Love for the Father

Expository study of 1 John: The Father's great love has made us His children and it distinguishes us from the world.
Table of contents

When the Heavenly Father restores us, He restored us to our heavenly position as son and daughters of God occupying the right hand of His throne with Jesus. This parable teaches us many practical lessons for Fathers specifically and parents in general:. It also demonstrates the very real way that God deals with us, His children, especially His "wild" children with love and patience. The prodigal son was a "wild child" who finally came home to the arms of a loving and forgiving father - this is the essence and the beauty of this parable and it is relevant in every place and every time where Fathers wait patiently for the return or the "turning around" of their prodigal sons or daughters.

You can always come home to the arms of your loving Heavenly Father, even if your earthly father won't have you. He has your robe of righteousness, your ring of sonship, your sandals of peace and freedom. And the feast is being prepared in heaven where the singing and the rejoicing have already begun. In the story of the prodigal son, we see the intimate, human ways that God, our Father, loves us.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; 30 but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. The sun in the sky that provides for so many of our needs is a big way that He shows His love. How The Father Loves Us When we review this parable we see three ways that this father showed his love for his son; by extension, three ways that God show His love for us: He Let Him Go It was customary in those days for the eldest son to not only receive a double portion of his father's inheritance but to be the first one to do so.

He Waits for a Return In the parable it says that the father saw his son returning while he was still a long way off. He was expectant and made himself available at the first glimpse of the son's return. Everywhere there are signs of God's presence and His love if we only but see: The beauty and love demonstrated by His creation that shelters and feeds us. The will and conscience that we posses continually attest to man's ability given by the Father - freedom to choose.

Lets us go Waits for us And when we do return, God displays His greatest show of love. He Restores Us It's one thing to take back an erring child, it's quite another to restore an erring child. It's what he deserved, better than what he deserved. The father's gift showed how the son was restored: He greeted him with kisses, which showed him his love and affection. He felt compassion, which told the son that he understood his pain and the effort that it took to come back. He put the "best" robe, which signifies position - the long robes worn by nobles.

Well God, our Father in heaven is this type of Father. When we return to Him He doesn't give us what we deserve or what we've earned - He restores us completely as sons and daughters and as sons and daughters we have: No More Sin He forgave us - Act 2: Summary This parable teaches us many practical lessons for Fathers specifically and parents in general: The purpose of our work with our children is to eventually let them be what they choose to be - even when that doesn't match even remotely what we want for them.

We can let go but we mustn't give up. We still can have influence and a relationship through prayer, through love and a willingness to monitor and encourage their progress and sympathize with their failure. Fathers don't say, "I told you so", they say, "I love you so". When the prodigals come home - don't make slaves out of them - make sons and daughter out of them once again. How about you - have you gone far away from your Heavenly Father? You're only there cause He let you go but remember you got yourself there - He never wanted you to go.

This moment He waits for your return. No matter how far. No matter how bad. Won't you come home to your Father this morning by coming forward. In this sermon, Mike draws a picture of the ideal father with the references to fatherhood in both the Old and New Testaments.

Bible Verses on the Father's Love - Soul Shepherding

Men like to watch. They like to watch sports or sit on the porch and watch cars go by. Each child has specific needs and, as a father who knows his children, I often pray for God to bless them in particular ways. When I was fifty two years old I learned that my father was not my real father. The man I had known as "dad" was long dead by the time this revelation came so it did not change anything between him and me. With the beginning of chapter twelve, the book of Genesis focuses once again on one specific individual.

Honor Thy Father

This time the writers will detail the life of Abraham who was to become the father of the Jewish nation and how the Seed of Promise was kept alive through him. Not my earthly father, who I love and still miss more than 50 years after he died, no, my heavenly Father, who is alive and with whom I have a daily relationship. Change is very difficult. Whether it's changing a habit or attitude or job or city - change is always a challenge, and change is even more difficult when it's imposed on us suddenly or without our approval.


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To the extent that God opens our eyes to see it, we will be changed people. The apostle John has just said 2: For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. The apostle John had been blessed more than most men in the history of the world. Many prophets had desired to see what John had seen and to hear what he had heard Matt. He had spent three years as one of the closest disciples of Jesus Christ. He had seen Jesus perform dozens of powerful miracles. He had seen Jesus transfigured in His glory. He had witnessed Jesus alive from the dead and stood transfixed as He ascended bodily into heaven.

Here he is as an old man. What motivates you and gives you hope?


  • Bible Verses on the Father’s Love.
  • 41 Bible Verses about the Father - leondumoulin.nl.
  • Resurrection.

Some things grow commonplace over time. Maybe at first, when it was new, an idea or experience affected us. It should consume our thoughts and control our behavior. It should motivate us to serve God and to live holy lives.

Love Between Father And Son

It should give us comfort in all our trials. It should fill us with the eager hope of being with Him in heaven. It should fill us with awe and worship, that He, the holy sovereign of the universe, would set His love on a sinful, self-willed rebel like me! But, also, behold is a command. Look at this Think about it!

Ponder the significance of it! He uses the illustration that if you had a friend in Australia, but you never thought about this friend and never communicated with him, that friendship would fade and not have much significance in your life. For the friendship to affect you, you must think often about this friend and what he means to you. Maclaren also points out that such thought always requires great effort. We all have too many other things crowding into our daily lives.

If we do not deliberately take the time and effort to block out all of these pressing things and to focus on what God has done for us in Christ, His great love will get crowded out of our thoughts and daily lives. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Most Relevant Verses

Those qualities should increasingly describe your relationships with others, beginning with those that you live with. Where would you be if God made up excuses for why He should withhold His love from you? He would have been completely justified to leave you in your sins, with no remedy. But, instead, He so loved you that He sent His only begotten Son to bear the penalty that you justly deserved. All of biblical parenting can be summed up in one sentence: Love your children as the heavenly Father loves you.

Such love involves proper correction and discipline, of course. But, I think that most Christian parents fall short primarily in the realm of love, not discipline. God lavished His love and grace on us in Jesus Christ. As Christian parents—especially as fathers—we need to lavish grace and love on our children.

It will motivate them to follow Christ far more than strict rules ever will. I am saying that if your children feel your love for them, the need for rules is greatly diminished. Stop and behold it often!

How The Father Loves Us

Rather, it is purely a gift that comes from His undeserved favor, or grace. Paul emphasizes this in Romans 5. First he says 5: His great love is demonstrated in that He sent His Son to die for us while we were in such an awful condition! But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved , and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

God is under no obligation to save us. He could have left us, as He left the fallen angels, with no way of salvation.


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  • 18 Bible verses about Love Between Father And Son.
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He justly condemned them to the eternal fire without any chance to repent and be saved. But, instead, He set His great love on us to raise us from spiritual death to life, and even more than that, to make us His beloved children through the new birth! Paul ends that great chapter, Romans 8, with these triumphant words 8: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All you can do is receive it. The Father offers such great love to all who will receive it. Because God has bestowed His great love on us, we are now called children of God. He imparts new life to us, so that we are raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. We actually become partakers of the divine nature 2 Pet. But, we share His very life. This takes away all ground for boasting and leaves us bowing in adoration and awe, that the Father would bestow His great love on us apart from anything in us.