DGCC’s Vision Part III: In the Love of the Father and the Power of the Holy Spirit

Preface

Why We Exist: Gospel Purpose

Our mission statement at DGCC says the following:

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

This is why we exist. This is our gospel purpose. This has been DGCC’s identity from the time it was planted 20 years ago. And, by God’s grace, this will be DGCC’s gospel purpose for the next 20 years and beyond. The question is, what exactly do we aim to do to live out this gospel purpose.

 

What We Do: Gospel Pursuit

For the past several months the Vision Team here at DGCC has met regularly to pray and discern DGCC’s vision for the foreseeable future. Essentially, the Vision Team aimed to articulate what we do, our gospel pursuit. And, by God’s grace, in our most recent members meeting, the Vision Team shared with our fellow members the vision we believe God has led us to. This statement below captures that vision.

We glorify God by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness in the love of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Scripture birthed this statement. Specifically, Ephesians 3:14–21 became the foundational text that informed and shaped this vision statement. Over the next several blog posts, I will unpack this vision statement. And I aim to do that by unpacking Ephesians 3:14–21 in order to (1) reveal the wonderful truths within this glorious prayer of Paul and to (2) hold those truths up as a glorious vision for the saints of DGCC.[1]

In our initial post, we considered the core of this vision: We glorify God. In the second installment of this series, we considered the means by which we glorify God: by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness. Now, here in the third post of this series, we will consider the final portion of our vision statement: in the love of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Paul’s Petitions in Ephesians 3:14–21

In the first two articles regarding our visions, I observed the following:

So, Paul’s ultimate aim in this prayer for the Ephesians is God’s glory (Ephesians 3:21). This is why the core of our vision at DGCC is this: We glorify God. And here in Paul’s prayer, we see what Paul prayed for so that the Ephesians would do just that. Paul prayed that the Ephesians would (1) have Christ dwell in their hearts through faith, or treasure Christ, and (2) reach full spiritual maturity as Christians, or be Christlike.

Thus, the purpose of Paul’s petitions is for the Ephesians to treasure Christ and grow in Christlikeness all for the glory of God. But what makes this treasuring and this conformity to Christ possible? For that, we consider Paul’s petitions themselves. What are those petitions? We’ve noted them in our previous articles. Let’s revisit them.

Paul makes two petitions in his prayer to God the Father on behalf of the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14–21: (1) Holy Spirit power and (2) a greater revelation of God’s love. First, Paul prays that God the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with power through the Holy Spirit. Second, he prays that God the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with Holy Spirit power to grasp and know God the Father’s love for them in Christ.[2] Paul petitions God on behalf of the Ephesians for the power of the Holy Spirit and a greater revelation of God’s love for them in Christ. More power and more knowledge of God’s love.

 

Holy Spirit Power

Paul first prays for the Holy Spirit’s power to strengthen the Ephesians — “that…he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16). We have already unpacked the purpose of this power in the previous post. The purpose of this request is that the Ephesians would treasure Christ even more — “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:17). But consider the reality of this request. As Christians we should treasure Christ in our hearts. Christ should take up permanent “residence” and make our hearts his home, and we should conform more to him and his ways as he has greater and greater influence on our hearts.[3] However, given Paul’s prayer, we are incapable of doing this without God acting on our behalf. We cannot rightly treasure Christ without power from the Holy Spirit. Or, to say it positively, we need power from the Holy Spirit to treasure Christ.

 

Revelation of the God’s Love

Paul makes a second petition that grows out of his petition for power through the Holy Spirit. Paul asks that the Ephesians would have a greater knowledge of God’s love for them in Christ — “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17–19). Again, we have already unpacked the purpose of this greater revelation of God’s love. The purpose of this petition is that the Ephesians would grow in spiritual maturity, that they would become more and more Christlike — “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19; 4:13). But again, consider the reality of this request. Christians should grow in spiritual maturity. Christians should become more and more Christlike. Christians should pursue holiness and Christlikeness. However, given Paul’s prayer, we are incapable of doing this without God acting on on our behalf. We cannot rightly become Christlike or pursue Christlikeness without a greater revelation and knowledge of God’s love for us.

