Truth For Life

Alistair Begg: You call God Father. Not everyone can. So what distinguishes the person who can call the Lord of all creation by such an intimate term from those who can't? Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg searches the Bible for the answer and considers what it means to know God as your heavenly Father.

I invite you to turn again to Ephesians 4, and our focus now today is on verse 6: one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. To you, our Father, we come in Jesus' name and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit now, that we might understand and believe the Bible and live in the light of its truth. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

Paul's statement which begins in verse 4 and runs to the end of verse 6 has been our focus now for some time. We have been purposefully delayed in this, as Paul has issued an exhortation to the believers to whom he writes, first in Ephesus and now to all who are the recipients of this letter in reading it. He's urged them to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. They're going to have to rely on the Spirit of God to enable them to be humble and gentle and patient. How much we need that, don't we?

Then he says this unity in the spirit is built on a kind of sevenfold foundation, and we've come now to the last aspect of it. This unity, we've tried to say in each of our studies, is not a natural unity. In other words, he's not describing here a unity that is on the basis of opinion or of shared interests or of mutual feelings, the kind of unity that can be created in all kinds of contexts if people try hard enough.

Rather, he's talking about a supernatural unity, a unity that is known by those who, as you look down at the text, have God as their Father, who have one Lord and Savior, who are indwelt by the one Holy Spirit and who in essence have discovered that this unity is in Christ. That's why it's important always to keep context in view, to remind ourselves every so often of those to whom he writes. Right at the very beginning, at the top of his letter, as it were, he's not addressing just everybody and anybody in Ephesus.

As you will see from the first verse of the letter, he's addressing his letter to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. I think we all know by now that when the New Testament uses that word "saint," it's not referring to an elite group of people who have tried to live their lives as good as they possibly can and then finally are called saints when they've died. Rather, it is a description of those who believe in the Lord Jesus, the ordinary believers who have been set apart by God for His purposes.

So it is to these people who are part of this one body indwelt by this one spirit that he reminds them that there is one God and Father of all. We'll save the second half of the verse for this evening, but for now, let's just try and tackle one God and Father of all and try and tackle it by asking and answering three questions. First of all, to whom does the "all" refer? Secondly, how are we to understand "one God"? And thirdly, what does it mean to call God Father?

I'll give you these in turn. To what does the "all" refer? It's an important question because we have to determine whether he's making a statement similar to what he makes when, in speaking to the intelligentsia in Athens, he reminds them that God is the creator of the world and everything in it. Is this reference then to all that God has made, to everything in the world? He's already made reference to that in verse 9 of chapter 3. He brings light for everyone, the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

Is this when it says one God and Father of all, does he mean he's the Father of all things, that he's the Father of all men by way of creation? Which of course is true, but is that what he's saying here? The way we understand that is by context once again. Paul is addressing himself very clearly to those who are in Christ. He is not then all of a sudden giving voice to a kind of expression of the universal brotherhood of man. He's the God and Father of all, a bit like the folk songs of the 60s.

Nor is he espousing a kind of liberal perspective, the kind of perspective that is found where theologians have decided that they don't like the idea that only those who are in Christ may be addressing God as Father in this way. So they'll tell people as they listen to the Bible being taught, don't worry about anything or what you believe or who you are or where you're from because after all, it says in the Bible that there is one God, the Father of all. Since you are part of the all, therefore he must redemptively be your Father.

I hope you know your Bible better by now so that you can understand that that can't be the case because the New Testament is making clear to us and Paul specifically here, that God is our Father only in and through Christ. To know God redemptively is to know Him in Christ. So if we are not in Christ by grace through faith, then we do not know God as our Father redemptively and therefore we are not part of this all.

You say that doesn't seem very nice when we're talking about unity in the spirit. It sounds rather divisive to me. Well, if I might say so reverently, take it up with the Lord Jesus. He is the one who made the distinction so very, very clearly. He did so not in order that He might exclude us, but in order that He might call us to Himself.

Paul has made this clear all the way through. If you look for example at verse 11 of chapter 2 where he says, "Remember that at one time," and then again in verse 12, "Remember you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated, strangers to the covenants," and so on. That's volume one, he says. That was your life, that described you. You were not in Christ. Verse 13 rather, "But now in Christ, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ."

