Father

On Tuesday I posted a blog entry titled “Mother”, which generated more email responses than any blog entries I have written in the past seven years. In that blog entry I referenced Matthew 12:50 where Jesus referenced brother, sister and mother, but not father. Why do you suppose he did that?

One day over two thousand years ago, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to visit a virgin named Mary and explain to her that the Holy Spirit was to come upon her and overshadow her and she would conceive and bear a son to be named Jesus. Since the nature of the child is determined by the father, Mary could not be impregnated by an earthy father and give birth to a child that was without a sin nature. Under this arrangement, Jesus was born as the second Adam and like Adam was tempted to disobey God, but remained without sin his entire life to become our perfect sacrifice on the cross. His death and resurrection provided us with an opportunity to be born again spiritually. That spiritual birth brings us back to Jesus and his physical birth and an analogy I wish to develop. Note: Looking up the Greek word from which “born again” comes from you also find the meaning “conceived”. Our translators chose to use born again to represent the overall spiritual process not just the beginning point of conception.

The mother of Jesus was Mary; a human. The father of Jesus was the Holy Spirit; God. As a result Jesus was born spiritually alive. I think it is fair to say that God chose Mary to give birth to Jesus. On the other hand we, like Mary are born spiritually dead. Our parents chose, either directly or indirectly to give birth to us. We did not choose to be born physically. Like God chose Mary, I believe God the Father can choose us (1 Peter 1:1 – 3; John 6:65) and the Holy Spirit can impregnate us spiritually with an imperishable seed of God (1 Peter 1:23). It is important to note here that God gave Mary a chance to say no and I also believe God gives us, after visiting us, a chance to say no. If the Holy Spirit impregnates us a child is formed within us and is referred to as a new creature in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Like Jesus, this new creature is eternal and without sin.

Mary was the mother of Jesus and we are our own Mother as in each person, as there is in each woman, that which when joined with the seed of the father will produce a child. In both cases – Mary and us – the father is God. Those born again are thus brothers and sisters to Jesus. Each of us who are born again (conceived) is in a sense pregnant with a child – the new creature in Christ – going through a growth process. At physical death, the new creature, the child of God, is separated from the mother and delivered into the next life where it will enter into a new perfect body prepared for it. No place in this process is there any mentioned of a father apart from God. In this spiritual process there are only brothers and sisters and mothers. In all cases the father is God.