Axis of Fatherhood

S

(Romans 3:21-24) But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law ... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction ...

O

Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, made it clear that all people have the same need for Jesus Christ--there is no distinction between people in this regard. For centuries, Jewish lovers of God had mistakenly erected walls between their "us" and "you" (non-Jews). These Jewish Christians did not use stone, turf, or timber like Hadrian used when building the great Roman wall across northern England. No, they contended that only Jews were God's people, regardless of whether they believed in Christ. In this letter to Romans, Paul argued for a different wall: it was the wall of sin that put all humans outside of God's embrace, but Jesus' cross tore down that barrier (Ephesians 2). Anyone, therefore, who "embraces" God's Son, Jesus, gains unhindered access to Jesus' Father, Jewish or not.

A (Psychological)

Miroslav Volf, in his book Exclusion and Embrace (1996, pp. 156-165), sketches a phenomenology of embrace, which he conceived by studying Jesus' story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). Paralleling the wall metaphor that Paul used with the Ephesians and here with the Romans, Volf gives us insight into into God's common love for all people. Both sons in the prodigal story shattered their relationships by "un-sonning" themselves and "un-fathering" their father. The prodigal's departure from home wasn't an act of separation required for the formation of a distinct identity; it was an act of exclusion (like his brother's) of pulling out of relationship and subsequent responsibilities--creating a spacial and moral wall even more distancing than a stone wall.

Paradoxically, by pushing others out, the prodigal found himself away from himself and the elder brother found himself estranged (by his own doing) from his father. Both sons defined their identities along moral axis: worthy or unworthy, good or bad. The Father kept redefining their identities along relational lines: lost or found, dead (broken relationship with me) or alive (restored relationship). Although the father rejected the misrepresentations of his heart, he didn't deny the damaging effects of his sons' behaviors and views. He kept reconfiguring the home order without destroying it so they could maintain it as an order of embrace rather than exclusion. He refused to make moral rules the final authority regulating exclusion and embrace. His behavior was governed by one fundamental, unchanging rule: relationship has priority over all rules. Because of the cross, Heaven's gate is eternally open (Revelation 21:25).

A (Personal)

Do I see my "good works" merely as God's assignments for me as though I were a solitary laborer isolated from others? Instead, do I see my primary task as being in relationship with my Savior and my Heavenly Father? That changes everything! If I am Christ's ambassador (2 Corinthians 5), I'll see relationships in a whole new light, a whole new priority.

P

O Lord, help me to reorder my world along relational lines. Help me to see myself and others from Your loving, relational perspective where every relationship is valuable, every soul is linked to mine and is worthy the price of reconciliation.