TeamDavis

I’ve spent much of the last two weeks gazing into the face of my infant son Josiah. It is an awesome and fearful thing (in the old sense of both words) to become a father and to hold your son in your arms.

Josiah loves his daddy

I had been told by many fathers that they inexplicably loved their children from the moment they lay eyes on them. That certainly held true for me, though I believe the love kicked in quite a bit before I saw him. I vividly remember being overwhelmed with love for my unborn child the first time I felt him kick Caryn’s womb.

I look at him and wonder at the love I feel for him. Where did it come from? Why do I love him so much? He has never done anything for me, and at this point I can’t imagine that he ever will. This is like nothing I have ever felt before. Why do I love him? No answer satisfies, except “because he is my son and I am his father.”

I am his father, and it is right that I should love him unconditionally. It would be wicked to fail to love.

Imagine if I did not love him! You would rightly call me a monster, an unfeeling wretch. How could a father not love his own child? This law seems written into the human soul – “fathers, love your children.” Even in a morally desensitized society we cringe at stories of parents who fail to love their children, who neglect or abuse, who shame, who murder.

A frantic thought passes through my mind as I gaze at Josiah. What if he doesn’t love me in return? I can’t imagine a worse end than that. Unrequited love between a man and a woman is painful indeed, but between a father and his child? How could a child not love the one who sired him? How could he reject the parents who conceived him, bore him, nursed him, fed him, cleaned him, raised him, trained him, gave him everything they possessed out of pure love?

That a child might reject and hate his loving father is a monstrous crime to imagine. Again, this law seems written in our souls: “children, honor your father and your mother.” We cringe at stories of children who reject and hate their loving parents. As we’ve grown in Christ, many of us have discovered the need to repent of little rebellions and hatreds in our hearts towards our parents, and to seek restoration. When I think of my own earthly father, I find this to be true:

I am his son, and it is right that I should love him in return. It would be wicked to fail to love.

Which brings me around to God the Father, revealed by Jesus to be his own eternal father and ours by adoption:

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
[John 1:12]

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba [Daddy], Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
[Romans 8:15-16]

By nature of our being creations of God, we certainly owe him both obedience and love. After all, he created us and gave us everything that is good! But something even greater has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ – God the Father adopts those who are in Christ to be his own sons and daughters.

God is not a distant uninvolved watchmaker who set the universe spinning and then stepped back. He is a father, The Father, who is intimately involved in creation, and especially in the lives of those he has adopted into his own family.

Our Father loves us not because of anything we can do for him, but because we are his children. He loves us because we are his! That is a great comfort as we struggle through this life, limping along towards God, and wrestling with our sinful tendency towards rebellion.

Our clear duty as dearly loved children is to love and obey our heavenly Father in return. This truth is written into the hearts of all human beings – we are made to know and to love our creator God. For those who have been joined to Jesus Christ and thus adopted as children of Father God, we know this truth to run even deeper, for we relate to him as dearly loved children.

God loves us because he is our Father and we are his children. We love him in return as a child loves his parents, because he first loved us. God wove this magic into the fabric of the universe, and the fabric of human fatherhood, at the dawn of time. And he saw it, and it was very good.