The Fatherhood of God

Going to read from the Bible in three short passages from the New Testament—first of all in Matthew chapter 7, and then in John chapter 1, and then in Ephesians chapter 1.

Matthew 7:7:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

And then in John chapter 1, in his prologue to his Gospel—verse 9:

“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

And then in Ephesians chapter 1. The greatest encouragement for the Bible teacher is, of course, to hear the pages rustling as they do now. It really is nothing that one would ever take for granted. Verse 3:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption … as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

Amen.

May God bless to us our reading from the Bible.

As in the Bible readings this morning I was moving around, so, because this is a topical study, I’ll be doing the same. So I would just suggest that you have your Bible available to you if I quote so that you’re able to verify it’s actually in the Bible. It’s always good to do.

And before we turn to the Bible together, we turn to God:

Our Father, we thank you that you have not left us alone. You’ve given us the Holy Spirit to enable us, to quicken us, to illumine the pages of the Bible so that we might hear from you. And that is our earnest longing: that we would have a life-changing, life-shaping encounter with you, the living God, as a result of the Spirit of God bringing home to us the Word of God. We desperately need your help in this and look away from ourselves to this end, praying in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, those of you who are routinely here would, of course, be anticipating that we would return to 2 Timothy chapter 4, where Alexander the metalworker, who did Paul great harm, is patiently waiting for us to arrive.[1] But for a number of reasons, I decided that we will leave Alexander for another week or so and deal with the fact that many people’s hearts are stirred on this particular day because it is Father’s Day. First of all we had Mother’s Day in this nation, and then I think the mothers felt sorry for the fathers, so they came up with a Father’s Day, and Hallmark thought that was a brilliant idea. And ever since then, it’s really worked out pretty well for many of us, and for that we’re thankful.

Let me begin with a quote about fatherhood from my old boss, from my mentor, Derek Prime: “All [that] we know of genuine human fatherhood at its best is but a pale reflection of what [God the] Father is, first, to his Son, and then to all who become his spiritual children.”[2] “All [that] we know of genuine human fatherhood at its best is but a pale reflection of what [God the] Father is, first, to his Son, and then to all who become his spiritual children.”

Now, this will be our focus and emphasis this morning, because our great need—and I speak particularly to fathers—our great need is not a series of practical pointers. Your wife may think this is what you really need or what I need—that what we need this morning is a talk along the lines of “Ten Ways to Be a Better Father.” And I’m sure that we need at least ten—maybe fifteen or twenty, some of us. But in actual fact, that is not what we need. That isn’t what we need in relationship to fatherhood any more than what we need in relationship to being a husband is another series of practical talks on how to take the garbage out and buy flowers appropriately on your wife’s birthday and so on. These are all very lovely things. What we need to be a husband is to understand what Christ is to his church: that he loved the church, and he gave himself up for us.[3] That’s the great need. And when it comes to being a father, the same is true. Our great need is not a lot of practical help, but it is an understanding of what the fatherhood of God actually is. Because the name of Father does not go up to God from us but comes down from God to us.

And sadly, that’s the mistake that many people make, especially if we do not have happy recollections of our fathers—if for whatever reason there are scars and bad memories. It’s not uncommon for people to say, “Well, I find it very, very difficult to think of God,” and the reason is because we’re projecting onto God a notion of fatherhood that is not true of God. No, true fatherhood is found in God in terms of his relationship first with Jesus and then, as the quote says, with all those who have become his spiritual children.

Our great need is not a lot of practical help, but it is an understanding of what the fatherhood of God actually is.

Is God the Father of Everyone?

So I want to address four straightforward questions. And the first question is this: Is God the Father of everyone? Is God the Father of everyone?

The answer of agnosticism is “I don’t know.” The answer of atheism is “Absolutely not. If there is no God, then he ain’t no Father.” And those of you who heard National Public Radio this morning may have been listening in as I was, when I was driving here earlier, to one of the Hubble Telescope men, who’s a mathematical physicist. And in the course of the dialogue, he was explaining that there are three worlds which are a mystery to us. World number one, he said, is the physical world, which makes sense of tables and chairs and stars and planets. Number two is the world of consciousness, he said—the realm in which our minds function, where we can love or hate or distance ourselves and so on. And then the third mysterious world, he said, is the mathematical world. And that was the end of it. And he actually said, “And the amazing mystery is this: that although it is our experience of the physical world that allows us to engage with the conscious world and then thereby enables us to come up with, you know, Pythagoras’s theorem and so on, in actual fact, it is then,” he said, “the mathematical world that then explains to us the physical world.” It just went round in a big circle.

