“…the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

The things they don’t tell you in Bible College that you find out in cross-cultural ministry…  It was back in the late 80’s when I was writing the draft of my first book, Storyteller’s Bible Study, that I came across a perplexing issue.  While writing the book’s Bible lessons I came across the fact that most Muslims consider it blasphemy for God to have a son.  Allah doesn’t condescend to such vulgar behavior as sleeping with Mary to procreate Jesus.  No, I’m not kidding; that’s what many of them think when Christians describe Jesus as God’s Son and God as his Father.  Allah does not do such things.  He will not be tarnished or dragged down or defiled by such activities as sex or even mingling with people.  He is, after all, divine, spiritual and transcendent, not physical and earthy.  But the Bible clearly says that Jesus is God’s Son (Luke 1:32, 35).  In fact, Jesus spoke of the Father and himself as his Son in John’s gospel more than any other book (114 references to Father and 49 times just in chapters 14-17).  Christians generally recognize that Jesus is not God’s biological son, and that he is not God’s descendent.  So if Jesus is God’s Son and God is his Father, how is that so, and what does it mean?

Let’s take the questions in order.  Exactly how is Jesus God’s Son (or God his Father)?  First, a little insight into Hebrew culture and understanding.  Jewish fathers and sons were very close, especially the firstborn son.  To raise the question, “Whom do you love more, your friend or your son?” to a Jew would be silly.  The answer was automatic.  But to do so in a modern Western state, you might be surprised at the answer, because of the radical individualism and independent thinking that exists.  To be a son of your father in Jewish culture was to be in a very special and unique relationship with your father.  It included the right to represent your father, officially speak for him and even conduct his business in his place.  It was, in effect, to be able to replace him at any turn for any reason about anything.  No other person could do this.

That explains the reaction of the Jews in John 5 after Jesus healed the man by the pool in Bethesda on the Sabbath.  Jesus commanded the man to pick up his bed and go home.  When the Pharisees confronted the man, he pointed them to Jesus.  In the conversation that followed, Jesus said, “My Father is always at work, to this very day, and I, too, am working” (v. 17), regardless of it being the Sabbath.  The idea here is that God hasn’t taken a Sabbath since Genesis 2:2-3 because of the fall of man.  A fallen universe requires God’s constant attention and supervision.  The Pharisees knew that only God himself was exempt from the Sabbath.  So for Jesus to say he was working with his Father on the Sabbath, well, that was just too much: “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (v. 18, emphasis added).  Note the italicized part.  Claiming God as your Father in that culture equated the claimant to being God himself.  In a similar conversation later, we see the same thing (John 10:24-33).

So what does that mean for the Father?  Throughout John’s gospel Jesus revealed many things about the Father.  He has the authority to send his Son (stated in many places), loves the son (many places), shows the Son what he does (5:20), works with the Son (5:20), raises the dead with the Son (5:21), trusts the Son (5:22), grants life to the Son (5:26), gives authority to the Son (5:27), testifies of the Son (5:31, 37) and gives work to the Son (5:36).  And this is just in one short part of one chapter in John.  The entire book is full of sections like this too numerous to detail here.  But we begin to see the point, namely, that to be the Father of the Son is to have a very deep relationship with each other.  What proximity is to distance, intimacy is to relationship.  How close are they?  Father and son are so close that Jesus could “do nothing by himself,” i.e., without the Father (5:19).  They are so close that he said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9) and “…I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:11).

All the more striking is Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17.  Praying for us, he said within the pristine sanctuary of this divine relationship, “…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me…” (v. 21).  Day to day, how close are you to the Father and Son, not in position, but in practice?  Are you close enough so that the world around you can believe the Father sent the Son?