Carson notes the following regarding the nature of this knowledge of God’s love: “This cannot be merely an intellectual exercise. Paul is not asking that his readers might become more able to articulate the greatness of God’s love in Christ Jesus…He is asking God that they might have the power to grasp the dimensions of that love in their experience.”[4] The measure of this love is, well, immeasurable. Therefore, Carson rightly observes that Paul “resorts to metaphor and then to paradox” in order to try and describe it.[5] God’s love for us in Christ is multi-dimensional — “the breadth and length and height and depth” (Ephesians 3:18). God’s love for us in Christ cannot be bound by knowledge — “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). We could never, on our own, grasp this love. We need God to reveal it to us. Only in the knowledge of God’s love for us can grow in spiritual maturity. We need a greater revelation of God’s love for us to become more Christlike.

 

Conclusion: In the Love of the Father and the Power of the Holy Spirit

So, Paul’s ultimate aim in this prayer for the Ephesians is God’s glory (Ephesians 3:21). This is why the core of our vision at DGCC is this: We glorify God. And in Paul’s prayer, we see the purpose of his petitions for the Ephesians — (1) that they would treasure Christ and (2) that they would be Christlike. And according to Ephesians 3:14–21, the two things that make this possible, the two petitions Paul laid before God were (1) power from the Holy Spirit and (2) a greater revelation of God’s love. When these two petitions are considered together, we clearly see that we are completely dependent upon God to treasure Christ and pursue Christlikeness. As Carson notes, “Paul assumes that we cannot be as spiritually mature as we ought to be unless we receive power from God to enable us to grasp the limitless dimension of the love of Christ.”[6] We need the power of the Holy Spirit and we the knowledge of God’s love for us in Christ in order to treasure Christ and pursue Christlikeness.

Therefore, we at DGCC make this our aim: We glorify God by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness. And we recognize the only way we are able to do this is in complete dependence upon God, that is, in the love of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

[1] Exegesis of this passage was aided by and leans heavily on Carson, who unpacks this passage in D. A. Carson, Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Second. (Baker Academic, 2015), 159–81.

[2] Carson, Praying with Paul, 161.

[3] Carson, Praying with Paul, 163–64.

[4] Carson, Praying with Paul, 168.

[5] Carson, Praying with Paul, 169.

[6] Carson, Praying with Paul, 173. Emphasis mine.

DGCC’s Vision Part II: Joyfully Treasuring Christ and Prayerfully Pursuing Christlikeness

Preface

Why We Exist: Gospel Purpose

Our mission statement at DGCC says the following:

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

This is why we exist. This is our gospel purpose. This has been DGCC’s identity from the time it was planted 20 years ago. And, by God’s grace, this will be DGCC’s gospel purpose for the next 20 years and beyond. The question is, what exactly do we aim to do to live out this gospel purpose.

 

What We Do: Gospel Pursuit

For the past several months the Vision Team here at DGCC has met regularly to pray and discern DGCC’s vision for the foreseeable future. Essentially, the Vision Team aimed to articulate what we do, our gospel pursuit. And, by God’s grace, in our most recent members meeting, the Vision Team shared with our fellow members the vision we believe God has led us to. This statement below captures that vision.

We glorify God by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness in the love of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Scripture birthed this statement. Specifically, Ephesians 3:14–21 became the foundational text that informed and shaped this vision statement. Over the next several blog posts, I will unpack this vision statement. And I aim to do that by unpacking Ephesians 3:14–21 in order to (1) reveal the wonderful truths within this glorious prayer of Paul and to (2) hold those truths up as a glorious vision for the saints of DGCC.[1]

In our initial post, we considered the core of this vision: We glorify God. Here in the second installment of this series, we consider the following portion of our vision statement: by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness.

