" The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. ”The idea of a father-son relationship is depicted in many points in the Bible. It is interesting to note that the first time such mention surfaced in biblical history is in 2 Samuel 7:14-16, when God told King David through the prophet Nathan about His own plans for building a temple for God – “I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” I may be treading on speculation, but it definitely seems like a prophetic parallelistic prelude to the coming of Christ: we know David’s human kingdom of Israel did not last forever – civil war broke out after his son’s, Solomon, rule; but David’s kingdom was definitely established forever through Jesus Christ.
– John 3:35
I mention this not to highlight a tidbit of interesting biblical prophecy but because it is here that God first declares a father-son relationship between Him and His chosen people. And there are implications: that of discipline, and also an eternal covenant. Again, it sounds like a blatant parallel to that of the divine Father-Son relationship, doesn’t it? Hold this thought then while I explore the love between Father and Son and study certain qualities and aspects of this love.
1. Subordination Sonship. In John 5:19, Jesus says “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Does Jesus claim to be equivalent to the Father? Not at all. Instead, Jesus explicitly states an absolute dependence on the Father, one of absolute submission, and it is from this obedience that the Son is able to do the many amazing things that He does. This is a reminder to us about the notion of “Christ-likeness”. As Christians, we aspire to imitate Christ and it is exactly because we want to obey, because we are His sons and heirs, and truly because we love Him. The extent however is lost on us. Most of us compromise in our aspiration – a little this or that will do no harm – but really, we can do nothing by ourselves. Even those things which we think are by our own strength and volition, we are really only deceiving ourselves. Give it a thought: even Jesus Christ, God the Son, can “do nothing by himself”, what about us?
2. Revelatory Fatherhood. In the next verse, John 5:20, Jesus explains, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” It is precisely because the Father loves the Son that He shows the Son everything. An analogy closer to home would be something like that of a family recipe to a unique dish which has been handed over generations, or perhaps a craftsman passing down everything he knows about the craft to his apprentice son. When seen from our perspective, we can also now understand that it is because of His love for us that He has revealed many things to us through His Word, taken in its dual meaning, i.e., in the form of the Bible and also His Son, Jesus Christ, for “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). And He does this so that “he who has ears let him hear” (Matt 13:9) and that “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you” (Matt 13:11) that we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Christ.
3. Perfect divine self-disclosure. It is the above two points that enable us to truly know our true God. Because Jesus and all His actions are an exact representation of God’s love for Him, and because Jesus loves us that He has shown us and taught us about His Father’s love, we are able to know God’s love and nature absolutely accurately. Think then, what if the Son did some things His own way? Then we would never know what of those expressions were that of the Father or the Son. It is based on this Father-Son love that all love relationships are set. The standard of God’s love is revealed in John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” – indeed God loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son, but it is precisely because He loves His Son to such an unfathomable extent “that” it is the benchmark. Only by this divine self-disclosure that we are able to grasp the extent of the Father’s love for His Son, and vice-versa and hence, His love for us.
4. Eternal Father-Son love. Christ has been since eternity – John 17:5 says “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” – and this forms a logical basis for us to suppose that God’s love is eternal, and a priori, or independent of existence (something I raised earlier in Part 3). Philosophers have always argued that in the absence of existence, there would be no notion of morality whatsoever, i.e., the case for moral relativism. But the Bible clearly states the contrary** and explains this in something so much more amazingly simple: that God is Love (1 John 4:8). I have always wondered what the statement meant and it is this rigorous cognitive exercise that have got me to finally comprehend it. God is Love because His love is eternal and independent of anything else, and this is because within the Triune God, there are the subject and object of God’s love. Hence it is a perfect love since eternity past. It also reveals to us that God’s love has always been other-oriented. And in refute to philosophical meaningless chatter, He did not need to create mankind to be the objects of His love – He has been loving since forever, and hence He is Love.
I believe the above aspects of the Father-Son love are able to explain to us several more things which are applicable to our lives.
Jesus said in John 15:14,15, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” From an atheist’s point of view, it must sound extremely absurd that utter, servile obedience would be considered ‘servanthood’ but friendship. Exactly the irony: it is because God loves us that He has made known to us His purpose, and the very reason why we must obey – love. Donald Carson draws an example of a Private and an Officer Commanding: an Officer Commanding can order the Private to fetch for a Rover; but if the OC was perhaps a family friend of the Private and have known each other since they were children, the OC would probably say, “Ronald, fetch the Rover, please. I’ll be going to HQ now for a battalion briefing and will take 2 hours. You can use the Rover during that time, but return to HQ to pick me up after that. Thanks.” In both cases, the Private must obey regardless. The difference of friendship is that of revelation, not obedience.
It is hence this love for God that compels us to obey fully, even though it is against our predilections, our comfort zone, and our (sinful) nature to do so. But recall John 15:9-10 – “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” Obedience will lead us to remain in His love, and it is by obedience that we can be sure we will not fall away. It is only by remaining in His love and never falling away that we can be made heirs of God (Rom 8:17, Gal 3:29). The alternative, if we should choose to disobey and fall away, would lead us to eternal damnation. By such simple reasoning, it is clear that He commands us to obey because He loves us and wants us to be made His heirs.
