The Father’s Love
The Good Father Series by Toby Eisenberg - Guest Speaker from Forest Community Church
2 Peter 1:3-4
Why were we made? Unlike other creation myths, God creating us as He broods over chaos is very intentional. And in His creation He is invested and involved in caring and loving His workmanship. He created because He wanted to. He doesn’t want or need anything from us. It’s a result of His nature.
St. Augustine’s argument for the Trinity as opposed to other interpretations. If you don’t believe in the Trinity, you have to say God is not loving or is incomplete. He would not be able to love until He created something. Love is not intrinsic to Him, it is not core. But if you understand the counsel of the Trinity, love can exist among them. So love is central to who God is.
The perfect love shared by the Father, Son, and the Spirit. It is pure love and where His nature and desire for creation comes to share with Him in eternity.
Image, likeness, and vocation
Genesis 1:26 - two different things, image and likeness. We are image bearers of the Trinity. We are called to bear or reflect God’s glory around the world. We are called to embody His characteristics as Christ did. So, we are capable of love and creativity. Creativity - seeing order in the universe, such as with our minds: rational, logically, reason, science. We can see it visually in beauty, music, art, creation, and we can see it imaginatively in our minds and thoughts and ideals. And we have freedom to act upon those machinations.
Concept: The temple is where God dwells among His people here on earth.
“After God’s likeness” means we become like God, but also means we’re not there yet, we are pursuing it, and we will be like it one day. It’s a process where God matures us, or perfects us.
Being made in His image is to be matured and become like Him to partake in His divine nature in being loving and creative. Sharing in that sacrificial love and serving others.
Genesis 1:28 - God commands us to reflect His glory among all the earth, to make more beings, to train them as He’s done with us, and to spread them across the whole earth.
Genesis 1:29, 31 - Beholding His goodness, He commands us in… A meditation on God’s love for us.
Jeremiah 3:19, 2:4-5, 11, 13 - Willingly turning from God[liness]. We are rejecting our call to our vocation.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 - God’s relentless pursuit for us to have us follow in His stead. That is the Father’s love.Renewed creation
John 3:3-6 - Born again = Genesis, same word. Newly created again. The same love and joy God had in Genesis, He refers back to here with Christ in the New Testament. We are God’s new children, but He is not done with us. Our response should be seeking purification.
1 John 3:1-3 - We are not perfected yet. We cannot be forced. So God calls us to actively partake in His call for us to be like Him.
1 Peter 1:3-5 - What awaits us. Our inheritance is God’s eternal life and love.
1 Peter 1:22-23 - Our response to being His new children is to purify ourselves. He placed already the seed of Himself in us to be nurtured to love like Him.
1 Peter 2:2 - We are children who are to mature to love like Him.
We aren’t to just wait until He takes us back to heaven but to actively participate in that call to be like Him.
Ephesians 4:17-18, 22-24 - Paul calls us to walk in sanctification apart from how the Gentiles already live. We need to be renewed in our mindset for maturity. We need to be willing to work through into maturity. We are called to be like fathers/mothers and to yearn to be like our Good Heavenly Father.Perfected by love - a foregone conclusion
Matthew 5:48 - perfection or completeness like our Father is a call to maturity like Him.
1 John 4:7, 12 - loving means we were loved by God.
Matthew 7:13-14 - It’s a difficult journey to mature. It’s a path of loving for the sake of the other. Christ did it so until He was crucified.
Mark 8:34 - Path of maturity is filled with conflict, failure, but we are called to follow Him like Christ.
James 1:2-4 - trials lead to maturity leading to perfection. Be prepared to love anyway when your sacrifice is met with opposition or ignorance or indifference. We are loving like God, like Christ. See it as exercise of our creativity when loving and still seeking the good in others. It’s a challenge, but if we become like God we find that love.
Romans 8:28, Philippians 1:6 - we will be like God because Christ did it for us.
Application
Behold! Creation/status as God’s children. Father’s love/certainty of becoming like Him.
Discuss with one another what keeps us from: becoming like the Good Father, living like His promised are true, and loving sacrificially.
Ask the Good Father to make His great love for you tangible and real.
