LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE KING
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom you have sent. ”
~ Jesus Christ (John 17:3)
And so we reach the conclusion of this series. We’ve talked about the heart of the Father, the heart of the Son, and how the heart of Jesus on earth was to do His Father’s business. We discussed what it means for man to be made in the image of God and the great sacrifice both God the Father and God the Son (including God the Holy Spirit) made to bring mankind back into the intimate relationship we were made for: adopted forever into the family of the Trinity. One might wonder how much more could possibly be said on the subject. Yet, honestly, we’ve only scratched the surface: just dipped our small toe into the vast ocean of what it means to be a child of the King. So, so, so much more could be said…
But what I really want to do in closing is make it personal.
This isn’t important just because it makes us feel good to think we could be part of God’s family. It doesn’t only matter because it’s a central point of the doctrine of the Christian religion. It isn’t even crucial because having the privilege of calling God our “Father”—or, even more precious, “Abba”, which is much the same as our English word “Daddy” (Romans 8:15)—is the highest honor to ever be bestowed on the human heart (which it is!).
It matters because it is the very purpose of life.
Your life. My life. Our lives. We exist on this planet for one reason and one reason only: to know Him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent. Life isn’t somehow about a lot of different things plus our relationship with God; it’s about our relationship with God, period. Not just a distant “relationship with God” that we foster by attending church once a week and paying a tithe every now and then. It’s knowing Him as Father, born-again into His family. And what I love about that is not just the joy of knowing we will live with Him forever in Heaven (as opposed to separated from Him in Hell, like we discussed last week), it’s knowing I am His now, on this earth…
And that I bear His image.
This is where I’ve been trying to get to for weeks, where I think God is trying to get all of us to throughout our entire lives. If we call ourselves Believers in Christ, truly born-again from the death of sin in our spirits, we are now God’s children…living currently…on this earth. And, just as Jesus was the mirror image of the Heavenly Father in everything He thought, said, and did, now we are the reflection of God our Father to the world around us (or, at least, we should be). We are His hands. We are His feet. We reveal His smile, His tears, His heart on earth. Jesus’ job while He walked the earth is now our job…and not only our job but our joy! Think about it, folks: we get to show off the most beautiful Person in all of existence in everything we do! The way He laughs. The way He thunders. The way He heals. The way He comforts. The way He restores. The way He forgives. The way He brings justice. The way He creates beauty. The way He delivers the poor. The way He smacks down His enemies. The way He loves, loves, loves…this is our heritage, our destiny, our birthright as children of God.
This is why He doesn’t just take us immediately to Heaven when we get saved: like an earthly father wants to watch his newborn baby grow strong and live the fullest life they can as an expression of his and their mother’s image, our Heavenly Father wants us to live on this planet growing strong in His Spirit (Luke 2:40), full of the abundant life His Son died (and rose again!) to give us (John 10:10), and becoming more and more a pure reflection of Himself. This is how God’s Kingdom comes “on earth as it is in Heaven”: when the sons and daughters of the King discover exactly what it means to be sons and daughters of the King and live their glorious inheritance out in real time in real lives doing the real stuff on this earth!
“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.” ~ Romans 8:19
As Jesus is, so are we in this world (1 John 4:17). As Jesus came to do the Father’s will, so we should be living. As Jesus could do nothing without the Father, neither can we. And why would we ever want to?
Our Heavenly Father is…
Well…
Our Heavenly Father.
And He’s worth it. Oh, He is so worth it!
I really want to thank you for hanging with me on all of these posts. Sometimes it has been difficult for me to clearly express what I feel stirring so deeply in my heart. I’m sure in places it’s probably been difficult for some to understand. But what I pray you walk away with from my enthusiastic gushing is knowing the love of the Father more deeply, more viscerally than you ever have in your life. It’s ironic that my only way of communicating all this has been in words when the way God has been planting it in my heart has been so much deeper than most words can touch. I now know He is my Father in a way I’ve never known before and that has changed…everything. Or maybe changed isn’t the right word. “Revealed” is much more fitting. That is my hope and prayer for you.
For the revelation of God the Father is the revelation that unlocks the Kingdom of Heaven!
I encourage you to ask Jesus to give you a deeper revelation of the nature of God as your Heavenly Father. Dig into the Scripture and mine out the gold of His soul and His burning love for you. Let Him teach you what it means that you are His Child and He is your Daddy. And let Him live out that reality through you through the presence and power of His Holy Spirit, every moment of every day. Then and gloriously then will the world look at us, widen their eyes, and say without hesitation:
“Like Father, like son.”
LIVE EPIC,
CHRISTIS JOY
