The Great Love of Our Father
Unbroken Love at Calvary
Over my years as a pastor, I have encountered many people who wrestle with embracing God as a loving father. Their experiences with faceless or faithless fathers, even angry and abusive fathers, have left them with deep emotional scars. Is there a way for these wounded souls to receive healing? Is it possible for them to find the father they never had in their Heavenly Father? I believe the answer is yes, and a proper understanding of what took place on the cross of Calvary, where the Son of God, Jesus, suffered and died for our sins, can be the balm that brings about that healing.
What exactly happened that day? Did Jesus come between us and God, effectively taking the bullet of God’s wrath for our sin? Was the Trinity broken? Did the Father, who Habakkuk describes as the one whose eyes are too pure to look upon evil, break fellowship with the Son when the sin of the world was laid upon him? These are important questions - life-changing questions, the answer to which will radically affect our faith or, to put it another way, our ability to trust God.
That’s what faith is, trust. And trust is built by understanding someone’s heart and motives. Why they do what they do. It’s not who we say we are that matters, it’s what we do. Our actions reveal our heart, especially in times of crisis, which is defined as “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” The cross fits that definition perfectly.
In the opening chapter of the book of Joshua, God’s people are facing a crisis. Because of the previous generation’s faithlessness in the face of that crisis, they have wandered for forty years in the wilderness. Joshua and Caleb, the only two Israelites from that previous generation who were willing to trust God to lead them against the “giants” in Canaan, are the only surviving members of that faithless generation. Joshua (whose name and meaning is embodied in Jesus and is a Bible-type of Jesus) is chosen by God to lead his people into the land. God promises Joshua in that opening chapter that He will be with him at all times - “I will never leave you or forsake you . . . the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go.” God makes that same promise to believers under the New Covenant in Hebrews 13:5.
The question that I want to ask is whether that promise extended to Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, as he atoned for our sins on the cross.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are the words spoken by our savior after what can only be described as three hours of other-worldly darkness. These words were spoken in rapid succession with three others - “I thirst,” “It is finished,” and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
How do we understand this fourth word of Jesus? Did the Father break fellowship with the Son, effectively breaking the eternal Trinity? Did an angry God pour out His wrath and anger for our sin on Jesus? Many will answer and say “yes.” I was one of those at one time and was no less committed and passionate about God than I am today. However, I no longer believe that is what took place on that dark day at Calvary. Here’s why.
Let’s begin by comparing the Old and New Covenants, both of which were established by the blood of an innocent victim. Jesus clearly connected these two covenants when he said, “This is the New Covenant in my blood.” The difference being in the blood itself.
Consider these words from the New Testament book of Hebrews -
But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)
The Old Covenant, entered into at Mount Sinai, was established through the blood of an imperfect sacrifice, but it is a sacrifice that points us to the final and perfect sacrifice of Jesus, the innocent victim at Calvary. But how do we understand the blood? Is it the appeasement of God’s wrath, or is it the means by which we are cleansed from the leprosy of our sin so that we might be healed and become a part of God’s family, citizens of his heavenly kingdom?
Let’s see how the blood was understood by Moses and the people of Israel. Two passages of Scripture, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, shed light on the question of the purpose of sacrifice and the blood resulting from that sacrifice.
In Exodus 24:8, we read about the purpose of the sacrifice and the blood it provided -
Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
Hebrews 9:19-22 explains further -
When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
The blood of Jesus cleanses us from our sin, presenting us holy and acceptable before God. This is why Leviticus 17:11 tells us that “the life is in the blood.
Each year on The Day of Atonement, an innocent animal was slain, and the blood was carried by the high priest into the most holy place, where it was sprinkled on the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. It was the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat (not the angry seat) that brought atonement and forgiveness of sins for God’s people.
I am in no way doing away with God’s wrath here. Sin is to be judged. But God’s provision shielding us from His wrath comes through the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus. It was because of the Father’s great love for us that He allowed a sinful world to nail his son to Calvary’s cross.
As he promised Abraham at Moriah’s empty altar where Isaac had been laid, God himself would be the Father who gave up his beloved son.
John 3:16 does not say For God’s anger at a wicked world was so great that he nailed his only Son to a cross where he unleashed all his holy anger and wrath on him so that those who place their faith in him would be spared.
Instead, we read the familiar words, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God gave, or as the apostle Paul says, God gave him up. (Romans 8:32)
The Father and Son, together with the Spirit, from their own eternal bond of unbroken love and fellowship, determined from the foundation of the world that Christ would be the lamb slain to save us from the deadly leprosy of our sin.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, surrounded by those bearing swords and clubs, the Son said Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But Jesus, knowing that the Father in his great love had stepped aside, as it were, and allowed him to be delivered into the hands of sinners, carried out the divine purpose of the Triune God.
Jesus himself gave witness to the heart of God. Breaking with the Levitical law, he touched the unclean lepers making them clean. He told the story of the father who ran down that dusty road and wrapped his arms around his pig-stained son who, at best, hoped to become like one of his father’s servants. When Philip asked Jesus to show us the Father, he replied, Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
Here’s what the Father and Son did, together, as one, at Calvary -
But God (Father) demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ (Son) died for us.
This is how God (Father) showed his love (not wrath) among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
That atoning sacrifice is the subject of my next post.
What a loving Father we have! And for all those who have suffered the wrath and abandonment of earthly fathers, you can find healing and rest in a Heavenly Father who was willing to allow a sinful world to kill his only Son, and a Son who is now your loving elder brother who, together with his Father, will never leave you or forsake you.
In Christ,
Dan
Scripture References:
Joshua 1:5.
Hebrews 13:5.
Matthew 27:46.
John 19:28.
John 19:30.
Luke 23:46.
Luke 22:20.
Hebrews 9:11-12.
Exodus 24:8.
Hebrews 9:19-22.
Leviticus 17:11.
John 3:16.
Romans 8:32.
Revelation 13:8.
Matthew 26:53.
Luke 24:7.
John 14:9.
Romans 5:8.
John 4:9-10.