1 J. W. Ewing, The Undying Christ, 71.
EPHESIANS III. 14, 15 99
(1) The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ means " the Father " of our Lord's teaching, of those good tidings which He came to bring home to our minds and hearts. That is quite good grammar, and quite good theology. It is (most emphatically) " the Father " of our Lord's discourses and parables; it is the Father of the Prodigal Son, who went forth to meet him while he was yet a long way off, and fell on his neck and kissed him ; it is the Father of whom our Lord testified, " I say not unto you that I will pray for you, for the Father himself loveth you " ; it is He alone to whom we bow our knees, because we cannot help it, because His goodness and patience and amazing love are too much for us, because they have tamed our pride and broken down our obstinacy, and shamed us out of our indifference ; and now we bow our knees to Him in adoring love, even if we have to add, " Father, I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."
^ There are many people nowadays who claim to know " the Father," and in the strength of that knowledge they reject the Saviour, reject the Bible, reject Christianity. Yet it remains absolutely true that the New Testament is the one and only book that ever told them anything worth knowing about " the Father " ; it is a fact that " the Father " to whom they bow their knees (if, indeed, they ever bow them at all) belongs exclusively to our Lord Jesus Christ. He alone knew Him ; He alone revealed Him. Even they have to come to the Father by Christ : as a matter of history, as a matter of fact ; there is no other way. And so their position is this : they embrace with effusion the one great and glorious revelation of the Book, and then they throw the Book aside with contempt ; they acknowledge with enthusiasm " the Father " whom Christ (and only Christ) declared unto them, and then they dismiss Christ with scant courtesy .^
(2) In the second place, it is impossible to doubt (if we believe Himself) that " the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ " means more than " the Father " of His discourses, of His gospel. There was an ineffable relationship, a mysterious unity, between our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father, which is as strongly marked in His own words as in any creeds which have been made since. Whatever fault may be found with those creeds, they do not assert more strongly than He did Himself a oneness with the
^ R. Winterbotham.
loo THE FATHER AND THE FAMILIES
Father which passes man's understanding; which, assuredly, it had been impossible for any other, and intolerable in any other to assert.
\ If we understand that He is indeed the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in such wise that there is absolutely no difference or inequality ; that such as the Son is in the Gospels, such is the Father also above us, and such the Holy Spirit within us ; even so good, so loving, so pitiful, so faithful and true, so unyielding in the face of wrong, so careful for His own, so just and right in all His ways, so compassionate to error, so grieved for sufferers, so sorrowful for sin even unto death ; if we understand this, I say, then we believe our Lord's saying, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (and cannot possibly be mistaken concerning Him), and we bow our knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with the most joyful and complete assurance.^
Trust My Father, saith the Eldest-born;
I did trust Him ere the earth began ; Not to know Him is to be forlorn;
Not to love Him is — not to be man.
He that knows Him loves Him altogether;
With My Father I am so content That through all this dreary human weather
I am working, waiting, confident.
He is with Me ; I am not alone ;
Life is bliss, because I am His child; Down in Hades will I lay the stone
Whence shall rise to Heaven His city piled.
Hearken, brothers, pray you, to my story!
Hear Me, sister ; hearken, child, to Me : Our one Father is a perfect glory ;
He is light, and there is none but He.
Come then with Me; I will lead the way;
All of you, sore-hearted, heavy-shod, Come to Father, yours and mine, I pray ;
Little ones, I pray you, come to God ! *
3. When St. Paul said, " I call upon the Father," he was not saying a truism ; he was striking the note that was distinctive 1 R. Winterbotham. ^ George MacDonald.
EPHESIANS III. 14, 15 loi
of Christianity. He was saying t}ie very central thing which Christ, our Master, came into the world to say. " I call upon the Father." What does it mean, this belief that God is our Father ? We are in the hands of a great power. No one can be such a fool as to think that man is independent. We are in the hands of a vast and universal power on which moment by moment we depend, as for our life originally, so, moment by moment, for the breath we breathe. What is this power ? Is it blind force ? The Jew alone of all the races was taught to believe that the power which lay behind him was righteousness, and that God was just and righteous ; so it was that he set to work to build up the foundations of human society — because he believed that God was righteous, and all this our Lord maintained and deepened. He deepened it into the belief that God was a Father.