Did you sing this morning as we all sang? “Though the eye of sinful man [his] glory may not see…”[4] You see, by nature, man does not say, “Oh, yes, I know God. He is Father.” But this morning, we have said the creed together, haven’t we? And it began, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”[5] We could have said the Lord’s Prayer together, as we often do: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Or, if we had chosen to use the general confession, we would have begun with the words “Almighty and most merciful Father,”[6] recognizing that in each of these statements, whether in praise or in prayer and confession, the worshipper is acknowledging what we often affirm—namely, that God is the creator of everyone and everything.

Nobody is going to stand back from that who begins with their Bible open. In Malachi, the prophet says, “Have we not all one Father? Has not … God created us [all]?”[7] When Paul preaches to the intelligentsia in Athens, quoting their own poets, he says, “As … your own poets have said, ‘… we are … his offspring’”—speaking of the creation of God. And he says, “Being then God’s offspring…”[8] So he takes them at their own word, and he advances his sermon on that basis.

But we’re still at the question, and the real question is: How does the Bible answer this question? What is the biblical answer to the question “Is God the Father of everyone?” And this is my best shot at it. I think the answer the Bible gives is “Kind of, but not really.” All right? “Kind of, but not really.” And let me explain.

The Bible makes it very, very clear that creation does not constitute us sons and daughters in the spiritual sense. Creation does not constitute us sons and daughters in the spiritual sense. In Ephesians, Paul says we are “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind,” “having no hope and without God in the world.”[9] In other words, we, by nature, belong to a different family altogether.

You remember how the religious men in Jesus’ day, in John chapter 8, got their noses very quickly out of joint when Jesus spoke to them along those lines. They were not happy with the things that he was saying, and they wanted him to know that they had Abraham as their father. And Jesus, of course, said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did”—this is John 8:39—“but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is[n’t] what Abraham did. You[’re] doing the works your father did.” What father?

They said to him, “[Hey!] … We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I[’m] here. I came not of my own accord, … he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It[’s] because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. [And] when he lies, he [reveals] his … character.”

“And when you lie, you reveal your character too.”

So, what does the Bible say? Well, it says, “Kind of, but not really”: “kind of” in the sense that we are all the product of God’s creative handiwork—he is the creator and sustainer of all things—but that does not constitute us as spiritual children.

And that actually helps us to understand why it is that people in the community will, if they engage with the notion of God, will often say, “Well, it sounds to me as if God is away somewhere else, or if he was around at one point, he’s no longer around.” James Taylor’s new album came out this week—the first new album of songs for, I think, thirteen years. I couldn’t wait for it. I preordered it. It arrived right on the day. I put it in immediately and listened to it. And on one of the tracks—a wonderful track with Yo-Yo Ma playing cello on one and then Sting singing harmony on another. Sting! Goodness, remember Sting? He must be about a hundred years old. Any of the present generation, sting is only something that a bee does to you. They didn’t know there was a person called Sting. But do you remember his lines?

Everyone I know is lonely,
And God[’s] so far away,
And my heart belongs to no one,
[And so I sometimes say],

[Please] take the space between us,
And fill it up some way.[10]

That doesn’t sound like somebody who is waking up in the morning and proclaiming that God is Father to him, or resting in the security of his companionship, or ending his day in the reality of his presence.

Now, why is that? David Wells, masterful theologian, puts it in this way: “There is an invisible boundary between him[self]”—that is, God—“and [ourselves] …. We cannot cross [the] boundary to know him savingly. He is not found in our deepest self. He is outside the range of our intuitive radar. [We are,] in fact, … alienated from him …. We cannot access him on our own terms [or in] our own [time].”[11] Now, the reason he’s able to write like that is because he understands the Bible. And you can check the accuracy of that statement just by reading the Bible.

And parenthetically, let me just say to some of you who are growing old listening to the gospel explained in this place routinely, and somehow or another, this is the way your mind works: “I’ll get round to it in my own time. I can access him as necessary, when I want.” May I say to you, honestly and kindly: no, you can’t, and no, you won’t. You cannot cross that boundary. The only way that you can know him is on account of his crossing the boundary to you.