Volume one, alienated and outside of Christ. Volume two, in Christ and reconciled. So let's be very clear. Paul, when he writes in this way, one God and Father of all, is not discussing God's relationship to the universe or to nature. He does that elsewhere, but he's not doing it here. He is describing the relationship of the family of believers, those who come from both a far-off background as Gentiles and those who come from a closer background as Jews.

They have been brought near, he says in verse 18 of chapter 2, both having access in one spirit to the Father. So you are no longer aliens and strangers, but you're fellow citizens, you're members of the household, you're stones in the building. You may recall when we went through all of that. In other words, he says it is to you that I am writing this, calling you to unity. You who have come to bow beneath the one Lord, you who are indwelt by the one spirit, you who have one hope, one calling, you folks are those who know that there is one God and Father of all.

Paul drives home the reality of what it means to be in Christ in all of his letters by using various pictures and metaphors. I want to reference just one with you in the hope that it will be of help. If you go back to chapter 1 and verse 7, he says in him, that is again in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight and so on. He can hardly stop himself, it just goes on and on and on, gets higher and higher and more wonderful.

Just think about this for a minute. You meet the average man in the street and you say, "Do you know God?" He'll say, "I'm not sure I do." You meet somebody in the street and you say to him or her, "Do you know God?" He says to you, "Oh yes, I know God. He's my Father. In Jesus I have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of my sins. He has forgiven my trespasses, he's done it because of the riches of his grace which he has lavished upon me in Christ Jesus." You say, "Oh, I think you do know God. I guess you know God the way in which God has revealed himself."

So you see this idea, if there's one God and Father of all, therefore we all know God, therefore we're all fine, therefore there's nothing to worry about, is not what Paul is saying here. It's not what the New Testament says. It's very important we understand that. This redemption picture is a vital picture because what it teaches us, and the picture is in the Old Testament of redemption, remember, the shedding of blood bringing men and women out of the bondage of Egypt.

That is used as a picture in the New Testament of what it means to be in Christ, being brought out from the bondage of our own rebellious hearts and sin. By his death on the cross, Christ has purchased us back for God and has done so at the cost of his own blood. That's the message. When I was a boy in Scotland, our Sunday school teachers tried their best to teach us about redemption. I've never forgotten the attempt of one who told the story of a young boy who took a knife, took a piece of wood and carved for himself a boat.

He made it into a little sailboat, and he was proud of his boat, he loved his boat, he took it with him everywhere and he put it on the river and watched it sail. One day it just sailed away completely and never came back, and he lost it. From that time on, everywhere he went, he would look for it. I wonder where my boat is. I made that boat, I love that boat, I lost that boat, I want that boat.

One day as he's walking in the street, he looks in the front window of a secondhand shop and he sees his boat. Oh, he says. In he goes and says the man, "That's my boat in the front window. I want it back." The man said, "It'll cost you to have it back." But he said, "It's my boat." He said, "But it'll still cost you." So he paid the money and he took the boat and he walked out and he kept the boat beside him and he said to his boat, "Little boat, you are twice mine. I made you, I lost you, I searched for you, I found you, I bought you. You're twice mine."

Now the analogy breaks down, doesn't it? Because you've got nothing there of the bondage and so on. But nevertheless, I never forgot it. It might be helpful to you or to one of your children and your grandchildren. What does it mean that we have been redeemed? It means that in Christ, he is no longer simply a Father by creation in a generic sense, but he looks upon us and takes us to himself and he says, "You are twice mine. I made you, I sought you, I bought you, you're mine." This you see is what Paul is driving home here, one God and Father of all.

Second question, how are we then to understand one God? One God and Father of all. Well, we understand it humbly, properly, biblically. The Westminster Confession, section 2, part 1 of section 2, says there is only one living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection. There is only one living and true God.

When Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he says to them, "I'm able to encourage you because your faith has gone out. You're like a sounding board and the word has gone out concerning your faith and people in your community are aware of the fact that you have turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God." It wasn't that before they were not into gods. It wasn't that before they were irreligious, that denied spirituality. No, their minds were filled with all kinds of notions.

But when the light of the gospel shone into their hearts, showed them themselves, showed them Jesus as their Savior, brought them to the place whereby they were included in his family, they were no longer chasing after all these other gods. Why? Because they have been embraced by the living and the true God. Paul does the same thing when he writes to the Corinthians and they're talking there about food offered to idols in chapter 8 and he distinguishes in that context between the many so-called gods and the one God and Father.