 

Purpose of Paul’s Petitions in Ephesians 3:14–21

Paul’s prayer to God on behalf of the Ephesians ultimately aims at glorifying God. But what exactly does Paul request of God on behalf of the Ephesians? Paul makes two petitions in his prayer to God the Father on behalf of the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14–21. First, Paul prays that God the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with Holy Spirit power. Second, he prays that God the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with Holy Spirit power to grasp and know God the Father’s love for them in Christ.[2] But these petitions are not ends in themselves. Paul makes these each of these petitions for specific purposes: the treasuring of Christ and Christlikeness. We can apply those purposes to all Christians, including us.

 

First Purpose: Treasuring Christ

First, Paul prays for the Holy Spirit’s power to strengthen the Ephesians in order that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:14–17).[3] Thus, we as Christians need Holy Spirit power in order that Christ would dwell more richly in our hearts, that he would have the throne of our hearts, and that he might begin to shape and mold our hearts, fashioning them to reflect his desires. Carson likens this to remodeling a recently purchased, dilapidated house in order to make it a permanent, livable, lovely home, that is intentionally shaped and curated to the renovator’s specifications, desires, and purposes.[4] Thus, we as Christians need the power of the Holy Spirit to open up even more of our hearts to our king so that he would have full access to “take up residence in our hearts as we exercise faith in him.”[5] This exercise of faith in Christ so that he dwells in our hearts is the treasuring of Christ above all things and submitting ourselves to him (Philippians 3:7–8). Because Jesus is our greatest treasure, this isn’t done begrudgingly, but joyfully (Philippians 3:1). In short, we as Christians need the Holy Spirit’s power in order that we might joyfully treasure Christ more.

 

Second Purpose: Christlikeness

Second, Paul prays that God the Father would strengthen the Ephesian Christians with Holy Spirit power to know God’s love for them in order that they might be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:18–19).[6] Being “filled with all the fullness of God” refers to Christian maturity (Ephesians 4:11–14).[7] Elsewhere, Paul uses the phrase “fullness of Christ” to make the same point (Ephesians 4:13). Thus, we as Christians need the Holy Spirit’s power to strengthen us to know spiritually, emotionally, experientially, and intellectually God’s love for us in Christ in order to grow in our maturity as Christians—in order to become more Christlike.[8] Indeed, the entire Christian life aims at Christlikeness—conformity to the Son—which God has predestined (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:9; 1 John 3:2–3). Therefore, we as Christians live out our identity in Christ by actively pursuing Christlikeness. Notably, though, we are completely dependent on the Holy Spirit to give us this greater revelation of God the Father’s love for us in Christ. Therefore, our pursuit of Christlikeness is a prayerful pursuit. In short, we as Christians need the Holy Spirit’s power and a deeper knowledge of God’s love for us in Christ in order that we might grow in Christlikeness.

 

Conclusion: Joyfully Treasuring Christ and Prayerfully Pursuing Christlikeness

So, Paul’s ultimate aim in this prayer for the Ephesians is God’s glory (Ephesians 3:21). This is why the core of our vision at DGCC is this: We glorify God. And here in Paul’s prayer, we see what Paul prayed for so that the Ephesians would do just that. Paul prayed that the Ephesians would (1) have Christ dwell in their hearts through faith, or treasure Christ, and (2) reach full spiritual maturity as Christians, or be Christlike.

According to Ephesians 3:14–21, then, Christians glorify God by treasuring Christ and pursuing Christlikeness. This treasuring of Christ is a joyful treasuring of Christ rising from deep gratitude for God’s kindness toward us in Christ (Ephesians 5:20). And this pursuit of Christlikeness is a prayerful pursuit that recognizes our utter dependence on God to fill us with all his fullness (Ephesians 3:14–21).

Therefore, we at DGCC make this our aim: We glorify God by joyfully treasuring Christ and prayerfully pursuing Christlikeness.

 

[1] Exegesis of this passage was aided by and leans heavily on Carson, who unpacks this passage in D. A. Carson, Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Second. (Baker Academic, 2015), 159–81.

