Do you think you are in God's Doghouse?
A few days ago, I shared a few lessons I recently learned about parenting while my family was at Pine Cove Woods Family Camp last week. Today I go off script from my marriage, parenting and family posts to share the second great lesson I walked away with from camp. As I teased at the end of the previous post, I also learned a valuable lesson about ‘adoption’ and the love of the Father.
I know God loves me.
"Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
David Crowder sings, "He loves us, oh how He loves us."
In church we sing "How Deep the Father’s Love for us."
And many more...
But, I have misunderstood the depth and level of the Father’s love for His children. In the past, I operated under a pecking order of God’s love:
The highest level of love from the Father is for the Son and the Spirit.
Next comes the Father’s love for ‘good' Christians. This would be those who, while not perfect, for the most part make great decisions and appear to be obedient followers of Jesus.
After the ‘good’ Christians come the ‘bad’ Christians. This is my team. These are the Christians who genuinely have a faith in Christ, but due to some ongoing sin in their lives, receive the label ‘bad.’ I know the depravity and wickedness of my heart (1 Timothy 1:15) and therefore assume that I fall squarely in the bad Christian category.
Last come all non-believers/non-followers of Jesus. The level of God’s love for the unsaved can be a topic for another post, another day (or more likely on someone else’s blog).
In a similar way, I believed God’s love for different people was like my love for others. First comes Kristen, then come my four boys, then come various levels of love for friends, family, community, etc… In other words, I believed God operated on tiers of love for others.
Galatians Rocked my World
At Pine Cove, JR Vassar taught through the book of Galatians. We camped out for one session in Galatians 4:4-7, where Paul addresses the topic of adoption. Paul writes:
"But when the fullness of time had come, 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. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
In other words… God’s love looks NOTHING like what I formerly believed. Rather, the Father loves His children with the same depth, breadth, power and intensity that He loves the Son and the Spirit. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you are: adopted as sons and daughters, no longer slaves to the law, an heir with Christ, and fully loved by the Father.
God doesn’t have a doghouse! This blew my mind, that the Father could actually love you and me with the same type of love as He has for His perfect Son and for the perfect Holy Spirit.
I think of my friends who are adoptive parents. Whether all their children are adopted or some are biological and others adopted, parents do not love their children with different levels of love. They love their adopted child(ren) as much as they love their biological children. In a similar way, the Father loves us (His adopted children) just as He loves the Son and Spirit.
Paul writes in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Father shows us how much He loves us, in that He gave up His only Son, His perfect Son, while we were STILL sinners. Why? Because, for some reason, His love for us is that strong.
Tim Keller, in his commentary on Galatians, writes, “Jesus procures for us “the full rights as sons…. Literally, through Christ we receive “the sonship”. This is a legal term. In the Greco-Roman world, a childless wealthy man could take one of his servants and adopt him. At the moment of adoption, he ceased to be a slave and received all the financial and legal privileges within the estate and outside in the world as the son and heir. Though by birth he was a slave without relationship with the father, he now receives the legal status of son. It is a new life of privilege. It is a remarkable metaphor for what Jesus has given us."
If you are in Christ, then you are fully adopted and fully loved by the Father. The past few days I have rested deeply in the fact that as a follower of Jesus I am deeply loved by the Father.
Your Turn:
How about you? How do you view the Father’s love for you? Do you view the Father’s love as tiered like I used to believe, or do you see yourself as a fully loved and fully adopted Son or Daughter of the King?
Picture Attribution: Joseph Hill, Flickr