Now this rung true for sure in the context of Ephesus. After all, if you remember, one of the great brouhahas in Ephesus was where the apostle and his friends, they were caught up in this vast crowd that was shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians, great is Artemis of the Ephesians." So the Ephesians every day were aware of the fact that there were all kinds of deities that were open to them. There were gods that you could consult for this, gods you could consult for that, and so on.

Finley, the old commentator, says that they had a swarm of motley deities, that they had access to a vulgar pantheon of worthless idols that had unsettled them and left them unsatisfied. That's one of the great tests of the reality of what it means to know God. There are all kinds of ways that we can embrace ideas and concepts of divinity. But you say, Ephesus is a long way from here and we are not going to go out this morning and be confronted immediately by all this kind of idolatry and this motley pantheon.

Well, don't speak too soon because there is actually a significant continuity between 1st-century Ephesus and 21st-century Western culture. From the second half of the 20th century on, from about the 1950s, what we have witnessed is a vast increased secularization of our culture, both in the British Isles and also here in the United States of America. It would be hard to argue against it.

But in the context of that, at the same time and parallel to it, we discover an increased interest in spirituality. It's not difficult to have a conversation with somebody. Previously our next-door neighbors might say, mine from a scientific background who's now gone, bless his memory, but he used to say to me, "Alistair, I'm a scientific rationalist. I don't have any place for the kind of thing you're talking about." But before he died he did, because his scientific rationalism was an idol, it was not a deity that actually answered any of his questions.

It just unsettled him and left him unsatisfied. So what do we find? That by nature, you've gotta serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody. So we construct spiritualities that fit us, tailor-made to our own hopes and aspirations, according to our own intuition about the meaning of life. Part of the framework of that is that in the embracing of the idea of the multi and the many, there is a wholesale rejection of the idea of the one.

So the idea of there is one God and Father of all, people say, well, that cannot be the case. Why not? Because we know that there are so many different possibilities and so on. Well, read your Bible and what do you discover? The Hebrews start out: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What did they do? They say, "I don't really want to do that."

They've got a much more exciting program over here. They've got a golden calf, there's dancing, there's all kinds of stuff. What about these other pagan deities? What about these Baals? What about these Asherah poles? Suddenly those who know better begin to pursue false deities. The role of the psalmist and the role of the prophet is to say to them, "Come on now, you know better than that. You know that there is only one true and living God. Why would you chase after all these substitute gods? Why would you try and bow down before them?"

Choose this day whom you will serve. If Baal is God, then serve him. But if God is God, then serve him. Do you want to serve the gods of our fathers on the other side or do you want to serve the living and the true God? Fast-forward into the New Testament and what is Paul doing? He's doing the exact same thing. He's calling the people of his day to the one true and living God.

Now we need to be clear about this. To declare with Paul that there is one true and living God, face up to this we must, is to reject the cultural spirituality of our time, a spirituality which is increasingly pantheistic, a spirituality which confuses God with nature, which contains God within nature. We could illustrate it all over the place, there's no need to, I think we understand this fairly well.

But when we declare with Paul here that there is one God and Father of all, that he is upholding the universe that he created, that he is omnipresent, that he is everywhere, that he pervades every corner of life, and that he is at the same time tri-personal, then we realize that when people want to talk about God and knowing God and who God is, there's a great need for us to be willing to take a stand.

But you see, I'm sitting with my Jewish friends and I say to them, "You say that Jesus is not the Messiah, I say he is. We can't both be right." Pause. "Well, we all know God in our own way, after all, there's only one God, he's the God." Now what are you going to do at that point? You're going to go, "No he's not," or you're just going to have to say, "Father, you're the only one that opens blind eyes and softens hard hearts." But the illustrations abound in the attempts of those even from that context who are struggling with this very question.

You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair has titled today's message "One God and Father of All." We'll hear the conclusion tomorrow. As you study along with us on Truth For Life, you are part of a large family of listeners who are learning from God's Word through this daily program. We recently heard from Joanne, who wrote to say, "I am listening and learning around the clock and can't begin to express how important Alistair's gospel teaching continues to be to my growth as a Christian. Thank you for this wonderful ministry."

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