[2] Carson, Praying with Paul, 161.

[3] See Carson on this point in Carson, Praying with Paul, 163–67.

[4] Carson, Praying with Paul, 163–64.

[5] Carson, Praying with Paul, 164.

[6] See Carson on this point in Carson, Praying with Paul, 167–76. Especially 172.

[7] Carson, Praying with Paul, 172.

[8] Carson, Praying with Paul, 173.

Trinitarian Theology for the Nourishment of Your Soul

As a church we have just begun a new series in our Adult Sunday School class on the Trinity. And in just the first two seminars, we have been moved and astounded by the vastness, the depth, and the beauty of our Triune God. What we’ve seen is that the whole of our existence and our redemption is bound up in the Trinity. We do not exist apart from the Trinity and we are not saved apart from the Trinity. Two verses that are especially crucial at pointing out these two realities are 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 2 Corinthians 13:14. First, consider 1 Corinthians 8:6.

1 Corinthians 8:6—for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

We exist from the Father (1 Corinthians 8:6). This isn’t new to us. When we think of the act of creation, we rightly think of God, whose name is YHWH (Exodus 3:15). And we often, rightly, think of God the Father, who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth with the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:1–2; Malachi 2:10). But here in 1 Corinthians 8:6, we see the divine name, communicated in the title “Lord,” attributed to Jesus. Through the one Lord—who is YHWH—through Jesus we exist. Of course you see this throughout Scripture (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2). As our Associate Pastor Coty Pinckney said the other day when reflecting on this verse, “We don’t even breathe apart from Christ.” That is an astounding reality. Whether saved or not saved you only breathe, move, think, eat, sleep, and exist because of Jesus the Son of God. Thus, we were created and we exist only by and through the Trinity. And we are only recreated in salvation through the Trinity as well. Look at 2 Corinthians 13:14.

2 Corinthians 13:14—The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Paul associates some very specific terms to the three persons of the Trinity: the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. God the Father, in his love predestined us to be his sons through Jesus before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–5). And through the grace of Jesus’ sin atoning life, death, and resurrection, we have been made alive with Christ when we could do nothing to save ourselves (Ephesians 2:4–10). And we walk in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, our helper and teacher who sanctifies and seals us for salvation (John 14:26; Ephesians 1:13–14; 1 Peter 1:2). Our redemption is born out of the Trinity.

We exist and we are saved only through the Trinity. And as we grow in our knowledge of the persons of the Trinity, we find a wellspring of spiritual nourishment and refreshment. I don’t think I can improve upon what Herman Bavinck writes regarding the spiritual benefits of growing in the knowledge of the distinct persons of the Trinity in his work, The Wonderful Works of God. Therefore, I leave you with his extended reflection on the matter. May it bless you as it has blessed me.

For believers come to know the workings of the Father, the Creator of all things, He who gave them life, and breath, and all things. They learn to know Him as the Lawgiver who gave out His holy commandments in order that they should walk in them. They learn to know Him as the Judge who is provoked to terrible wrath by all the unrighteousness of men and who in no sense holds the guilty guiltless. And they learn to know Him, finally, as the Father who for Christ’s sake is their God and Father, on whom they trust so far that they do not doubt but that He will supply for every need of body and soul, and that He will convert all evil which accrues to them in this vale of tears into good. They know that He can do this as Almighty God and that He wants to do it as a faithful Father. Hence they confess: I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Thus, too, they learn to know in themselves the workings of the Son, He who is the only-begotten of the Father, conceived in Mary of the Holy Spirit. They learn to know Him as their highest Prophet and Teacher, He who has perfectly revealed to them the secret counsel and will of God in the matter of their redemption. They learn to know Him as their only Highpriest, who has redeemed them by the one sacrifice of His body, and who still constantly intercedes for them with the Father. They learn to know Him as their eternal King, who rules them with His Word and Spirit and who shelters and preserves them in their achieved redemption. Hence they confess: I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son, our Lord.

