiness evokes guilt, but it also destroys it. Walter Brueggemman is completely correct to say, “the ache that is left from guilt …cannot be removed by good works, by willpower, by positive thinking, or by romantic psychology. The ache can only be removed by entry into the sphere of the holy…such guilt requires the self- giving of God.”

Hebrews understands this, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb12:28- 29). What is it that the fire destroys? Only that which destroys us (evil).

b. Process: The Discipline of the Father

 

The solution to the cosmic orphan or abandoned child syndrome, is a revelation “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28)[16]. Example – young man, life threatening brain tumour, always quoting Romans 8:28, receiving public prayer etc, operation removed tumour but side of face permanently paralysed, his testimony fell to pieces and he became angry with God. He failed to understand that all that happens to us is within the discipline of the Father, who never holds anything back because it is too hard for him. He did not believe that the discipline of a Holy Father in all things is the glory of the children of God.

 

The purifying work of the Father is constantly on our lives. In everything God is speaking to his children because he is completely a Father in his Word which upholds “all things”[17]. And he speaks most clearly in the suffering of discipline (because this is the way of the cross). As John Chrysostom said, commenting on Hebrews 12:8 (see below), “See, it is those very things in which they suppose themselves to be deserted by God that should make them confident that they have not been deserted.”

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb 12:5 – 11)

Something that God has shown me recently is an answer to one of the reasons why I have felt a bit like an orphan all my life, and struggled with feeling “worth” anything. Hebrews 12:7-9… it is God’s discipline that proves that I am His LEGITIMATE child… if I am not disciplined then I am illegitimate, after all whoever heard of a child who was never disciplined?! And yet this is the case with so many of this generation, (“Super Nanny” is a controversial revolution because discipline has become so out of fashion), as it was with me – my only discipline was in regard to being polite in public. And so there is a feeling of worthlessness, shame, and of not belonging, which I am sure is not unique to my situation.

 

As we learn to receive the discipline of the Lord our distorted image of God is progressively reduced, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, ] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor3:16). Everything about God becomes more desirable “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” (Ps 36:9). Unionis intensified, belonging is deepened.

Inviolable Children

One of the things we have been sensing as we have proceeded with this series is that there is within the church a deep fear of the power of God, more accurately, a deep fear of the Father’s power. Underneath the surface the average Christian fears that God will break through their ego boundary and violate their personal space in some controlling way. This is impossible because for those born of the Spirit the Father is already alive inside that boundary. Paul describes his conversion like this, “he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Gal 1:16). If God is your Father, if you are his child, you have a new heart and a new nature – you are united to the Spirit of God[18].

As a child of God you are inviolable, which means God will never violate you, more than this, he wills to protect your innermost being with the totally of his being as a Father[19]. His holiness is your security. This is why the church of God today is so inwardly ravaged, if we are not grasped by the holiness of God, like Isaiah, like Peter, like Jesus, the walls of the temple of the Spirit are broken down and we feel we are perishing.

Becoming Pure for the Father

 

What is it that keeps us from experiencing the gracious things of the Father? Essentially, it is idolatry. The promises and commands of scripture are clear,

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has thetempleofGodwith idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the LordAlmighty.” 7:1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Cor6:14- 7:1). “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:21)

Our problem is that when we set up idols in our hearts[20] and these false images[21] are attacked by the Holy Father we are not discerning enough to recognise he is not attacking us but only attacking what destroys our fellowship with him. In a meeting with a sincere and committed Christian recently, he came out with a confession, “It’s not the devil I’ve been resisting, it’s God!”

 

JY – some years ago praying through issues to do with how my own father’s expectations had distorted my understanding of God as my Father, I kept having this inner sense of God’s “perfection” that made me feel like his demands could never be met. (Now I would understand that this sense couldn’t be true because it had nothing to do with Jesus.) One morning as I was praying I actually sense this “image of perfection” as almost a concrete reality projected outside of my body, it was so clear that it was a projection of my imagination that I was led to deep and painful repentance. Shortly after as I walked outside it was like the whole world was suddenly filled with all the goodness of God.

 

What are the false images and idols in our lives….

 

Application and Conclusion: RF