Believing the Father

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)

I just noticed this unique statement about believing in the Father as well as the Son. Maybe it is not so unique because it is mentioned elsewhere, but it is not emphasized to the degree that maybe it should be in the thinking of many people.

We tend to put more weight on believing in Jesus than we do in finding out the real truth about the Father. And I suspect that this just might be the way Satan wants it to be. For considering many of the horrendous ideas about God that most people have mingled all through their thinking and belief systems, most people's beliefs about Jesus look very good by comparison.

But this is precisely one of the reasons why Jesus came to this earth in the first place – to reveal the truth about the heart of the Father and that the Head of the Godhead, the Father of all light and truth and goodness and love is no different in the slightest iota from how Jesus feels toward us or how He relates to sinners.

Most Christians have far less trouble believing that Jesus is good and that He cares about them than they do in believing that God the Father is equally loving and caring and kind and gracious. Satan has effectively managed to segregate our ideas about Jesus and the Father to a great extent, and much of that has taken place at a deeper level than most of us are even conscious of to a great degree. This has been Satan's scheme from the very beginning, to cause a rift in the thinking of intelligent beings all throughout the universe, to insinuate doubt and drive a wedge between our ideas of God the Father and Christ the Son in the minds of all. He has also led us to believe that justice and mercy are opposites, that grace and kindness are somehow incompatible with straight truth and righteousness and fairness.

Satan has largely accomplished, through the vehicle of religion in particular, that which he started out to do since the very inception of sin in his mind – to cause doubts in the minds of as many as possible as to the real truths about reality, either in our ideas of the character and authority of the Son of God or through false beliefs about the character and intentions of God the Father.

In heaven where it was much more obvious that the Father was all-powerful and the supreme ruler of the universe, Lucifer focused on discrediting the reputation of the Son and managed to effectively convince one third of the angels of God to embrace his assertions about the illegitimacy of the Son. In many ways he has continued that campaign on earth, but in some ways he has tweaked it to include many more lying reports about the Father. Because it is not nearly so clear to humans that God the Father is the one in ultimate control over the entire universe as it is to angels, Satan has been able to use myriads of lies to confuse and darken the hearts of most people to cause them to view the great God of the universe as one who is bent on harming them every chance He can get.

I firmly believe that this discourse by Jesus is a direct attack against the fundamental lies of Satan that were initiated from the very beginning of the controversy between Himself and Lucifer – Satan's original name in heaven. One of the main assertions that Lucifer had put forward was that Christ did not have the same authority as the Father God and thus he implied that it was Christ that was trying to exalt Himself to be equal with God, not Lucifer as is revealed in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Satan the accuser has long sought to project his own evil characteristics onto the reputation of God or of Christ all throughout the long history of rebellion. He managed to convince nearly half of the angels in heaven of his slanderous assertions and enticed them to join him in his attempt to overthrow the kingdom of Christ in heaven. Then later on this earth he continued his massive campaign of deception quite effectively by inducing Adam and Eve to buy into his lying assertions about God's intentions towards them and deceived them into turning over their authority to him along with that of every succeeding human being ever to be born on this planet.

As a result of that coup d'etat by Satan and his subsequent claim to legitimate authority over this earth, the controversy was ramped up to a new level and God introduced an even broader plan to counteract the counterfeit system of governance that Satan insisted was better than government under the Son. The foundation of Satan's government is selfishness itself and Satan managed to inculcate this principle of selfishness into the very fabric of every human being born with the embedded lies of evil which were introduced into our gene pool by the introduction of sin. God had to come back with a plan to salvage the human race in such a way as to not legitimize any of the lies of Satan about God but to vindicate the real truth about the character of God that had come into serious question in the minds of many.

So what is becoming evident to me in this verse is the point that Jesus and God the Father have no difference whatsoever between them as far as their attitude and feelings and intentions toward their created children. Satan has long sought to promote his lies that somehow there were differences between the Father and the Son, and he has sought to insinuate those claims from every angle possible. But Jesus and the Father both have been working quietly behind the scenes and at other times rather openly to discredit the lies of Satan and to undo the enormous damage caused by sin all throughout the universe and especially here on this dark planet.

The jealousy and animosity of Lucifer – now known as Satan – has only amplified throughout the succeeding ages since he first began his rebellion in heaven. Most of his animosity and hatred has been directed toward the Son of God and he has done everything he can think of to discredit the authority of the Son. But instead of resorting to the methods of Satan by indulging in force or self-vindication or any arbitrary means to suppress the rebellion and the lies being spread about them, the Father and the Son have chosen the long, painful but more perfect path of allowing this rebellion to play out to its fullest extent possible; they have chosen to let evil be exposed in the face of perfect, selfless love and to allow all involved to clearly see the stark difference between living life based on selfishness compared to life based on perfect love.