How Does One Become a Child of God?

That brings me to my second question. That is: How does one actually become a child of God and know him as Father? If, then, God is not the Father of all men in the spiritual sense, which the Bible makes clear he is not, then how does a person become his child?

Well, again, the story of the gospel is that in the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father has crossed the boundary. He’s crossed the boundary. And he gathers people into his family by a supernatural birth. So that’s the first answer to the question. In theological terms, the word is regeneration. He makes us spiritually new from the inside out. We who are dead in our trespasses and in our sins, he makes us alive.[12] We who are without hope and without God, he comes and invades our lives. That, you see, is what we were reading in John chapter 1—that “he came to his own, … his own … did not receive him. But to [those] who [received] him, who believed in his name,” to them “he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but [born] of God.”[13]

In other words, this is how it happens: the work of the Spirit of God enables us as fallen sinners—as guilty, responsible, lost, and accountable—the grace of God enables us in that condition to turn away from sin and to turn in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe in Jesus as our Redeemer, and to be granted spiritual life where there has only been spiritual death.

Now, if you’d like to read an encounter that runs along these lines, you can read it for homework in John chapter 3. Jesus speaks to the religious leader who comes in the darkness of the night, Nicodemus. And Nicodemus has a very pleasant introduction. Jesus cuts to the chase and says, “Nicodemus, I really need to say to you: that unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”[14]

These are words of Jesus. It always makes me smile when people say to me—often on the golf course—they say, “You’re not one of the born-againers, are you? You’re not that kind of Christian, are you?” I always say, “Yes. Is there another kind?” Is there another kind? No, there is no other kind! Here’s the explanation. Jesus says it’s not as a result of your heritage. It’s not because your uncle was a priest. It’s not because your father was a pastor. It’s not because you fell out of your bed and banged your head, and you suddenly started reading religious books. No, it was as a result of a supernatural birth that came about on account of God’s grace.

And, of course, Nicodemus asked the question that you might ask: “Well, how can you enter a second time into your mother’s womb and be born when you’re old?” Jesus must have said, “I can’t believe you’re even asking that question!” “That which is flesh gives birth to flesh. That which is spirit gives birth to spirit. Don’t be surprised,” he says.[15]

So how, then, does a person enter into the family of God? As a result of regeneration and, secondly, as a result of adoption. As a result of adoption. Some of you are adopted. Some of you have adopted children. And what the Bible tells us is that the work of the grace of God by which he receives us as his very own children is again on account of his love for us and is expressed in our union with Christ.

The picture of adoption, of our union with Christ, lies at the real heart of what it means to be his child.

If we were all God’s children by nature, what possible need would there be for adoption? Let’s imagine that I go home, and I say to my daughters at lunchtime, I say, “You know, I’m going to adopt you into my family.” They’d say, “You’ve taken leave of your senses. We’re in your family! Why would you adopt us into the family if we’re in the family?”

So you see, if God is in the business of supernaturally invading a life and adopting people into his family, he’s adopting into his family by grace those who are not in his family by nature. You’re the product of God’s creation, but you’re not God’s child through birth. And you ain’t God’s child through baptism either! And you’re not God’s child as a result of your holy endeavors. We’re asking the question: How then does one get swept into the family of God? As a result of his initiative-taking grace in regeneration and in adoption.

In Galatians chapter 4—we read Ephesians, but we can add Galatians. Why not? In Galatians 4, Paul is writing on these very things, and he makes it perfectly clear. “There is…” That’s Ephesians. That’s not Galatians. “When the fullness of time had come”—Galatians 4:4—“God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons,” or sons and daughters. “And because you are sons [and daughters], God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’ So you[’re] no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” It’s a wonderful thing! The picture of adoption, of our union with Christ, lies at the real heart of what it means to be his child.

Justification is, of course, a glorious truth. We reference it all the time, don’t we? We sang about it last week: “I stand,” you know, “in the finished work of Christ, and Christ is in me. He’s the hope of glory.”[16] In Christ, the guilty verdict that we deserve has been taken by our substitute, Jesus, and the “not guilty” verdict has been rendered on our behalf. That’s a fantastic truth. We walk free. I stand, you know, “in Christ alone.”[17]

But it’s even better than that. Is it fair to say that adoption is even better than justification? In this sense: that a judge could pronounce you non-guilty, but he doesn’t necessarily invite you to his house for pancakes or let you sleep in his bedroom or become a member of his family. That would really be something! And that is what God does. He not only cleans the record, he not only declares us not guilty, he not only invades us by the Holy Spirit, but he adopts us into his family so that we are enabled, says Paul, to say, “Father—dear Father.”

