Gaining a Father

What do Christians gain from the work of Jesus on the cross? We cannot be exhaustive here, so I will focus this blog series on four overarching blessings that come from Jesus’ work of salvation. The four things we gain are a Father, Husband, Family, and Ministry. We will split each of these up into a different blog post. We will focus on Father today.

Theologian J.I. Packer said that he thinks the main theological theme of the whole bible is adoption. Paul said that we were adopted as sons through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5). When we are adopted into the family of God we no longer have to go after things like approval, comfort, pleasure, power, status, or identity in any other created thing. We get a good Father who has blessed us “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 1:3).

Therefore, we can resist idolatry - which is turning a good thing into a god thing. It is making something in our life more ultimate than God. Paul said, in his letter to the Galatian church, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you worshiped the things that by nature are not gods” (Gal. 4:8). Nothing that God has created in this world (spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, athletics, career, etc.) can fulfill us like God can. If we have the God of the Universe as our personal Father, we have available every spiritual blessing that we could ever need – in this life and the next.

As we all know, when earthly parents pass away, it is customary for them to leave an inheritance to their kids. Similarly, Paul says, “in Christ we have obtained an inheritance” (Eph. 1:11). This means that our heavenly Father will leave us with an inheritance that will never perish. This is an inheritance that we can’t lose once we’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit “who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13).

Lastly, what is implicit about adoption is that we have a Father who will never leave or forsake us. In our culture, where many people don’t have a father due to abandonment, abuse, or divorce, we can be assured that we will always have a heavenly Father that is always there for us. We should be extremely thankful to Jesus for reconciling us to God the Father since we were once his enemies due to our sin (Rom. 5:10). Because of his work of redemption, we now have "full rights as sons [and daughters]" and have his Spirit within us crying out "Abba Father" (Gal. 4:4-6). Next week, we will look at what it means that we have gained a Husband.