Paul tenaciously collects threads in scripture to weave an astonishing message: true all along. These Romans verses picture God’s promise and great love for us as Father.
Inspect a $20 bill. See its red and blue flecks? Those scattered threads make no pattern, but they mean everything to the Treasury’s electromagnetic detectors. So, scattered verses in Romans weave God’s powerful truth. He is Father to us. Let’s gather those threads.
This calls to failed fathers, like me. We fail as fathers in myriads of ways: a child doesn’t achieve well. Dad on TV do it all better, and a relationship goes south. If you are a dad and have failed pointedly so everyone knows, welcome. If your dad might use this, then you can send it.
Once upon a time there was a communion called God. He still is three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is important, but not a central character now. Now, we sing the Father and His Only Begotten Son.
Paul sings in Romans 1:7: “To all [ya’ll] (he was really from Texas) who are beloved of God, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!” This Jewish Ph.D. in theology sings, “We wouldn’t have known! We had no idea! We thought God was about being good and law-abiding. If it hadn’t been for Jesus we would have never gotten God as Father!”
God talks to us in Jesus. The single new thing He says in Jesus is that He, God, is Father.
We rightly trumpet dead-beat dads and abusive fathers who injure kids and wives, but we do what Blaise Paschall warns against: “God created us in His image, and we return the favor.” He warned against projecting on to God our failings. Let’s not.
Remember what were the first things you knew of God?
In a new love with Jesus did you love life? Did you love release from dreaded terrors? How wonderful to bring your failures, your naked self to God? Do you remember “the Clean”? Can you recall deep joy in being loved, even though He deeply knew you? Recall an incredible lightness in first loving God as Jesus’ Dad? That’s the point of Jesus. He helped me fall in love with Papa, knowing nothing could nix my clean, or being His child.
Did time steal the first blush, your first pang of love? God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is still the One I first loved. If one of us changed, it wasn’t Him. Did you try everything Paul tried in religion and mistake those for growth? God in Heaven shows us the most important thing in His Son. The Proud Father dispatched angels to tell us it was His Boy down in that manger!
A soccer dad watching his girl get massacred as goalie did a “dad thing”. He left the stands, walked around, hugged his girl, and stood behind her the rest of the game.
In Romans we see God work in history. Having made a garden of Eden He tried to be Father to Adam and Eve. Perfect God. Perfect Garden. The kids not close to perfect.
Again, God is perfect, but fathers can see God knows our stories. God gave it His best shot, and still things unraveled. My failures to my sons are clear. God differs from me: He’s perfect. God even knows I gave it my far-from-perfect best shot. God gave Adam His absolutely-perfect-best shot, and we both as fathers, have watched our failures flounder.
As reverently as I can, please hear that God knows things go wrong. God knows fathers can start with powerful possibilities and end with messes. God knew Adam’s epic fail would take the life of God’s perfect Son? Think on this sort of love. God knew. He still let Adam and Eve have kids that led to us and our loving God through His First Son and still fail! What love is this? It is a love entered into only by faith.
In Romans 4:11-12. Paul mentions another father: Abraham. What did Abe do to “be the father of all who believe . . . that righteousness might be reckoned to them?” Paul separates out what Abraham did in faith [circumcision, Promised Land.] God gives no fatherhood formula. A father can only act in faith to a life he prays is best for his children. Abraham acted in faith for us “who follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham.” As fathers we faith for our kids.
Verse 16 concludes, “For this reason it is by faith” we love God. Paul touches Abraham and Sarah’s faith to become parents, “In hope against hope [Abe] believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations.” Paul as a Jew claims Abraham as their father in bloodlines. Good. God smiles on us differently says Paul. We are Abraham’s kids as we follow Christ in Faith. As Abe followed in faith, so must we. So we are God’s kids and Abe’s kids.
Hear it again. I am Abe’s descendant, so God’s covenant with Abe is mine as I was adopted into the family. I’m in God’s family not by blood, but by faith. I’m in Abe’s covenant, not by lineage, but by adoption. That is how God’s fatherhood comes “to” me.
How does it go out from me? God seeks to take more Christian fathers, and build what you have in Christ into children not born into Christian families. If we are to change the world, more fathers must adopt more spiritual children.
Maybe you have children who love the Lord. That is great! May God reward you for being such a father. Amen. But to grow in Christ, you must become as Abraham was. To be like Abe you must multiply your number of children-by-faith.
I see dads adopt youth. Many do it informally. Some as teachers adopt students. Many give their lives to adopt kids in scouting. Some become spiritual father to young husbands and fathers. God needs more.