Now, I played a lot of golf the last three days, as you can probably see by my face. And there was a lot of times that the Trinity was mentioned—a lot of times. But I have to say that I never once heard someone say, “Dear Father, thank you for the gift of this day. Dear Father, thank you for the immensity of your love.” See, only grace enables a man or a woman to call God Father. We may call him all kinds of things, but only in grace. And he accomplishes it in an amazing way.

Isaac Watts, in the eighteenth century, wrote a great hymn that begins, “Behold th’amazing gift of love…” Goes like this:

Behold th’amazing gift of love
The Father has bestowed
On us, the sinful sons of men,
To call us sons of God!

You see, if you’ve come here this morning, and you’re coming out with a kind of Pete Seeger school of theology—you know, the sort of fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; you know, “Let’s all hold hands,” and it’s a kind of form of sentimentalism and universalism—then you’ve got no concept of this at all. The only chance you have is if God actually just sneaks up on you, just breaks through your intuitive radar and prompts you and says, “Hey.” Because the idea that this is

   th’amazing gift of love
The Father has bestowed
On us, the sinful sons of men,
To call us sons of God!

Someone says, “No, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Concealed as yet this honor lies,
By this dark world unknown,
A world that knew not when he came,
E’en God’s eternal Son.[18]

Do you hear what he’s saying? “Concealed as yet this honor lies, by this dark world unknown”

—so that when you go back to school tomorrow or back into the office, you shouldn’t anticipate that someone goes, “Oh, here comes the daughter of the King!” Now, they might say, “Oh, did you go to that religious thing again yesterday?” See, the reality of who you are as an adopted daughter of God is unknown to the world. It has no category for it. Because God has done something that cannot be accomplished in any other way.

What Are the Benefits for God’s Family?

Third question: What, then, are the benefits of membership in God’s family? If membership in God’s family is on account of his regenerating work and his adoption, then what are the benefits of membership, of knowing God as Father? Let me give you five words. I won’t extrapolate on them, because our times rolls on.

Word number one: intimacy. Intimacy. To be able to call God Father. In fact, the phrase that Paul uses in Galatians 4, where he says, “God has given us his Spirit, whereby we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”—if you know the Bible at all, you know that that was the very terminology used by Jesus when, in the garden of Gethsemane, he recoiled from the prospect of death, and he said, “Abba, Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me.”[19] So the interaction of God’s eternal Son with the Father is in some measure that intimacy that we now enjoy. Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”[20] “Make our home with him.”

I have a very clear picture of where my father’s earthly remains lie: in a village in Yorkshire, within the shadow of the church tower. But when I think there, I pretty well think to his cottage. And I think back nostalgically to the sense, even in my manhood, that was represented in my ability to go in that cottage and go anywhere I wanted to go and sit on any seat I wanted to sit on, and even put my feet up on the couch, or lie on the floor and put my feet up on the fireplace, or whatever. And we talked together, and there was intimacy. That is a pale reflection of the fatherhood of God.

Secondly: generosity. We’ve had generous fathers. Generous fathers! Jesus says, “If you…, [being earthly],” or “evil,” “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your [heavenly] Father … give good things to [them that] ask him!”[21] If we have a picture of, somehow, God eking out his blessings, reluctantly giving us our pocket money—a little blessing here and a little shower there, as it were—then we haven’t understood the Bible at all: that he is magnanimous, that he is generous in the extreme, that he loves to lavish his affection upon us, that he lavishes us with his grace. You can see why people take this and get it wrong in health, wealth, and happiness. But there is a genesis of that message in the reality, in the truth itself: that God is far more willing to bless you, if you are his daughter this morning, than you are to take the time to ask him.

