Understanding Jesus from the perspective of the Father’s love can really inform the way you abide in Him, serve others, and pray. The Gospel of John tells the story of the relationship between the Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus and their indescribable love for you and for me. It is a story about Jesus Christ’s extravagant and extreme love for the lost. I challenge you as a leader to ponder this truth and consider how it may change you by fully embracing it.
The Greatest Opener of All Time
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
The opener of the Gospel of John begins with an explosion of God’s creative activity. It takes us back to Genesis to a time before the world even existed, where we can see God, the artist creating what has never been before. John wants to take us back to Genesis so we can see Jesus Christ, the Son of God, there at the beginning, before the earth was even made. What is striking about John’s Gospel is the relationship we see between the Son and the Heavenly Father.
John is going to give us an account of the life of Jesus that, like no other Gospel account, is going to highlight and dramatically bring to life, the relationship that Jesus has with the Heavenly Father. This relationship between Father and Son is crucial to John because without seeing them always together, we will miss the meaning and the personal significance of one of the most important parts of this story which will come at the end of his book, which states the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ life on earth. JESUS CAME TO POINT US BACK TO THE FATHER.
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The Gospel Story
John takes us back to Genesis where all creatures are made to tell the Gospel story. The Son creates man and woman to live on earth and to have the most beautiful relationship imaginable with himself AND with each other. He gives them a massive perfect garden. To be perfect, the Maker placed inside the souls of this first man and woman the ability to think, worship, and choose. The most dangerous, risky, but potentially rewarding of all of his decisions was to give man and woman the ability to choose to love him.
Then enters Satan. He lies to Eve and tricks her to believe that God is strict and selfish for not wanting her to have the knowledge of good AND evil. Eve and Adam already had the knowledge of good. Now she could have more! What a nasty trick. She took his bait. It was a tragedy for them, but John wants us to put ourselves in this story and see that mistrust in God is also a tragedy for you and me. Satan wants us to play around with the thought and the possibility that God may not be completely good… that there may be something better if we will just experiment a little.
Grief. There is no other word that comes to mind at this point in the story. The cry of a loving Father, watching his son and daughter leave him for a curiosity fulfilled in a moment that would poison Adam and Eve and ALL of their children and grandchildren for generations to come. The Father and the Son are the only ones who could step in and do anything about it. How would there ever be a remedy to this permanent curse that fell on Adam and Eve for choosing to disobey and reject God’s design?
The damage and destruction were so extreme. The Remedy would have to be even more extreme than the cause.
Instantly, in the middle of this impossible twist in God’s original story (as only an All-knowing, All-powerful God could do) a rescue plan was drawn up. In the same instant that the wrecking ball struck down the house God had built, the Divine architect drew up a blueprint to rebuild his house, and to Satan’s dismay and anger, this New Creation would be even better than the first. In effect, God says, I will bring justice. And it will be on my terms. I am in control here, not you. He would go to the extreme for the lost.
The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
– Gen. 3:14-15
God’s son, who had created everything in the beginning and who witnessed his own creation (Adam and Eve), chose a moment of passion over an eternity of perfect satisfaction arrived at the moment which would now be the hinge of history. The Son would be born as a baby, to a simple, low-income family. They would raise him as their own, even though he was born of God, Jesus Christ, God’s son, completely human and completely God was born into our sinful planet to be the bridge from our curse and certain death on earth to be the ladder to offer us a way to ascend back to heaven through belief in him.
Jesus would be the only remedy God would ever offer. An innocent, vulnerable, and eventually abused son, crushed for our mess.
Do you ever question if the Heavenly Father loves you because you know what a mess-up you really are inside? I DO…
In the words of Brennan Manning, “God expects worse from you than you even expect from yourself.” You don’t need to be ashamed.
Call to Action
- What do the opening of John’s Gospel, and the opening to Genesis show you about the glory of the Artist, and the heart of our Maker?
- What words might you use to describe the relationship that the Father and the Son have had since the beginning before earth even existed?
- How do you think the Father felt about Jesus’ obedience to go to such an ultimate extreme as to leave the comfort of heaven to be born into a sinful world to seek and save it?
- How might the Father want you to relate to his Son Jesus, based on what you know of the Father’s love for His Son? In what ways might that change your relationship with Jesus?
- How might a proper view of Jesus from the perspective of the Father’s love for Him change how you abide with Jesus, how you serve Jesus, how you give to Jesus, and how you pray with Jesus?