Wednesday, July 18, 2007
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
JUSTIFICATION: A FATHER'S GIFT TO HIS BELIEVING CHILDREN
As a grown man, I find it kind of neat that when my father and I go to restaurant, my father almost always insists on paying for me. It's not as though I couldn't pay for it myself; it's not as though I wouldn't be happy to pay for myself. However, even though I am grown man, my father still looks for ways to show me that, as my father, he loves me and he wants to take care of me.
A fatherly instinct is to want to take care of one's children and provide them with good things. In the case of an earthly father, he can only do so much, and, at times, the things he provides for his children, they could even provide for themselves. However, our Heavenly Father can provide us with everything, including those things which no one else can provide for us.
One example of this is the gift of justification that our Heavenly Father gives to us. Because we are sinners who sin everyday and deserve to die for those sins, we need to be justified, or declared "not guilty" to stand before our Heavenly Father and enjoy the blessings of His presence. Because our Heavenly Father loves us and wants us to be with Him in His care, He gives us this precious gift of justification.
However, there is something amazing about how our Heavenly Father has given this gift to us: in a sense, He has done this by suppressing His most paternal instinct for a time. To make us His adopted children, He had to subject His only-begotten Son to unspeakable suffering and even death. His perfect Son, becoming true man while remaining true God, was the only one who could stand in our place and cover our sins with His shed blood. Believing, we now have life in His name.
As we know, Jesus did not stay dead; He rose victoriously from the grave on that first Easter morning. Because we are justified through His life, death and resurrection we are brothers with Him, and His Father is indeed our loving Father too.
