Two prevalent, but inaccurate, ways of viewing God are common: as either the enforcer of a moral code, or as primarily the resource for all that we desire. This is God as either maker of laws or bestower of blessings. Certainly, God could be seen as both, but usually the tilt is toward one or the other, that we should expect austerity in the name of holiness or abundance to give us a fulfilling life.
These two views of God produce two very distinct understandings of the Christian life. The first fosters a legalistic, judgmental, and often self-righteous stance, while the second encourages a person to seek and claim the blessedness which God is believed to offer, and that is usually measured by all sorts of earthly benefits. The primary interaction with God in the first case is to offer careful obedience, and in the second is to look for answered prayers.
But do these common views of God portray the Father that Jesus is showing us? During his earthly ministry, was Jesus the enforcer of a moral code? The evidence, if we believe the testimony of the gospel writers, is that he was viewed in quite the opposite way. Constantly, the keepers of morality criticized Jesus for flaunting the rules and commands.
A person might claim that Jesus was simply disregarding man-made laws, but that argument does not stand up to careful examination. He fostered comfortable and non-judgmental fellowship with those who broke not only the code of the Pharisees, but also the laws given to Moses.
Evidently, enforcing a moral code was not a high priority for Jesus. He taught about how we ought to live as children of God, but he showed merciful patience and compassion to those who failed to do as he taught. His greatest criticisms were reserved for those who acted as moral police and were exclusionary, which ought to warn us against adopting that role today.
What about viewing God as essentially the giver of blessings, answerer of prayers, and patron of an abundant earthly life? Jesus himself claims to have no where to lay his head, and his beatitudes are not about receiving earthly things. He talks about losing one’s life, denying and dying to self, and that one must make a choice between God or wealth.
Jesus does not proclaim that his Father is the generous giver of earthly and temporary excess, but instead the provider of daily necessities. His lavishness is regarding spiritual and eternal riches rather than worldly possessions.
So what is Jesus’ fundamental portrayal of his Father? In a word, relationship. He and his Father are one. When all others abandon him, his Father is faithful (). His Father is the one who values mercy not sacrifice; compassion not religious performance.
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me. John 17:22-23a
Jesus’ prayer in the upper room enunciates his longing to bring us into the fullness of his own relationship with the Father, the very same union in love he enjoys. He did not come into the world to ensure we follow a set of moral dictates, or to show us how to get our prayers answered so we might be blessed. He came that we might enter into, and by experiencing it, know the Father’s love.
The God of Jesus is the well of an all-loving relationship that wraps us intimately in the eternal reality of divine care, which is far more beautiful, and therefore holy, than adherence to a moral code. The goodness and wholeness of this relationship deftly surpasses a life demarcated by extravagant earthly possessions.
Relationship with God, through Christ, and by the Spirit, is what Jesus offers. He reveals himself, and his Father, as the Shepherd looking for lost sheep, the Father waiting on a reckless son to return, and the Lover of his children.
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