Knowing the Father’s Love

(Ephesians 3:14-21 NRSV) For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

If you ever have occasion to find yourself in my office, you will notice lots of pictures on the walls. They are partly there to cover up the panelling, but they also provide me with a sense of hominess, a necessary personal touch in an otherwise pretty depressing 8x12 box; I shudder to think how much time I've spent in that office over the last 13 years - probably something like 13,000 hours, which makes the pictures all the more important.

And the pictures which have pride of place are, of course, pictures of my family; most particularly my children, my wife, and two of my three fathers. Two of my three fathers? Yes; my father Hermann Willi Hugo Rollwage; my father Martin Luther; and, not represented by a picture, my Heavenly Father. When I want to see my Heavenly Father, I look outside, and look at the changing leaves, or the blue sky, or the snow on the ground, or the rain watering the earth, or the birds flying by, or any of the other thousand reminders of the goodness and faithfulness of God. Those are my three fathers - my earthly father, my spiritual father, and my heavenly Father. And I love them all.

I was a lucky kid. I knew my father loved me.

I didn’t think of this as being particularly lucky at the time, I figured that was the way things worked – you mom loved you, your dad loved you, they loved each other – I figured this was the case for everybody, not just me. It was many years before I realised just how lucky, how unusual, how rare this kind of arrangement was. And is.

Sometimes I am amazed that my father kept loving me, particularly through the years of my adolescence when loving me must have been challenging. I didn’t do a whole heck of a lot in my teen years to merit my father’s love, but still and all, I knew he loved me. I understood somehow that it wasn’t something to be earned; it was a given. He loved me. Oh, that doesn’t mean I just wallowed in it; although you didn’t need to earn his love, you by golly had to work pretty darn hard to earn his approval, and harder yet to earn his respect, and it took me all of at least twenty-five years to accomplish at least a modicum of that. But love? That was there. That was a given. Like I said, I was a lucky kid. I knew my father loved me.

Martin Luther, whose picture also adorns my wall, wasn’t so lucky. He constantly had to earn the approval and love of both his mother and father, and wasn’t always successful. He remembered throughout his life the beatings he received from his parents for this or that infraction, beatings which he found hard to reconcile with their supposed love. He understood his parents as having responsibility for him more than affection, and it was an understanding which the young Luther applied to his relationship with his Heavenly Father as well.

God views us, he thought, with considerable suspicion and with active wrath for our sinfulness, a wrath which might be unleashed at any moment in the form of a lightning bolt, a spot of the plague, or the calling forth of the very devils themselves, clamouring for a chance to drag us off into the gaping mouth of hell. Like I said, Martin Luther wasn’t so lucky as I. His bad dreams were part of his waking reality.

Luther became so obsessed with this idea of a wrathful God, that he risked even the earthly wrath of his own father. His father had sent young Martin to the University of Erfurt, at great expense, in hopes that Martin would complete a law degree and support his parents in their old age. But Martin dropped out of law school. Instead, fearing for his life in a dreadful thunderstorm and vowing to become a monk should he survive, Martin joined the Augustinian order of monks, taking a vow of poverty and obedience, and devoted his life to the unlikely enterprise of earning the approval, if not the love, of the God whom he so desperately feared.

Yet the peace of spirit Luther so badly wanted would not come. He tried - he tried hard - praying, fasting, obeying the rigorous life of devotion and hard work set out in the monastery. He even went beyond the norm, subjecting his body to self-administered physical punishment in order to purify his unworthy soul. Finally, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome itself, hoping that by visiting sufficient holy shrines and praying to sufficient numbers of saints and martyrs, God might begin to look favourably upon him. Yet, again, the more he saw and experienced, the more convinced he became that nothing he could do could please his angry, wrathful Heavenly Father; nothing.

When he realised, all of a sudden, that he had it all wrong. When he realised, all of a sudden, that he had it all backwards. When he realised, all of a sudden, that he couldn’t do anything to earn the love of God, because, of all things, God already loved him. All of a sudden.