In Abraham’s day the family was topsy-turvy like today. God sends single moms and dads to His church to find spiritual parents. God sends youth who need Jesus, and are recovering from divorces, abuse, and absent fathers. God calls you, dad.
You, failing fathers, and you, fathers blessed by your kids, may I ask you something? Do you yearn to invest some of your of your counsel and love into God’s next generation? Abraham has more spiritual children than blood kin. Do you see God’s multiplication? Paul only had spiritual kids: Tim and Titus. Who do you think put that desire in your heart, dad?
Rand flew to New York to be in Jeff Paoletti’s wedding. The Wergins adopted Kirsten and Jeff. Jim and Cheryl Wilkinson were in Tulsa to see Marci light candles at Ann Munn’s wedding. Why? Three years ago, Adopt-A-Student finished. A week later the Wilkinsons came here. A week after that Jim asked Ann if she had been adopted. She said, “No.” The Wilkinsons adopted her. How big is that to Ann? In a room with 64 invited guests for her wedding and sit-down dinner, four were Ann’s adopted family: the Wilkinsons. Ann was no disaster. She came as DIL (Daughter-In-Law) material! Fathers, Jim and Rand are blessed to be used by God in the lives of Jeff, Kirsten, and Ann. God put that hunger in your heart, father. But what if you’re not worthy?
Look in Romans 6:4 for a Father snapshot: “We were buried with [Christ] through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, so we too might walk in newness of life.” God takes us as children after we die. All of us dies. God sees in us His completely new children. All the rest dies in baptism. My mistakes keep dying, and I keep on being born anew. He continually bury parts of me as dad, and God makes failed parts new.
I’m transformed. I’m new. Any baggage with me, I had to bring it, I foolishly chased and claimed in baggage claim. God as Father starts me over. My Heavenly Father knew every father must start over, and over, and over. He also knew starting over is hard! So God said: “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons (and daughters) by which we cry out, “Papa! Father!” Romans 8:15. Now the Holy Spirit! He empowers us to call God, “Papa.” “Go ahead, call Him ‘Papa’. Start over. May your kids see you start over, Dad.” Now for sons and daughters of failed fathers. God stands with you as the Father you wished you could have had while getting massacred all alone as goalie in front of everyone. God is with you to assuage horrors and give you the ability to be the father or mother you think is impossible.
Maybe you think the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father is not strong in you. So Paul gives one last “father” blessing. Romans 15:5-7. This is how God is Father. This is how we encourage all dads, especially failing ones. “Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus; that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to God’s glory.”
I began by saying the Holy Spirit was not in central casting until later. Later is now. The Holy Spirit whispers this love song, “Father God is everything the others were not. His Son told the Truth about the Father. They tell the Truth about you.”
We take up the song not if we accept each other like tolerance roars, but as God preaches acceptance. An old prophet entered Jesse’s house saying, “I’ve come king hunting.” God dared father and prophet to see what God saw. The old prophet, himself a failed father, and the father of the boys, looked at all Jesse’s boys. God said no to all, almost. The littlest was out tending sheep. And God chortled from heaven, you didn’t see it, did you? You missed him because you missed David’s heart! Davey has a king’s heart! Father God saw it in Solomon. He saw it in Deborah, Esther, and Ruth. God as Father is “first believer” in a boy or a girl and then shows His assessment right to everyone. God calls and believes first and proves it to the rest of us!
We see this picture’s tail end easily. At every prison deathwatch, we see a mom who is the last to believe in her baby boy or girl strapped to a gurney, awaiting a lethal injection. Give us first believers as fathers. More men must step up and invest in children who the Father of Lights brings when a biological father fails.
That is what communion is about. The Father who believed in you first, who salvaged you with His perfect Son. The Father who gave His successful Son for your failures invites you to communion: a family meal! Amen. Profess Jesus as brother, and get God as Father. Adopted.
If you hunt them, these verses were in the Bible all along, like scattered threads.
Psalm 68:5. A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, is God….
Psalm 103:13 as a dad has compassion on his kids, so God has compassion on us who fear Him.
Proverbs 3:12 for whom the Lord loves He reproves, like a dad a son in whom he delights.
Isaiah 9:6 a child will be born to us, a son given to us. And His name will be called … Eternal Father.
Isaiah 64:8 O Lord, Thou art our Father. We are clay, and Thou our Potter.
Paul says, like scattered threads, God knew we could not put the threads into a pattern, so He sent His Son in flesh, pulling together all the threads and pointing to the Father. So, He sends us men to show us how to spend ourselves as spiritual fathers and mothers. What say you?
Another Traveler 