And they also learn to recognize in themselves the workings of the Holy Spirit, He who regenerates them and leads them into all truth. They learn to know Him as the Operator of their faith, He who through that faith causes them to share in Christ and all His benefits. They learn to know Him as the Comforter, He who prays in them with unutterable longings and who testifies with their spirit that they are children of God. They learn to know Him as the pledge of their eternal inheritance, He who preserves them until the day of their redemption. And they therefore confess: I believe also in the Holy Spirit.

Thus the confession of the trinity is the sum of the Christian religion. Without it neither the creation nor the redemption nor the sanctification can be purely maintained.

Every departure from this confession leads to error in the other heads of doctrine, just as a mistaken representation of the articles of faith can be traced back to a misconception of the doctrine of the trinity. We can truly proclaim the mighty works of God only when we recognize and confess them as the one great work of Father, Son, and Spirit.

In the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is contained the whole salvation of men.[1]

 

 

[1] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God: Instructions in the Christian Religion According to the Reformed Confession (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 142–43.

Delighting in the Trinity

[We will consider the Trinity before long in our sermon series on paradoxes in Scripture. Michael Reeves’ 2012 volume, Delighting in the Trinity, is an engaging, insightful, and enjoyable meditation on the importance of this key teaching. Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite. Page numbers are in parentheses – Coty]

Neither a problem nor a technicality, the triune being of God is the vital oxygen of Christian life and joy. (18)

Since God is, before all things, a Father, and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God ‘does’ being Father as a day-job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old ‘God’. It is not that he has a nice blob of fatherly icing on top. He is Father. All the way down. Thus all that he does he does as Father. That is who he is. He creates as a Father and he rules as a Father; and that means the way he rules over creation is most unlike the way any other God would rule over creation. The French Reformer, John Calvin, appreciating this deeply, once wrote:

we ought in the very order of things [in creation] diligently to contemplate God’s fatherly love . . . [for as] a foreseeing and diligent father of the family he shows his wonderful goodness toward us . . . To conclude once for all, whenever we call God the Creator of heaven and earth, let us at the same time bear in mind that . . . we are indeed his children, whom he has received into his faithful protection to nourish and educate . . . So, invited by the great sweetness of his beneficence and goodness, let us study to love and serve him with all our heart.

It was a profound observation, for it is only when we see that God rules his creation as a kind and loving Father that we will be moved to delight in his providence. We might acknowledge that the rule of some heavenly policeman was just, but we could never take delight in his regime as we can delight in the tender care of a father.”  (23)

Knowing God to be the triune God of love, [Augustine] held that we were not created simply to live under his moral code, hoping for some paradise where he will never be. We were made to find our rest and satisfaction in his all-satisfying fellowship. Moreover, our problem is not so much that we have behaved wrongly, but that we have been drawn to love wrongly. Made in the image of the God of love, Augustine argued that we are always motivated by love—and that is why Adam and Eve disobeyed God. They sinned because they loved something else more than him. That also means that merely altering our behavior, as Pelagius suggested, will do no good. Something much more profound is needed: our hearts must be turned back. A little over a thousand years later, Martin Luther picked up Augustine’s line of thought to define the sinner as “the person curved in on himself,” no longer outgoingly loving like God, no longer looking to God, but inward-looking, self-obsessed, devilish. Such a person might well behave morally or religiously, but all they did would simply express their fundamental love for themselves. (67)

Everything we have seen means that life with this God is as different from life with any other God as oranges are from orang-utans. If, for example, God wasn’t about having us know and love him, but simply about having us live under his rule, then our behavior and performance would be all that mattered. The deeper, internal questions of what we want, what we love and enjoy would never be asked. As it is, because the Christian life is one of being brought to share the delight the Father, Son and Spirit have for each other, desires matter. … The Spirit is not about bringing us to a mere external performance for Christ, but bringing us actually to love him and find our joy in him. And any performance ‘for him’ that is not the expression of such love brings him no pleasure at all. [Jonathan] Edwards compares such loveless Christianity to a cold marriage, asking:

if a wife should [behave] very well to her husband, and not at all from any love to him, but from other considerations plainly seen, and certainly known by the husband, would he at all delight in her outward respect any more than if a wooden image were contrived to make respectful motions in his presence? (99)

