Knowing The Father – Intimacy With God

Feature 4 – October 2015 – Grace & Truth Magazine

Knowing The FATHER –
Intimacy With GOD

A New Relationship
John 20:1-18 records how Mary Magdalene met the risen Lord outside the empty tomb. She was so overjoyed that she clung to Him. She so loved Him that she never wanted to lose Him again. Her desire was to have the Lord just as He was before He died and rose again. But this could not be as His death had brought about a great change in the relationship He had with His disciples.

His time on earth was almost over and soon He would be received up into heaven (Lk. 24:51). He had come from God and was going back to God (Jn. 13:3, 16:28). He had completed the work that the Father had given Him to do (17:4). Therefore He said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God’” (20:17 NKJV). No longer were His followers to be only His servants or even His friends (15:13-15); they were now His brethren! This was a new relationship with Him, belonging to God’s family. “My Father [is] your Father” – they now shared in the eternal relationship He has with His Father. “My God [is] your God” – His relationship as the risen and ascended Man to God. This was the great news that Mary took back to the disciples on that resurrection day.

Until the Lord came to make the Father known in this world, His disciples knew God as Jehovah, their covenant God. During His earthly ministry, the Lord had taught them to regard God as their heavenly Father, who would care for them and supply all their needs for life upon earth. But through His death, resurrection and ascension, He brought them into this new and intimate relationship with God – a spiritual relationship in which there is no longer any distance between believers and God. He is now known as “the Father,” without any necessity for them to use the adjective “heavenly.”

Knowing The True God
“This is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (Jn. 17:3).

As godly Jews, the disciples confessed Jehovah to be the one and only God: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” (Dt. 6:4). Then in the new relationship they knew Him as “the ... true God” – not a different person from Jehovah, but God now fully revealed in His Son. John used the adjective “true” throughout his gospel to describe things as they really are. For example, the manna was “bread from heaven;” but the Lord is “the true bread” (Jn. 6:31-32). He is the ultimate reality of what was partially true of the manna, that is, it was “bread from heaven to eat.” Similarly, the Father is “the true God” – God as He really is in His nature. This is how we, believers of the present time period or dispensation, know Him in this wonderful relationship that was brought about by the death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the Father in and through the Son. The Lord Jesus describes this knowledge of Himself and His Father as “eternal life.”

The Son Makes The Father Known
“The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (1:18).

The clause, “He has declared Him,” means that the Son has fully and completely manifested the Father. The Son reveals everything we can or ever will know about God. He alone is able to do this because He “is in the bosom of the Father,” the place where He has always lived. The Father’s bosom also describes the true nature of God – love! “Bosom” conveys the thought of the closest and fullest union, the tenderest intimacy and the unbroken fellowship of eternal love. The Father’s bosom is all about the always existing, without any beginning, Father/Son relationship in the Godhead and the affections that are proper to that eternal relationship. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). The Son continues, “abides,” in the Father’s love because He always keeps His commandments (15:10). The Son is competent to declare the Father’s name, the name of love (the Father’s name is a central theme of John’s gospel; and the Father’s love corresponds to it). Not only so, but He continues to make it known to His own. “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (17:26).

Intimacy With God: “Part With Me”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1).

“The Word was with God” means He always enjoyed a face-to-face nearness to Him. It was said of Jacob that his life was “bound up in [Benjamin’s] life” (Gen. 44:30), which pictures for us what it means for the Word to be “with God.” In reality, it is the eternal life of the Father and the Son. That life was “in Him” as “the light of men” (Jn. 1:4) when the Word came into the world. He came from the Father’s side (from being at home with Him). He brings first-hand knowledge of that person to us because He is God’s unique and only Son, “the One and Only” (1:14 NIV).

