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Are You My Father? (The Witness of the Spirit, Romans 8:16)

  • Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God

I have been memorizing, studying, and preaching on Romans 8 for the better part of a year now. I never cease to be amazed at the riches contained therein. I am now studying vv. 15-16, where Paul writes of the ‘Spirit of adoption’ who ‘bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’ I have read numerous Puritan sermons, contemporary sermons, commentaries, and what Greek experts have to say. (The link is to an article by Daniel Wallace that I found to be extremely helpful). They have all been helpful. But I found insight in an unlikely place.

A couple of weeks ago I read a book to my 3 year-old. I had read the book several times before. It is called, ‘Are You My Mother?’, by P.D. Eastman. In the book, a freshly hatched baby bird goes on a quest of sorts in search of its missing mother. The tiny bird approaches several animals (a cat, a dog, a cow, etc) and even an inanimate object. To each it poses the same question: ‘Are you my mother?’ With the other animals they simply respond with, ‘no.’ With the inanimate object, which appears to be a backhoe of some sort, the answer is clear enough without a direct answer. In the end, he finally meets his mother. He knows her immediately without being told.

Forgive me for waxing philosophical about a children’s book, but I couldn’t help but relate this to what I had been reading in Romans 8. All human beings are in the position of this baby bird – except they’re not looking for their mother. Rather, they are looking for a Father. We are walking around, like the little chick, asking one object, one person, after another, ‘Are you my Father?’ This is how idolatry happens. Scripture speaks of this explicitly:

  • Jeremiah 2:26 “As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed: they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, 27 who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us!'”

So then, we are walking around looking for a father, making things that are no fathers into fathers. Douglas Wilson calls this ‘father hunger.’ Recently, on his blog, he shared a little quote from William Bridge that I found intriguing. I found it in its context and it was even more intriguing:

If you should see a child, a pretty child, lie in the open streets, and none own it, would it not make your bowels yearn within you? Come to the little one, and say, ‘Child, where’s thy father?’

‘I know not,’ saith the child.

‘Where’s thy Mother, Child?’ ‘I know not.’

‘ Who is thy father? What’s thy father’s name, child? ‘I know not.’

Would it  not make your heart ache to see such a little one in the streets? But for a poor soul to lie in the street, as it were, and not know his Father, whether God be his Father, or the Devil be his father; for a soul to say, ‘I do not know my Father, whether God in Christ, be my Father, yea or no;’ this is pitiful indeed. The word ‘Father’ is a sweet word, for it sweetens all our duties; take the word Father out of prayer and how sour it is. Surely therefore it is a sad and sore affliction to want the assurance of God’s love in Christ.

This is the natural position of man, and Bridge relates it directly to assurance, which, by the way, is Paul’s grand theme in Romans 8. In vv. 15-16 the work of the Spirit is described as having to do with assurance that God is our Father and that we are his children through adoption in Christ. Following the line of thinking in this post, let me summarize the ‘witness’ of the Spirit in this way:

We are walking around searching for a father, making fathers out of things that are no father (idolatry), and then as we deduce from the gospel in Scripture that God indeed is our true Father, the Spirit comes along and adds his ‘amen’ in your soul. Let me put it this way: You come to God, having heard/read the gospel message, and say, ‘Are you my Father?’ And the Spirit responds with a resounding, ‘Yes, and you are his child in Christ!’ He preaches to us the message, using the words of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,: ‘God our Father, Christ our brother…’

And when this happens, like the baby bird in the children’s book, we are filled with joy.

Read William Bridge’s entire sermon HERE.

Sin so Deep it Climbs to the Heights

  • Matthew 6:5 ¶ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 ¶ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ comments on this passage greatly affected me as I read them tonight:

Sin, he shows us here, is something which follows us all the way, even into the very presence of God. Sin is not merely something that tends to assail and afflict us when we are far away from God, in the far country as it were. Sin is something so terrible…that it will not only follow us to the gates of heaven, but – if it were possible – into heaven itself. ..

The essence of the biblical teaching on sin is that is essentially a disposition. It is a state of the heart. I suppose we can sum it up by saying that sin is ultimately self-worship and self-adulation; and our Lord shows…that this tendency on our part to self-adulation is something that follows us even into the very presence of God. It sometimes produces the result; that even when we try to persuade ourselves that we are worshipping God, we are actually worshipping ourselves and doing nothing more…

This thing that has entered into our very nature and constitution as human beings, is something that is so polluting our whole being that when man is engaged in his highest form of activity he still has a battle to wage with it. It has always been agreed, I think, that the highest picture that you can ever have of man is to look at him on his knees waiting upon God. That is the highest achievement of man, it is his noblest activity. Man is never greater than when he is there in communion and contact with God. Now, according to our Lord, sin is something which affects us so profoundly that even at that point it is with us and assailing us…

The next portion of the quote hit me the hardest:

We tend to think of sin as we see it in its rags and in the gutters of life. We look at a drunkard, poor fellow, and we say: there is sin; that is sin. But that is not the essence of sin. To have a real picture and a true understanding of it, you must look at some great saint, some unusually devout and devoted man. Look at him three upon his knees in the very presence of God. Even there self is intruding itself, and the temptation is for him to think about himself, and really to be worshipping himself rather than God. That, not the other, is the true picture of sin (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, pp. 300-301).

Snippets: Praying ‘Thy Will be done’

 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Does praying the Lord’s prayer make us all ‘Transformationalists?’ There is a certain streak in Fundamentalism (and I’m no stranger to that label myself) that says seeking ‘social justice,’ racial equality, the eradication of poverty, and the like is nothing but leftist propaganda. I wonder if they have ever prayed the second petition of the Lord’s prayer and meant it. I wonder if I have as well.

Indeed, we get part of the petition right. We want God to be praised and worshiped as he is in heaven – this is certainly his will. But we forget that in heaven all national and racial boundaries have been perfectly demolished, that all men live in God’s house (and some would say mansions), that no man there has want of food or clothing – for Christ feeds him and clothes him. And this is all God’s perfect will.

Is it then not for these things also that we are praying when we repeat the words of Jesus, ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’? Are we not praying for the unity of all nations and races? Are we not praying for the eradication of poverty? Are we not praying for the eradication of disease, of sickness, of sorrow, of anxiety, etc?

And if we are praying for these things, and meaning it, will we not seek after them in the here and now?

Certainly we await the dawning of a new day and the arrival of the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. Certainly we seek after that city which is to come. Some will quickly remind us – ‘the kingdom is not yet!’

But the kingdom which is ‘not yet’ is also ‘already.’ God’s perfect will, his heavenly will, has broken into this disaster area in history and in the already that is present. Should we therefore not see glimpses of it, and seek after the reality of it now?

I do not believe that we can redeem culture. Only Christ redeems. But can he himself not redeem it? He is redeeming it and will redeem it. And so we pray, ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ And we pray it in hope, and act upon it in faith.