Christians are united as brothers and sisters spiritually by the very same truth that makes siblings brothers and sisters physically—they have the same father (well, Father, in this case).
What an amazing blessing! God is our Father!
It is not simply that God gives us physical life, though he does, and in that sense God is the Father of everyone, but God is our Father in that he gives his believing children a new kind of life, a spiritual life which, unlike biological life, will never fade but is fit for eternity.
The two gifts of life, for which biblical Greek has two completely different words, are similar. Biological life and spiritual life look alike, but, as C. S. Lewis writes, they are actually as different as night and day. One is a photo of a place; the other, the real place. One is the statue of a human being; the other, the actual living person.
The business of Christianity is to impart to human beings genuine life, the life of God which comes only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
“This world,” Lewis writes, “is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”
The difference, you see, between mere biological life and spiritual life is the difference between a “carved stone” and a living, breathing human.
Our God is the greatest King, but it was no royal nobility which caused him to send his Son to give real life to you and to me.
Our God is the most powerful Judge, but no legal demands of any law—and certainly no merit on our part—obligated him to freely extend life and mercy to any of us.
Our God is the most masterful Creator, but nothing in his great creative energy forced him to fashion sons and daughters out of statues.
But thank God himself that God is also our Father, and out of his deep Father’s love for his children he extends to us freely the blessings of genuine life, life fashioned to be able to experience an eternity of Joy.
No description of God is as expressive or beautiful or full of meaning as this: God is our Father.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