The amazing truth is that we do have “part with [Him]” (13:8 NKJV) and share in His relationship with the Father. This life is one of intimacy with God. We have the same position of nearness with the Father that the Son has! “The Father loves the Son” (3:35) is a statement of eternal truth. Yes, the Father’s love centers on His Son. But John exclaims, “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 Jn. 3:1). Such love is unconditional. “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (Jn. 16:27). Alexander Carruthers’ (1860-1930) hymn of worship exults:

We bless Thee, God and Father, We joy before Thy face; Beyond dark death for ever, We share Thy Son’s blest place. He lives a Man before Thee, In cloudless light above, In Thine unbounded favor – Thine everlasting love. His Father, and our Father, His God and ours Thou art; And He is Thy Beloved, The gladness of Thy heart. We’re His, in joy He brings us To share His part and place; To know Thy love and favour, The shining of Thy face. Thy love that now enfolds us Can ne’er wax cold or dim; In him that love doth centre, And we are loved in him; In him thy love and glory Find their eternal rest; The many sons – his brethren – In him, how near, how blest!

Intimacy With God: The Spirit Of His Son
“God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal. 4:6).

Believers have the spiritual capacity to respond to the Father, intimately calling Him “Abba,” because the Holy Spirit indwells them (see Romans 8:14-16). He eternally “proceeds from the Father” (Jn. 15:26) and guides them into “all truth” (16:13). The Holy Spirit reveals to them the secrets of the Father’s heart, that is, all that He has purposed for Christ and His Church (Eph. 1:9-10, 3:4-6). The Spirit is also the power, or vitality, of eternal life: “the water ... a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (Jn. 4:14). He enables “the true worshipers [to] worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (v.23).

Intimacy With God: A Love-gift
In addition to, or as part of, these truths about our acceptance before the Father’s face is the fact that believers are the Father’s special love-gift to His Son. In His prayer to the Father in John 17 the Lord described believers as “the men whom You have given Me out of the world” (v.6). He went on to say, “They were Yours, You gave them to Me.” This idea of a love-gift is repeated throughout the chapter in verses 2, 9-10, 12, 20 and 24. Love is measured by what it gives; and love gives in proportion to its appreciation of its object. We can understand that the Father loves the Son. But how can we ever explain this aspect of the Father’s love as stated in verses 23 and 26 – that we who are believers are loved by the Father in the same way in which He intimately loves His Son?

Furthermore, this gift involves our being taken from the domain of the world, with all its antagonism against and hatred of God, and sanctified by Him – all so the Father can give us to the Son of His love (consider Colossians 1:13)! In the future, He also will adorn us with the heavenly glory of the risen Man at His right hand, that is, with redemption’s glory, which He has bestowed upon His Son (Jn. 17:22). The Father will show the world that He loves the saints with the same love as He has for the Son (v.23). We can only worship at such thoughts as these!

So precious are believers to the Father and His Son that none can ever be lost. They are eternally secure in God’s hands (6:37-39, 10:28-29, 17:12, 18:9). So much is the love-gift from the Father appreciated by the Son that:

• He gives us eternal life (17:2).
• He shows us the Father and keeps us in/through the Father’s name (vv.6,11-12,26).
• He gives the Father’s word(s) (vv.8,14).
• He prays for us (vv.9,20).
• He sends us out in service into the world in the same manner that He was sent by the Father (v.18).

Intimacy: At Home With God
“In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (14:2-3)

Heaven is the Father’s house where we believers will live forever in intimacy with God. If we ask what He means by “where I am,” we find an immediate answer in John 1:18. He, the Son ever “is in the bosom of the Father” – constantly living in His love. That is where He lives or abides (see John 1:39 and 12:46). In John 14:2-3 He promises that He will take His own people home to His Father. The way to heaven was opened to us by His death; and His presence there now as Man prepares it to be home for us. The word “mansions” actually means “dwelling places” [“abodes,” JND] and carries the idea of a permanent, eternal home – a home forever in fellowship with the Father and the Son, intimately enjoying their love!

“Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (17:24).

Practical Responses: Love Always Obeys
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (15:9-10).

The Son always lives in the Father’s love and therefore cannot do anything other than obey Him. He lived upon earth as the uniquely obedient One (8:29). His whole object in life was to live for His Father’s pleasure: “the living Father sent Me, and I live because [“on account of,” JND] the Father” (6:57). Believers practically experience the love of the Son when they feed on Him and live for Him in the same manner that He lived for the Father. They must abide in His love and obey Him (15:9-10, 14:9-10). When they obey the Son, they are also loved by the Father. “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him ... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (14:21,23).

By David Anderson