Fellow-Redeemed in Christ Jesus,
Fathers, what was your initial reaction the very first time your wife told you that you were going to be a father? Or, the first time your child called you dad? Awe, excitement, maybe a little apprehension. Even if God has given us more than one child, I know for me those things did not change from the first to the last. Some of us have enjoyed the experience of feeling those things all over again with our grandchildren.
It is no secret that our fathers were not perfect. It is no secret we are not perfect fathers. While like Jesus says none of us would give our children a snake when they asked for a fish, or a rock if they asked for bread, there are times we might lose the sense of joy and awe in the privilege of taking care of God’s sons and daughters. On this national Father’s Day, we look to the Holy Scriptures to renew us in our fatherhood.
God the Father models joyful fatherhood. He was well pleased with Jesus, his eternal Son. God the Father renews us in our fatherhood, and motherhood for that matter, through the forgiveness of all our sins by the holy blood of that Son. The writer to the Hebrews uses, and I use this word in its actual meaning, the awesome relationship between God the Father and God the Son to inspire us to The Great Joy of Fatherhood. God is Jesus’ father; God is our Father through Jesus.
On Trinity Sunday, we confessed, “For each person-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit- is distinct, but the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one.” God has revealed himself in the Holy Scriptures. While this remains a mystery to our human reason, it is one of the fundamental truths on which we build our saving Christian faith.
God the Father had his eternal Son become a human being through the virgin birth. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and God’s Son became the Son of Man. This is what the writer to the Hebrews means by quoting Psalm 2. God the Father says, “You are my Son; today I have become your father.” The “today” is the fulfillment of God’s promise to carry out the world’s salvation through his Son’s life and death on the cross.
What joy does a father have other than just having a son? It is watching that son, or daughter, carry out his word and will freely and obediently. This was the joy God the Father had as his Son was about his business in the temple when Jesus was 12 years old. It was his joy when John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. He spoke of that joy on the Mt. of Transfiguration. God the Father had such great joy at his Son’s willing and perfect obedience that he raised Jesus from the dead for our justification. The Father gave Jesus the Son of God and the Son of Man the place of all authority over heaven and on earth.
The great joy of fatherhood for us does not lie in the perfect obedience of our children. As Jesus was holy like his heavenly father, our children are sinful and disobedient like us their earthly fathers. We want to model ourselves after God the Father in heaven but that is not what comes natural to us. The great joy of fatherhood for us comes in this; God is our father through Jesus.
All people are God’s children because God created them. Believers are God’s children, the members of his holy family, through faith in Jesus Christ. The great joy of fatherhood for us is that we are now children of our heavenly Father though Christ. God has forgiven our sins and our children’s sins. We live in that intimate relationship with him.
We soon will once again address God in the Lord’s Prayer as “Our Father.” We just sang in our hymn of the day that God’s fatherhood is the fatherhood through which all fatherhood is known. As God loves us, so we love our sons and daughters. He cares for us, we care for them. He is patient with us, forgives us, listens to us, answers us and disciplines us. These are the ways, then, we treat his children in our care.
God the Father has made us fathers through Christ just as he does everything for us through Christ. If Christ were not our Savior, we could not be the fathers God calls us to be. God’s fatherhood not only models who we are as fathers, but also compels us to be Christian fathers; that is, fathers in Christ.
One of the great joys of being a father is introducing our children to others. “This is my son. This is my daughter.” What great things to be able to say. Another great joy of being a father is to bring up our children in the training and instruction of the Lord and seeing them know their Savior, and striving to do his will as they recognize the true God as their heavenly Father. A father also prays for his children when they forget their spiritual heritage, and asks their heavenly Father to be with them and call them to repentance.
The way we father God’s children does not earn any blessings from God. Yet as we strive to father after God’s model and do not exasperate our children by being unloving, unforgiving, and not living the faith we confess, God promises blessings in our family.
God is our Father in heaven no matter what we do. We have that promise in Holy Baptism. We are his children no matter what we do and that moves us to do only what he wills. That’s the way it is in our earthly families as well. I can’t just say “You aren’t my father,” or, “You aren’t my child.” In Christ that would not occur to us.
The great joy of fatherhood is have the gift of children by God’s grace and rejoicing in them as the Father rejoices in Jesus his Son, and rejoices in us his children through faith in his Son. There is no better motivation and guide for our own joyful fatherhood as we raise our sons in Christ to be the fathers of tomorrow. Amen. <SDG>