When I was in high school I had some good friends who were Roman Catholic. Because we all attended church regularly, we sometimes shared ideas and how we felt about our faith. I remember how shocked I was the first time one of them told me how he saw the role of the Virgin Mary … that she was someone Catholics depended on to “soften up” Jesus. The idea seemed to be that God the Father and Jesus Christ were austere, distant, and rather judgmental, while Mary (because she was a woman) was more sympathetic with our human condition. My friend freely admitted that he often prayed to her, feeling that she was more likely to help him get the answer he was looking for.

A devotional like this isn’t the right place to discuss whether or not his view accurately reflected true Catholic teaching or was simply his erroneous take on the subject. I only bring it up to pose a question to those of us who are from evangelical churches.  Do we sometimes harbor a similar view without realizing it? Of course, we don’t look to Mary to “soften up” God for us, but do we sometimes feel like Jesus is the softer, kinder version of the God we read about in the Old Testament? Do we feel more comfortable approaching Jesus because we see Him as less wrathful and judgmental than our Father God?

What we believe about God should be firmly rooted in what Scripture teaches, not in ideas we have picked up from other people or favorite song lyrics. Some Christian songs are of course beautiful and wholly scriptural in content, but some are not. And we’ll only know which are which if we diligently study the Scriptures (see Acts 17:11)! In evangelical churches we have done a pretty good job of recognizing the role of Jesus Christ in bringing salvation to us. And most of us understand to some degree how vital the role of
the Holy Spirit is as well. Without His convicting power and revelation, we wouldn’t be able to even sense our need for a Savior. The Spirit’s indwelling presence enables us to be transformed and helps us to live out the new life we have received from faith in Christ.

But it seems that we rarely acknowledge the role of God the Father to bring us to himself, and I find that tragic. In the Gospels Jesus spent a great deal of time trying to realign His disciples’ ideas about God. “I and the Father are one” He declared in John 10. Together, they were bringing salvation to mankind who had been adversely affected by the fall of Adam and Eve. Jesus’ goal was to “do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). His obedience to the cross was in response to His Father’s plan, not His own. Yes, Jesus loves us. That fact is not in dispute. I just think our songs that suggest that He acted solely out of a burning love for us miss an important point. The primary motivation for His sacrifice was to please the Father and fulfill all that He had beencalled to do. It was out of His loving relationship with the Father that Jesus submitted to all that came His way.

It was shocking to the Pharisees to hear Jesus call God the Father Abba, the Hebrew equivalent of our term “Daddy.” It was a term of endearment, dependence, intimacy, and family entitlement – a far cry from their view of God. Jesus understood that unless
His disciples came into this kind of relationship with the Father, they would always be hampered in their ability to serve Him in the freedom of grace, not in the bondage of law-keeping. Paul picks up this theme in Galatians 4. “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son … to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying
Abba, Father” (vv. 4-6).

Our salvation was God the Father’s idea. Jesus, out of His love relationship with His Father, submitted himself to the plan of redemption and gave up His life on the cross to redeem us by His precious blood. But we must not forget that Jesus was not the only one who paid a great price for us. It was God the Father who “so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) As one song from Hillsong put it, “the darling of heaven” was crucified for us, and His Father felt the pain of separation as much as Jesus did.

Consider how hard it was for the Father to ask Jesus to do the unthinkable – to come to earth, to take on human flesh with all its
limitations, and to experience the humiliation and pain of the cross for sinners.  Could we ask our children to do something so horrific, even if it meant salvation for many others? After all, we have to remember that it was a race of rebels who would benefit from Jesus’ pain, not friends of God. While we were still enemies in our hearts, willfully turning our backs upon the God who created us, God the Father “demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”
(Romans 5:8).

Is this Someone we can trust to continue to care for us? If He was willing to give His beloved Son to reconcile us back to himself, how much more will He demonstrate His love toward us now that we are reconciled? Will He withhold any good thing for those who are now His own dear children? If we could only grasp the implications of this truth! We could enjoy the same love relationship with our Father that Jesus enjoyed while He walked on the earth. Out of their perfect love for one another Jesus was able to submit himself to the cross, even though He did not want to. In the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of His betrayal Jesus wrestled with the calling of the cross. He asked His Father if there was any other way that we could be redeemed. And we know that the answer was “no.” I believe the reason Jesus found courage to face it was because of His love relationship with the Father. He trusted Him and wanted to please Him, so He “humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8)

If we can come into that kind of trusting relationship with our Father, we can find courage for whatever we face too. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us” the apostle John writes in 1 John 3:1. And “perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (4:18). Do we still fear the God of the Old Testament? Do we believe He is anxious and ready to punish us for our sins? What we see in Jesus Christ is a perfect reflection of what our Father is like. Scripture will inform us if we will study it and allows its truths to transform our hearts.  Colossians says that we are to joyfully give thanks to the Father, “who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:12-13). Wow… are we blessed or what?

“Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan!

Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!

Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary!

Mercy there was great, and grace was free;

Pardon there was multiplied to me;

There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.”

(William Newell, “At Calvary” 1895)

Let’s cultivate this loving, intimate, dependent relationship with the Father. It will anchor our souls in His grace and enable
us to face life with new hope and confidence. It will drive fear from our hearts and help us to submit ourselves to His will with the same humility that Jesus demonstrated. Out of His obedience to the Father, we were blessed beyond description. Perhaps out of our loving submission to the Father others will be blessed by our obedience too.

I want us to leave behind the folklore in evangelical Christianity that has sentimentalized Jesus’ sacrifice to the point of almost
forgetting the role of the Father in our salvation. God is holy and He cannot tolerate sin in His presence, that’s true, but He has made every provision necessary to help us escape judgment. He has not only given His Son for our redemption but He has adopted us into His family, granting us all the rights and privileges of sonship.

Imagine the love that drew salvation’s plan – that rebels like us would be redeemed so perfectly that we can actually participate in the divine nature through the Holy Spirit! (2 Peter 1:4) As He walked among us Jesus tried to teach us about the love of the Father and the rich relationship we could enjoy with Him if we would humble ourselves as a child and trust Him fully.

The Old Testament scriptures are full of promises of the Messiah to come, the One who would set us free from the curse of sin and death. It was through the obedience of One – Christ Jesus – that the effects of Adam’s sin were erased, enabling us to enjoy a new relationship with the Father. The New Testament writers reveal the breadth, length, depth, and height of God’s love, helping us to better understand all that was involved in the Father’s plan to “bring many sons to glory.”

If we have any lingering doubts about God’s love, the record of Scripture will banish them. As we feast on the riches of His grace we can draw near to our heavenly Father with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, as it says in Hebrews 10:22. My prayer is that we can let His perfect love drive out all fear as we follow Him, and that we can finally enjoy all that our Father planned for us in our salvation.

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“God, in the Gospel of His Son”

God, in the Gospel of His Son, makes His eternal counsels known;

Where love in all its glory shines, and truth is drawn in fairest lines.

Here sinners of a humble frame may taste His grace, and learn His Name;

May read, in characters of blood, the wisdom, pow’r, and grace of God.

The pris’ner here may break his chains; the weary rest from all his pains;

The captive feel his bondage cease; the mourner find the way of peace.

O grant us grace, Almighty Lord, to read and mark Thy holy Word;

Its truths with meekness to receive, and by its holy precepts live.

(Benjamin Beddome, 1717-1795)