What is your Christian life like? What is the shape of your gospel, your faith? In the end, it will all depend on what you think God is like. Who God is drives everything. So what is the human problem? Is it merely that we have strayed from a moral code? Or is it something worse: that we have strayed from him? What is salvation? Is it merely that we are brought back as law-abiding citizens? Or is it something better: that we are brought back as beloved children? What is the Christian life about? Mere behaviour? Or something deeper: enjoying God? And then there’s what our churches are like, our marriages, our relationships, our mission: all are molded in the deepest way by what we think of God. In the early fourth century, Arius went for a pre-cooked God, ready-baked in his mind. Ignoring the way, the truth and life, he defined God without the Son, and the fallout was catastrophic: without the Son, God cannot truly be a Father; thus alone, he is not truly love. Thus he can have no fellowship to share with us, no Son to bring us close, no Spirit through whom we might know him. Arius was left with a very thin gruel: a life of self-dependent effort under the all-seeing eye of his distant and loveless God. The tragedy is that we all think like Arius every day. We think of God without the Son. We think of ‘God’, and not the Father of the Son. But from there it really doesn’t take long before you find that you are just a whole lot more interesting than this ‘God’. And could you but see yourself, you would notice that you are fast becoming like this ‘God’: all inward-looking and fruitless. (99)

(Quoting Miroslav Volf) I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandparently fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.  (119)

With the God who is eternally love, his anger must rise from that love. Thus his anger is holy, set apart from our temper-tantrums; it is how he in his love reacts to evil. (119)

Your True Home

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Ephesians 3:14b-15)

Two weeks ago while reflecting on Joel’s graduation and the bike ride to DC, I noted the frequent repetition of the word “home” during the ceremony in Chapel Hill: “Chapel Hill is home. You can always come home. This place is your home forever.”

What is the nature of a good home? In a good family we are loved and accepted. We indeed can always return home. Our family welcomes us and takes us in.  Nothing we do will get us kicked out of a good family.

But a family includes something more which the Apostle Paul brings out in Ephesians – something missed in the picture of “home” painted at the graduation:

In a good family, there is a father, and he has authority.

  • Yes, in a good family there is acceptance. And in a good family there is also loving authority.
  • Yes, we are never kicked out of a good family. But there is also discipline in that good family, for our good and the good of the family.

There cannot be a family, there cannot be a home without authority.

Indeed, the Apostle says that every family in heaven and on earth is “named” after that heavenly family with the heavenly Father. Every family – and especially every father – ideally should picture the love, watchcare, guidance, provision, and discipline of our heavenly family.

Our culture is reluctant to recognize such authority, in part because it has been distorted so often. Too many fathers check out, and just want peace and quiet in the house so they can relax. Others discipline harshly, or verbally and physically abuse their wives and children.

But do you see the Apostle Paul’s point? Such behavior on the part of fathers is evil not only because of the sin against family members; it is also wrong because God created fatherhood to display His character. Checked-out and abusive fathers sin against God by providing others a terrible picture, a distorted picture, of what God the Father is like.

Yet see how God provides for us the perfect picture of acceptance and authority in Jesus Christ. He accepts us: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). His sacrifice enables us to be part of His family – indeed, part of His Bride (Ephesians 5:25-32). He accepts us as we are – but praise God He loves us too much to leave us as we are. He sanctifies us. He cleanses us. He Himself presents us to Himself, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27).

David concludes Psalm 23 with these words: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” In Christ, we will be part of God’s loving family forever: Under His authority, loved beyond our imagining, enabled to see Him face to face and to enjoy Him forever. That indeed is our true home.