Who is My Father?

You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

...He speaks from his own nature.... (John 8:44)

I see Jesus talking here about the core issue that all of us struggle with, at least if we really take salvation seriously. It is the problem of appreciating and grasping our true identity and value.

Each person born on this planet is born into sin. We inherit sin from our parents and we also cultivate it through the many habits we acquire as we grow up. Sin is both a misperception of reality as well as the belief that we can live independently, that satisfaction and thriving and life can be found outside of dependence on our heavenly Father, that we somehow can find life in some other source. All of this is based on the foundational lies that were invented by Satan and there is no way we can escape the effect these lies have had on us except through divine intervention on the part of Jesus.

Having been born in sin we all start out with the devil as our initial father spiritually. Remember, the word spiritual simply means having to do with our spirit, not necessarily religion. Everyone has a spirit and everyone is affected by spirits around them, both other people's and supernatural spirits both good and evil. The spirit realm of our existence is actually where the most intense and threatening conflict is taking place, not in our physical realm as we so often assume. It is in our spirit where the greatest battles take place and is the arena primarily addressed by Scriptures, especially the New Testament. The mistaken idea that truth is only fact-based, left-brained, logical and disconnected from emotions is one of the problems of many religious people. Our emotions are usually the symptoms of the condition of our spirit and while we should not allow them to dominate or control us, we do need to pay attention to what they are revealing about our spirit.

Our fundamental problem is that since we have grown up believing the lies of Satan both by default and through the result of many experiences in our life that were misinterpreted either by us and/or by those around us, we all live life to some degree under the influence of Satan's lies about God, about ourselves and about reality. Satan by default is our first father because he snatched that role from Adam when Adam ceded it to him through disobedience in the Garden. Then as the vicarious father of all mankind, the devil lost no time in infusing his own nature into the very genes of humanity so deeply that it became impossible for any human to escape its effect on their own. Humans simply have lost the capacity to even know what is real and true and life-giving or to live that way because much of their very nature by default reflects the nature of the devil. And since the devil is the originator of sin to start with, then being reflectors of the father of sin and deception means that our nature is going to be hopelessly held hostage by the sin embedded in our very psyche and there is no way we can extricate ourselves from this situation.

Jesus is the only human since Adam and Eve that was not born on this planet subject to this condition. It is true that He took upon Himself the weakened nature and the physical effects of depreciation in the body of humans after four thousand years of the effects of sin, but He did not assume humanity's penchant for sin, the inherent rebellion in our nature that hopelessly traps sinners. This is because He did not come to show us how to extricate ourselves from sin through more effort with help from God; He came to reveal to us the truth about who God really is and the real truth about our identity as heaven values us. In short, He came to relate to us that in His revelation we can perceive our infinite value because we are all viewed as sons and daughters of God, no longer under the tyranny of Satan.

Jesus is stating in this passage another fundamental principle of reality, those concepts we more often refer to as laws. This principle is this: who our hearts reflect defines our real father and in turn determines how we treat others. Our ultimate identity is formed by this relation to our chosen father and determines the attributes that our lives will reflect. A father is the source, according to this universal principle, that each person emulates in their life. A person is generally known by the family characteristics that they reflect, and in the spiritual aspect this is even more true.

But then why is it that these highly religious people who staunchly claimed God as their father were in reality still reflecting the devil so much so that Jesus had to plainly tell them that their father was really the devil? What was the underlying problem that so blinded them that they couldn't even tell who their real father was?

Satan employs this principle as part of his diabolical schemes against us. He has so distorted our ideas about God whom we claim to emulate, so thoroughly infected nearly every concept of God we believe and teach that while firmly believing that we are following the true God we are in fact reflecting an impostor, a distortion of God. These false views so thoroughly saturate our world that we don't even see that many of them are false. We infuse our assumptions about God so much so into our belief systems and teachings about Him that in essence we create a God more in our own image rather than discovering who He really is and what He wants to reveal to us objectively. This is one of the most successful schemes of the enemy that keeps us in his bondage while assuming that we are living in God's favor and are serving Him.

Remember, Jesus was not speaking to heathen here when He identified them as children of the devil. He was talking to the most advanced religious people on the planet, ones descended from chosen men of God that had received some of the greatest revelations about God over many centuries. These men were great scholars of the Word of God and knew it backwards and forwards. Many of them had memorized great portions of the Scriptures and were expert theologians. They had the degrees and were experts with more knowledge of history and religion than anyone else on earth. Many of them were meticulous in their quest for perfecting their lives through obedience to God's commands. They spent countless hours and enormous effort trying to eradicate sin from their lives. In short, they had taken very seriously the route to holiness that many of us are trying to follow all the way to its extreme. And yet Jesus said that from heaven's perspective they were still children of the devil desiring to do what the devil desires to do.