Let me now return to the idea offered in the introduction paragraph: that of the father-son relationship stated in 2 Samuel 7:14-16 involving discipline and an eternal covenant. At this point, we should re-examine the passage – “I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”
The first thing to note is that God chooses His son. This is seen in tandem with God choosing Israel, His own people, God choosing David, and then Solomon, and in the New Testament context, His Church – those will eventually and will finally be saved in Christ – who makes up His new Israel. This is redolent of the idea of election – we do not choose our Father, but He chose us.
Secondly, when His son does wrong, the son will be disciplined. The poignant phrasing of the words in the passage rings of Jesus’s crucifixion, and bearing similarity to Isaiah 53:5. Surely the son mentioned in this passage cannot be a parallel to Jesus, who was perfect and hence deserving no wrong that God would punish him? Exactly the same reason why Jesus was crucified isn’t it? We as Christians know that Jesus was crucified in our place, for our sins. It is precisely because God have chosen us as His sons and unwaveringly according to His promises have ‘punished’ us – yet He knows our ‘wrongs’ are far too much for us to bear our deserving punishment and have instead done so – through Christ, His perfect, obedient Son.
Thirdly, we are told that God’s love “will never be taken away from” His son, again redolent of what Jesus said in John 10:28: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand." This is the eternal love which God exhibits and professes, which translates to an eternal covenant He has with His sons.
Fourthly, the eternal kingdom is thus established in Christ, who has resurrected and reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev 19:16), for eternity. It is because we are God’s sons, saved by grace in Christ, and hence will become co-heirs with Christ in the eternal Kingdom (Rom 8:17, Gal 3:29).
As you can probably see by now, the Father-Son relationship is not confined to the Intra-Trinitarian love which is undeniably important but not the only sense of love which exudes from this special relationship; it is the model and standard which His love for us, His own sons through faith in Christ, is also exhibited that we belong to Him and become heirs. Isn’t it amazing how this whole delicately intricate plot seems when we consider all these things? And best of all, because of this, we belong to the eternal Kingdom.
“ You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. ” – Galatians 3:26-29
** I’m adding this as a footnote because it is not entirely related to the topic of the Love of God. Nonetheless, I have mentioned that the Bible states a contrary notion to a popular philosophical view that in the absence of existence, there can be no morality, i.e., moral relativism. Moral relativism suggests that morality is relative to social, cultural, historical and personal circumstances. The contrary, which is moral absolutism, as the name suggests, states that there is an absolute code of morality which is stemmed from a fundamental source, e.g., the nature of Man, the inherent laws of the universe, the will of God etc.
The Bible has blatant evidence for moral absolutism. In Proverbs 8, King Solomon writes about Wisdom, personifying Wisdom and goes into a lengthy narrative/exposition about her – quite pristinely written, wisdom is associated with knowledge, goodness, justice, righteousness, discretion, understanding, and power.
In Proverbs 8:22,23, Wisdom says, “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began,” and in Proverbs 8:30,31 – “Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.”
Is it not clear from the passage that even before creation, God had already established ‘wisdom’? Not only so, the passage also suggests that God made use of this wisdom to create the world, being the “craftsman at his side”. Ever since I found this passage, I have been marvelling at it and God’s brilliance, because it explains and scripturally supports many things which we often conjure as mere thoughts and ideas in our head but never found much scripture to buttress with. For one, this is a clear evidence for moral absolutism, and two, it is with this divine ‘universal knowledge’ that the universe was created – the same knowledge that we as humans presume to possess or seek to possess. Think about all the physics, chemistry and biology lessons – the knowledge we have spent thousands of years of human consciousness to discover is exactly the truth which govern the laws of the universe, are the very things which God used to create the universe, and is the very knowledge God Himself had created before existence.
Now if you were a philosophically-inclined atheist, you may argue that Proverbs 8 does not at all explain or justify moral absolutism but merely presupposes it. I concur on that, and now I attempt to explain. To begin, I must state clearly two indisputably granted assumptions. We as Christians know that our God is omnipotent and omniscient. We also know that our God is and has been around for eternity past – He is the Alpha and Omega.
Now in philosophy, we know that there is a priori knowledge – knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction and hence independent of empirical experience – as opposed to a posteriori knowledge, which stems from empirical deduction. Examples of a priori knowledge would be geometry, mathematics, and axiomatic statements whose truth are inherent in itself. To simplify things, an analogy would be that even if the entire universe were to disappear at this moment, there would still be some truths standing – for example, the idea of “null” or “zero” or “one” or synthetically speaking, “one plus one equals two” and that “a square has four sides”. Such is a priori knowledge.
In the same way that we can appreciate a priori truths, extrapolate this meek understanding of it unto God, who is not merely an a priori truth, but the source of all knowledge itself. Surely all the a priori knowledge has to stem from a source or require a medium through which the knowledge can sustain itself, because without which, we would have an absolute void except for a few drifting concepts of ‘squares having four sides’ and ‘one plus one equals two’? Admittedly, this is a loose argument, but I do not confess to use this as the main argument in my favour. Instead, I am only asking that you extrapolate the frail comprehension you have of a priori knowledge unto our omnipotent and omniscient, eternal God. It is in this same way that we can inch closer to understanding how God can be eternal.
If you were to at least sway towards this argument, then you would have little difficulty accepting that wisdom, being a characteristic of God in itself can exist in eternity, independent of creation, and hence be the justification for moral absolutism.
I should add as a last note that I am definitely no philosopher, and neither do I even come close to being an expert on this matter. There are however, books that you can read to suffice your thirst to know, if you do have one. One of which is The Abolition of Man, by CS Lewis. A full transcript of it can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm.
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