All of a sudden? Well, that is to say, following years of study and reflection and prayer and confession and pilgrimage and, well, just about anything else he could do, Luther realised that he was trying to please the wrong God altogether. Following all those years of effort given over to placating the God of Wrath and Judgement illustrated in the church paintings and personified by his own parents, Luther realised he had it all wrong. All of a sudden, he realised that the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ is the God who has come to us not in wrath but in love. All of a sudden, God already loved him. All of a sudden.

How did it take him this half-a-life to realise what seems to us perfectly obvious? Well, Luther lived in a world and in a church that had a picture of God which reflected the tough reality of the Middle Ages. Marauding armies could visit a village and leave a burnt shell behind, the plague could sweep through and silently render two thirds of the population dead, brutally enforced taxation could reduce the scanty earnings of backbreaking labour to a sum well below subsistence, and the church itself had become sufficiently corrupted that the average person in the pew as well as the priest in the pulpit had equally vague notions of God and possessed equal ignorance regarding the contents of the Latin Bible at the front of the church which no one in the village, priest included, could read.

Monarchs and prelates, princes and priests maintained control over the population by liberal application of the iron rod and, failing that, promises of unending hell-fire for those who don’t know their place. It was not a climate in which love could be easily grasped, not an atmosphere in which a loving God could be conceived, let alone believed.

But Luther had something few others had – access to the Scriptures. As a student and then teacher within the cloister and University of Wittenberg, the soon to be Doctor Luther had as his responsibility the preparation of lectures upon the Scriptures. Which, not surprisingly, involved (as prep time) the reading of them. And in the Scriptures, Luther found another God; this time, not the God of superstition and legend, but the true God, the God revealed in the Scriptures and in the Life of Christ. Here is what he found:

God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! (John 3:16-17) Christ died for us at a time when we were helpless and sinful. No one is really willing to die for an honest person, though someone might be willing to die for a truly good person. But God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinful. (Romans 5:6-8) God our Saviour showed us how good and kind he is. He saved us because of his mercy, and not because of any good things that we have done. God washed us by the power of the Holy Spirit. He gave us new birth and a fresh beginning. (Titus 3:4-5) The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." (Zephaniah 3:14-17)

The more Luther looked, the more the message stayed the same. All of a sudden. All of a sudden. All of a sudden, Martin Luther knew that his Heavenly Father loved him. All of a sudden, he knew that nothing he could do could make God love him, because God loved him already. Everything he would do now, everything to which he would devote his life, would be in response to that love. And so he lived the life of response to God, and in doing so, changed our world.

All of a sudden. Almost 500 years ago now, when Luther had his moment of grace. And it has been twenty-five years ago for me, when I, as a young seminary student, was reading Luther, concerned, like Luther, with trying to please a God who wasn’t all that fond of me, and rightly so. Then Luther’s insight, the gift of God to his troubled soul, the realisation that God loved me, that my salvation was dependent upon what Christ had done for me, became God’s gift to me. All of a sudden, I knew that nothing he could do could make God love me, because God loved me already. Everything I would do now, everything to which I would devote my life, however imperfectly, would be in response to that love. All of a sudden. It was easier for me than for Luther, for I could understand a father’s love. After all, I was a lucky kid. I knew my father loved me. Now, as a young man of 19, through the experience of my spiritual father, Martin Luther, I knew God loved me too. All of a sudden.

You have a Father who loves you too. He wants you to know that he loves you, wants you to know beyond any shadow of doubt. Here is what he says to you:

God loved you so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. God did not send his Son to condemn you. He sent him to save you! (John 3:16-17) Christ died for you at a time when you were helpless and sinful. No one is really willing to die for an honest person, though someone might be willing to die for a truly good person. But God showed how much he loved you by having Christ die for you, even though you were sinful. (Romans 5:6-8) God our Saviour showed you how good and kind he is. He saved you because of his mercy, and not because of any good things that you have done. God washed you by the power of the Holy Spirit. He gave you new birth and a fresh beginning. (Titus 3:4-5) The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:14-17) This is your Heavenly Father. This is his love for you. This is what Jesus lived and died to tell you, what his disciples lived and died to tell you, what the Reformers lived and died to tell you, and what, all of a sudden, you hear again today. You're a lucky kid. Your Father loves you. Accept His love. And live a life of love in response.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! ~ Amen. (Ephesians 3:18-21)