A Father's Heart

This text was born from a walk through the Scriptures.

Not from trying to gather different verses to build a message, but from the realization that passages written in different times, circumstances and books seem to reveal parts of one same message, deeply connected to each other.

One word lit up another. One text opened the next.

And the path began with a small phrase from Paul:

“God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”

Every one.

Paul's statement is surprising. He does not say that God will still bless us. He says that he has already blessed us. And not with some spiritual blessings, but with all of them.

And he adds where they are:

in Christ.

Perhaps that is why, a little later, Paul prays that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened.

Not necessarily so that we may receive something that is still missing.

But so that we may see.

Because there is a hidden treasure.

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The treasure

Jesus said that the Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. A man found it and, full of joy, sold everything he had to buy that field.

First he found it.

Then he sold everything.

That makes all the difference.

He did not give up everything hoping to find a treasure.
He gave up everything because he had found the treasure.

And Paul seems to show us where the treasures are hidden:

“In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Again:

all.

All spiritual blessings are in Christ.

All treasures are hidden in Christ.

Perhaps, then, the problem is not the absence of the treasure.

Perhaps it is not seeing it.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Hear.
Taste.
See.
Experience.
Approve.

Not just knowing about God.

Knowing him.

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Everything

It was on this path that an old phrase took on another dimension:

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse of the temple, so that there may be food in my house. Test me […] and see…”

In Malachi, these were real tithes, real food, a real house. We do not need to turn the text into something else.

But when we reach the New Testament, something extraordinary happens.

The offering no longer appears only as a part of our possessions:

“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.”

Offer yourselves.

A widow put two small coins into the treasury.

To others, almost nothing.

To Jesus:

she gave everything.

The man found the treasure and sold everything.

The widow gave everything.

Paul says: offer yourselves.

Perhaps the great question was never ten percent.

Where is your treasure?

Because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

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The problem of the heart

And it was precisely the heart that led us to the deepest part of this search.

From the beginning, the human problem was in it:

“every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time”.

How do we solve this?

More commandments?

More prohibitions?

More effort?

More strictness?

The answer announced by God is surprisingly different:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.”

And more:

“I will put my Spirit in you.”

God does not simply promise to teach the old heart to behave better.
He gives a new heart.

But how?

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The Son in us

Here a small expression of Paul's may light up the whole path.

Telling what God had done in him, Paul writes that God was pleased:

“to reveal his Son in me”.

And who is the Son?

Peter had answered before Jesus:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

So the language begins to meet:

the Son revealed in me.
Christ in me.

And Paul himself develops this in the same letter:

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

And later:

“until Christ is formed in you.”

Colossians sums up the mystery:

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Perhaps we have arrived at the treasure.

It is not simply things that Christ offers us.

Life is in the Son.

“God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life.”

The answer to a heart inclined toward evil is not simply a more refined knowledge of good and evil.

It is life.

And life is in the Son.

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The true vine

Jesus uses an extraordinarily simple image:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.”

And:

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself.”

The branch does not manufacture life.

It receives it from the vine.

That is why Jesus can say:

“Apart from me you can do nothing.”

A separated branch can receive rules, instructions, warnings and knowledge about how it should produce grapes.

But it will not produce grapes.

It lacks life.

When it remains in the vine, however, the fruit appears.

Perhaps that is why Paul does not speak of the “fruits” of the Spirit.

He says:

“the fruit of the Spirit”.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are not independent products manufactured by human effort.

They are the fruit of life.

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The heart of the Son

And here Galatians gives us another extraordinary piece:

“Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and he cries out: ‘Abba, Father’.”

Now the path begins to be complete.

God reveals his Son in us.

Christ lives in us.

Christ is formed in us.

The Spirit of the Son is sent into our heart.

And from that heart comes:

“Abba, Father.”

Perhaps the solution for the heart inclined toward evil is even deeper than we imagined.

It is not simply receiving a heart that tries to imitate the Father.

It is Christ being formed in us.

A heart of a Son.

And the Son manifests the Father.

“I and the Father are one.”

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing.”

Jesus lives as a Son.

He listens to the Father.

He sees the Father.

He does the Father's will.

And he manifests the Father.

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A Father's heart

Now we can understand in another way:

“Be holy, because I am holy.”

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

“Love your enemies.”

The standard is not simply a legislation.

The standard is the Father.

But this does not begin with our effort to imitate him.

It begins with the Father working.

“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”

And Paul adds:

“For it is God who works in you both to will and to act, according to his good purpose.”

Even the willing.

The Father works.

The Son is revealed.

The Spirit dwells.

Christ is formed.

Life bears fruit.

And the Father's heart begins to appear in his children.

Perhaps this is the treasure we were looking for.

Not simply the things of the Father.

Not simply the blessings of the Father.

The life of the Father manifested in the Son
and the Son living in us.

That is why:

“Everything that belongs to the Father is mine.”

And:

“Whoever has the Son has life.”

The treasure hunt ends where perhaps we never imagined.

What can overcome a heart inclined toward evil?

Life.

Where is this life?

In the Son.

And what happens when the Son is revealed and formed in us?

A heart of a Son arises, one that knows the Father, listens to the Father and does the Father's will.

And, in that son, there begins to become visible:

A Father's heart.

“We love because he first loved us.”