December 2, 2010

"And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham." (Matthew 3:9)

The son of a prominent community figure asks the local authority who has pulled them over on suspicion of drunk driving: "Don't you know whose son I am?" As though whose son he was would be the ticket to avoiding a ticket and the way to get out of trouble. We don't have such a quote in our Gospel Lesson for this Sunday, maybe this is because John the baptizer gets ahead of the Pharisees and Sadducees who joined him in the desert by providing them with the warning - "And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father." The Pharisees may have thought that whose sons they were - the fact that Abraham's blood was running through their veins - caused them to be exempt from needing to truly repent. As though whose sons they were, and consequently who they were and the "good life" that they lived, would be the ticket to their salvation and their ticket to favor with God. In the Gospel of John we learn that the one and only ticket to God the Father is through the Father's one and only Son Jesus who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

We, who are gentiles, aren't sons of Abraham like the Pharisees and the Sadducees were, but ALL of us are sons of mankind's first father - Adam. God created our first father, Adam, from dust- "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7) When Adam and Eve sinned, God could have just given up on mankind. God could have started over, and this time instead of using dust, He could have used stones as his creation medium to create new living beings. Wouldn't that have been an easier plan?

But God didn't take an easy route. He didn't give up on mankind. It was His pleasure and His will to save sinners and bring them, not just into Abraham's family, but to bring all who believe into His family. Instead of using stones to start over and create children, He sacrificed and gave His one and only Son, and sent Him into the world so that through repentance and through faith in that Son, we have the privilege of being God's adopted sons. Just because the phrase is cliche' doesn't mean that it's not true or that it's not worth pondering and appreciating - God the Father giving the world His only Son was, and always will be, the greatest Christmas gift ever. God lavished us with the greatest gift ever - through the gift of Jesus Christ we are the Father's adopted sons! "In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1:5-7) God the Father lavished us with love and lavished us with the gift of His Son Jesus, the One He loves. The One who lived the perfect life that the Father expected, that we could not, in our place! The One who died to pay for all the times when we did not live life perfectly and according to the Father's will. Because of what Jesus did for us, we are the loving Father's adopted children! "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (I John 3:1)

If we ever have a day when our spirits are down, a day where it just seems like the worldly people among us - the "sons of the world" - are getting all the breaks, while we as Christians suffer all the setbacks - we should remember that the world and its cheap thrills will soon pass away, but the Alpha and the Omega and what He offers is eternal. The people of the world are "sons of the world," but we are "sons of the Alpha and Omega." We can say to ourselves, "We have God as our Father!" We can encourage fellow Christians by reminding them with the question: "Don't you know (or aren't you considering) whose sons we are?"

Whose sons we are makes all the difference for us now, and for the world to come. While John the baptist was preparing the way for Jesus' first entrance into the world, we are in a state of preparing to celebrate Jesus' first entrance into the world, even as we are concurrently also in a state of preparing for Jesus' next and final entrance into the world - when Jesus will be the judge of all. "For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God." (Romans 14:10-12)

While it probably would be somewhat disrespectful to phrase it in this way, when we approach the judgment seat, we will be able to say to Jesus, when He asks for our account, "Don't you know whose son I am?" The only reason we will be saved from being sent to be burned up in the unquenchable fire is because of whose son we are. "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." (Galatians 3:26-27) When, in faith, we clothe ourselves with Christ, our Savior and Brother, we clothe ourselves with everything that He merited for us and we will have a perfect record to present on Judgment Day. We can say (with joy) to ourselves that, "We have God as our Father!" How incredible is that?