Intimacy. Generosity. Thirdly: security. Where does my security lie? Ultimately, in God. Took Peter a long time to get ahold of this, but eventually, by the time he’s writing his first letter, in 1 Peter 5, he says, “And you should cast all your anxieties upon him, because he cares for you.”[22] I say it took him time to learn the lesson because he was there when Jesus said to Peter and the rest, “Why do you worry about your clothes? Why do you worry about your food? Why are you so anxious about all of these things? Don’t you realize that your security is found in the fact that your Father knows?”[23] “Your Father knows.” See, this is very, very different from the idea of God as a cosmic principle or as an animating force within the universe. No, this is a Father with whom we are intimate, with whom we find security, with whom we find generosity.

And fourthly: destiny. Destiny. You see, for the Christian, the best is always yet to be—even through death. Death is not a good road to go down, but we’re all going to go down it. But the Christian knows that the best is yet to come, because we are guaranteed an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and that is kept with our name on it.[24] “I have a Father. … He knows my name.”[25]

Identity is the last word: intimacy and generosity and security and destiny and identity. “I stand in Christ, with sins forgiven, and Christ in me, the hope of heaven!”[26] That’s the couplet that I’ve been searching for, as you can tell, ’cause I’ve tried it about seven times and couldn’t bring it up. But I’ve got it now: “I stand in Christ, with sins forgiven, and Christ in me, the hope of heaven!” You see, some of us are so focused on ourselves and trying to prove who we are and what we are and what we’ve done and how we’re achieving, and our identity is just a peculiar focus in a Facebook era, presenting ourselves again and again and again and again.

What is your true standing? Your true standing is that you are an heir of the Father. You are a joint heir with the Son. You are a child of the kingdom. You’re part of his family. You are one. And it is the reality of what we have become by grace that serves as the preventative measure to stop us slipping back into what we were by nature.

You see, my Roman Catholic friends often say to me when I tell them this story about justification and regeneration and adoption, they say, “No, no, that sounds too easy. That sounds too easy. That sounds… You got a free pass about everything? That your past sins are forgiven, your future sins are forgiven, and… Goodness gracious! So why don’t you just sin like crazy if that’s the deal?” It makes perfect sense: when the gospel is proclaimed, the people will be responding, saying, “That can’t possibly be!”

Your true standing is that you are an heir of the Father. You are a joint heir with the Son. You are a child of the kingdom. You’re part of his family. You are one.

But here’s the counteractive influence: it is the reality of our identity through grace that prevents us from slipping back to our old identity by nature. So you say to yourself in the morning, “Well, is this the way the child of a King would respond to this? Is this the kind of reading material for someone who is a joint heir with Jesus Christ? Is this the way?” And so on.

Am I a Member of God’s Family?

Final question—and this is a sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, but I won’t take longer on it. In fact, it’ll be the briefest of all. Question number one was: Is God the Father of everyone? Question number two: Since he isn’t the Father of everyone, how does someone actually become a child of God and know him as Father? Thirdly: What, then, are the benefits of knowing God as Father? And finally: Am I a member of God’s family? Is he my Father?

That’s a question that only you can answer. You see, from God’s side, as we said, he sweeps us into his family as a result of his regenerating work, as a result of a supernatural birth. From God’s side, our union with the Lord Jesus Christ is accomplished in the moment of regeneration. In fact, it is so immense in Ephesians 1 that it takes us all the way back into eternity. It’s imponderable. “How deep the Father’s love for us!”[27] How deep! So deep in the recesses of eternity, so deep in terms of the extent of his love.

And so, from God’s side, it is there in that mystery. But what about from our side? How did these Ephesians actually—who were chosen and predestined for adoption—how did they actually come into a living relationship with God? This is what he says: “In him you …, when you heard the word of truth”—that’s number one—“the gospel of your salvation”—this word of truth that is the good news of salvation, the salvation into which you have entered—“when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, [you] were sealed with the [promise of the] Holy Spirit.” So, from God’s side, this is in the recesses of eternity. From our side, it is in a moment of time. It is an act of conscious repentance from sin and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you again: Are you a member of the family of God? Have you ever parked your car by the side of the road as the truth of the gospel has dawned on you and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, I get it. I never got it. I get it. I believe that you are the Savior that I so desperately need. I believe that you have died in the place of sinners, and I’m a sinner; therefore, you’ve died in my place. I believe that you are the one who brings about the transformation I so dreadfully need. I believe that you are the one who has closed that gap, that great alienation between myself and your Father, who is a holy, holy, holy God. And today I turn from all of my sin, and I turn to you in repentance and in faith.”

