God has ordained the family, where parents have a duty to raise and provide for and discipline their children, and children have a duty to obey and respect their parents. Any interference with this relationship, or disobedience by the children, harms the children and impairs their happiness and safety.
Yet our society, judges, government, peers, and media, seek to undermine children's obedience and respect for their parents.
The parent child relationship is so fundamental to human existence, yet it is regulated by God's Word. It also serves as a model or analogy to God's saving of His people, for He adopts us as His children, and He saves us, and He provides us with all good things, and we owe a duty of affection and obedience to Him.
Lost men are not naturally the children of God, but are rather children of wrath, acting like their father the devil, and wholly rebellious against the God that made them.
Yet God loves a people, and draws them to Himself by His Spirit, and adopts them as His very own children!
A natural parent has a moral duty to protect and provide for his children, and no such duty towards children not his own.
But an adopted father receives and embraced children out of love, and not moral requirement. Those children are specially loved by their daddy, and specially loved by God Who gave them a daddy by adoption.
So too is our God's love for His people a special, voluntary love for us!
God did not adopt His people because we were beautiful, or obedient, or friendly toward Him. Rather, He loved worthless sinners who hated Him. By His Spirit He changed us, and drew us unto His Son, our adopted elder brother who died to save us! |