If this is not a wake-up call for me and all who want to take religion seriously, then we are living in darkness. We spend so much time arguing about religion that we have little time left to listen to the words of Jesus warning us of our own blindness. We are just as much in danger of thinking that we are not deceived, that we are somehow more enlightened than they, that we have more truth than they did and that we are not in danger of being deluded like they were. But that very attitude is itself a strong symptom of blindness. If I am not willing to honestly expose my heart and mind to the searching examination of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to continue to expose lies in my soul to be removed and replaced with His truth, then I am still living out the nature of my initial father, the devil.

The good news is that Jesus came to this earth to announce that the devil does not have to remain our father a minute longer. Through the adoption worked out for all of us in Jesus Christ our Savior, each one of us can experience the transforming power in our lives that comes from having a new Father. If we consent to be disciplined and loved and nurtured and healed by our new Father and His family, our lives will begin to reflect our new identity and our old nature will be put into the prison in which our hearts were kept for so many years. When I choose to embrace my new identity living under the authority of a new Father, I not only receive incredible privileges and honor but I also assume responsibilities as I grow in maturity in the family with God as my Father. But I must choose to be a part of this family, for God is not in the business of forcing anyone to live under His authority. God's family is exclusively for those who value the freedom of love and learn to appreciate the inherent power of that freedom. To believe anything less than that is to corrupt and violate the principles of truth and freedom that love encompasses and that would return us to our old father of sin.

A few verses before this Jesus spoke to some people around Him briefly who were so influenced by what they were hearing that they were choosing to engage in true belief. In essence, they were choosing to join His family. He said something to them that is significant from this perspective of who they would view as their true father. So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:31-32) Later He explained that it is the Son who must make you free. You see, it really is all about family connections and who you believe is your real Dad. For whomever your heart reflects is the father that your life will turn out to look like.

A father is the person that you allow to disciple you. The word disciple and discipline are nearly identical words, not just phonetically but in meaning as well. When we have a true perception of positive discipline then we can begin to appreciate living as a disciple under the parenting and authority of a loving Father who is seeking to grow us up in maturity in every aspect of our lives as we more and more reflect what He is like.

This whole passage is filled with references to who people claimed to be their true father. Jesus said that God was His true Father but the Jews strongly insinuated that they believed He was born because His mother had committed fornication with some man out of wedlock (verse 41). At the same time, these Jews claimed both God and Abraham as their supposed father but Jesus challenged that claim and exposed their mistaken assumptions by pointing out that their actions spoke louder than claims. From heaven's view, our father is the one that our lives and attitudes reflect, not the one who physically produces us with our mother. Jesus reveals that we actually can choose a new father if we truly desire to do so.

According to the words of Jesus just quoted above, part of making God our real and effective Father requires that we continue in His Word. As we continue to abide in the Word – which in other places is identified as Jesus Himself – our lives will begin to reflect more and more the family attributes that emerge from truly living in the family of God. We are infused with a new nature even though our old nature will rise up in vicious conflict with it repeatedly. We will enter into an intense battle in our spirit between our fallen nature and the new nature born of God. Our choices in each of these battles to embrace our identity from our Father in heaven will strengthen and mature us to look and act and feel more like Christ. It all rests on what we choose to believe and embrace our true identity and how much we are willing to have our ideas about God transformed by the Word of God and His Spirit.

Father, I know how much my heart struggles to believe not only the real truth about You but even more to believe that You are my real Father. My own father here on earth tried his best to raise me to be a good religious person, but he didn't realize the importance of a personal relationship with You. As a result my heart got severely damaged and my concepts about fathers was very distorted.

I passed along the same problems to many others, especially my own children that still view You with suspicion because of my poor example. I invite You by the authority of Your Son who covers all of my sin with His blood, to entice the hearts of my children and reveal to them the real truth about You that I failed to show them. Share with them what You are really like, that You are not abusive and dogmatic and demanding like they think You are. Reveal Yourself to them and to me even more clearly so that our lives will begin to reflect Your heart more accurately and attract others to want to know You for themselves.

This is Your glory – to take messed up, guilty, screwed-up sinners like us who have believed and spread so many nasty things about You and turn us into loyal children living together in love and beauty as Your family. Thank-you so much for the incredible privilege of being Your child. Now, please convince my heart of that truth as well as my head, for Your reputation's sake and for Your glory, Amen.