Listen to the story of one man as I close. (Wrong electronic device.) So, William Cowper—we sing his hymns often. We quoted him last Sunday night: “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.”[28] Cowper’s an interesting man and a clever man. His mom died when he was six years old. It really hammered him, and in many ways, he never really recovered from the reality of that. As a result of… He was a lawyer, but he wasn’t a very good one by his own testimony. He got a clerkship in the House of Lords, but nobody really wanted to deal with him, and he didn’t want to deal with them either. He had a couple of love affairs that went down fast and hard, and eventually, he ended up in an institution.

And in the institution, one of his relatives came to him and said, “You know, William, I think what you actually need more than anything else is to understand the fatherhood of God.” And they explained the way in which the Father had loved and sent his Son in order that regeneration and adoption might be the reality. And “Cowper burst into tears saying, ‘It is the first time that I have seen a ray of hope.’” And

when the friend had gone [he] opened his Bible at random and, in the providence of God, his eyes fell on those words in Romans [3]: “Whom God ha[s] set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.”

In other words, that he has incurred the wrath of God in himself so that Cowper and others like him may not experience it.

This scriptural account of Christ’s redeeming work touched Cowper’s heart, causing him to [testify later as follows]:

“There shone upon me the full beams of the sufficiency of the atonement that Christ has made; my pardon in His blood; the fulness and completeness of my justification and, in a moment, I believed and received the gospel.”[29]

“And in a moment, I believed and received the gospel.”

It was in a moment that I believed and received the gospel. I was the age of children in VBS. I knew enough about sin to know I needed a Savior—about jealousy, about temper, about disobedience. Nobody had to convince me about badness. And when it was explained to me as a child what Jesus had done, “in a moment, I believed and received.” Can I ask you: Have you had that moment? And if not, Father’s Day 2015, while you sit just where you sit, may be that moment for you.

Next Saturday, I’ll do a wedding here. When they all come to see me—well, usually the girl is very composed, and the fellow is a basket case. And he’s always asking, “Well, what about… What about… What about…” And eventually I say, “You know, listen: just let me worry about the ‘what about.’ This is what I want from you: a good, solid ‘I do.’ That’s all I need from you. I just need an ‘I do.’”

And in a sense, that’s what God the Father awaits. He awaits your “I do.” “I do.”

I do believe, I will believe,
That Jesus died for me;
That on the cross he shed his blood
[From sin to set] me free.[30]

That is the cry of the child of God.

Father, thank you for your Word, which repays our further study. I pray, Lord, that none of us who come under the sound of your instruction may do anything other than turn to you in childlike trust and in believing faith, marveling at the wonder of your love for us and to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear our prayers of confession. Grant to us forgiveness. Quicken us by the Holy Spirit. May this day be a day of salvation for not a few. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] See 2 Timothy 4:14.

[2] Derek Prime, The Lord’s Prayer for Today (Bromley, UK: Day One, 1996), 23.

[3] See Ephesians 5:25.

[4] Reginald Heber, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826).

[5] The Apostles’ Creed.

[6] The Book of Common Prayer.

[7] Malachi 2:10 (ESV).

[8] Acts 17:28–29 (ESV).

[9] Ephesians 2:3, 12 (ESV).

[10] Sting, “O My God” (1983).

[11] David F. Wells, What Is the Trinity? (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012), 11.

[12] See Ephesians 2:5.

[13] John 1:11–13 (ESV).

[14] John 3:3, 5 (paraphrased).

[15] John 3:4, 6–7 (paraphrased).

[16] Stuart Townend and Mark Edwards, “There Is a Hope” (2007). Lyrics lightly altered.

[17] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “In Christ Alone” (2001).

[18] Isaac Watts, “Behold the Amazing Gift of Love” (1709).

[19] Mark 14:36 (paraphrased).

[20] John 14:23 (ESV).

[21] Matthew 7:11 (ESV).

[22] 1 Peter 5:7 (paraphrased).

[23] Matthew 6:25–30 (paraphrased).

[24] See 1 Peter 1:4.

[25] Tommy Walker, “He Knows My Name” (1996).

[26] Townend and Edwards, “There Is a Hope.”

[27] Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (1995).

[28] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[29] The Ambassador Book of Great Hymn Stories, 6th ed. (Belfast: Ambassador, 2004), 140–41.

[30] Unattributed refrain to William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1859).