Category Archives: Book Reviews

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Two – Jesus The Model Son

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CHAPTER TWO

Jesus the Model Son

Before the Father created His human son and daughter, He had a blueprint, His own Son who was designated to become the Son from the beginning of creation.

But when did Jesus become the Son? As the second person of the Trinity before His incarnation, He was equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Intrinsic to God’s plan was the voluntary self-emptying of the second person of the Trinity in order to become the Son. He had to be a perfect model of the son that Adam failed to be in order to be a perfect substitute for mankind when He sacrificed His life on the cross to pay man’s debt of sin.

It was He who interacted with His people before His incarnation, revealing Himself first to Abraham and the patriarchs, and to Moses. It was He who led them through the wilderness and spoke to His people through the prophets. He finally came in person to represent and reveal the Father so that His people would know who the Father really was.

Through the dynamic language of the ancient Hebrew people, which was expressed through action rather than abstract thoughts, He revealed Himself as the one who had strength and authority and who nourished them as a nanny goat would nourish her kid. As the Son of God, He would “continue the house’, and teach those who followed Him to do the same.

As a true Son, He lived in perfect union, submission and obedience to the Father even to His death on the cross.

It was this model that the Father chose for the human beings He created to follow because He designed the human race to live in union with Him and in harmony with one another as a family, and in harmony with the created world over which we were to rule in obedience to Him.

God had already made provision for Adam’s failure before the creation of the universe He would sent the second person of the Trinity, who would become the Son to rescue mankind from destruction and restore us to fellowship with Himself through the life and death of the Son.

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter One – Sonship God’s Original Design

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LEARNING TO BE A SON

CHAPTER ONE

Sonship – God’s Original Design

God’s dream was to create a family, sons and daughters who would resemble Him and be one with Him and who would be His vice-regents to rule over the earth. His plan was that all people would be His children. Even when Adam fell and was driven from God’s presence in disgrace, he was still God’s son, just as the prodigal in Jesus’ story remained the son of the father even when he rebelled and left home.

The father in the story did not disown him. He waited for his erring son to return and welcomed him home with joy because his lost son had been found. No matter how far God’s human family runs from Him, we can never be “unborn” because, as the offspring of Adam, whom Luke described as “the son of God”; (Luke 3:38), we are all sons and daughters of God.

Paul acknowledged this by quoting a Greek poet in Acts 17: 28 – We are all His offspring.

The older son was equally “lost”, not because he ran away but because he was estranged from the father by having a slave-mentality. Like the Pharisees who despised “sinners”, the older son refused to rejoice when his brother returned home because he was more concerned about his brother’s behaviour than his standing as a son.

God had reasons for creating the human race. Apart from His desire to give His love to a family, He had to sort out an issue with Satan. God created the angelic host to be “sons of God’, but Lucifer, the highest of the angelic beings who became Satan, had designs on God’s throne. He was evicted from God’s presence and thrown down upon the earth. It was his plan to entice the human race away from love and loyalty to the Father to exert his rule over the earth through them.

Through the nation of Israel, it was God’s intention to reveal His true nature to the entire human race and to prepare them to receive His Messiah who would redeem humanity from slavery to the devil and restore and reinstate them into the family of God. Israel failed to fulfil its mission, but God always preserved a faithful remnant through whom He would send His Son.

Through judgement and discipline God dealt with Israel’s waywardness. He never gave up on them because Israel was His firstborn “son”. From the beginning He had planned and promised that He would send His Messiah to rescue them from bondage to sin.

But God’s promises to Israel extended beyond the boundaries of one nation. God’s love was for the whole world. His promises were made to the Gentiles as well. Not only did He call Israel His son; Egypt and Assyria, symbolic of the worst of Israel’s enemies, were to be included in the promise of blessing (Isa. 19: 24-25).

Can it be, then, that God has included the whole world, even those who reject Him and worship false gods, in His family? The Scripture concludes that all are potentially the sons of God, sons by birth and relationship but estranged from God through sin, rebellion and unbelief. Those who have received Jesus and believed on His name have been given the right to become children of God experientially (John 1:12), but the door is open for everyone to take their rightful place as His children through His mercy and forgiveness in Christ.

Through Jesus He set up His rescue plan so that those who are at enmity with Him may be reconciled through Jesus’ blood shed on the cross. Those who refuse His offer of mercy must accept the consequences of their choice, but it is their choice, not God’s that they face eternal judgment and destruction instead of the love of God’s eternal family.

 

Learning To Be A Son – The Way To The Father’s Heart

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LEARNING TO BE A SON – THE WAY TO THE FATHER’S HEART

For several months I have advertised my debut book, “Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart”. I believe it’s time to pique your interest by giving you a glimpse into the content of the book.

First of all, I must tell you why I wrote it. A few years ago I was encouraged by a friend to spend a month studying one chapter of the Bible. I chose Luke’s Gospel and inched my way through chapter one with great enjoyment and profit; so I carried on into chapter two and three and eventually to the end of the book which probably took me a year or more, nearer two, I think.

At about the same time I was introduced to the teaching of a young American preacher by another friend which became a turning point in my understanding of the Bible. This young preacher had studied under a rabbi, a Messianic Jew who was also a Christian minister. What he had to say was life-changing for me as he explained many aspects of the Bible from the ancient Hebraic language and culture, which made sense to me as never before.

I also discovered a scholar of the ancient Hebrew language – Paleo Hebrew – on the internet and, through reading some of his work, I was faced with the truth that much of what I had understood and believed had no foundation in Scripture. Talk about having to change my mind! These events sent me on a quest to read and understand the Bible from the perspective of the ancient writers and not from my own western scientific and philosophical imposition on the Scriptures.

Now don’t get me wrong. I did not become a Hebrew scholar by any means, but I did lean heavily on the scholarship of others. As I pursued Luke’s story, and then later on the other three gospels, I began to realise how far the church has strayed from the simplicity of Jesus’ teaching and mission.

His primary purpose was to reveal the God of Israel who had been buried under all the baggage of Judaism. It was His passion to reveal to His people the one name by which they did not know God – the name “Father”. This was His all-encompassing mission which included His way of life, His teaching, His miracles, His death and His resurrection, all of which were a revelation of what God the Father is really like.

Why was it so important that His people understood that God was their Father? It was God’s intention to create a race of human beings to be His sons and daughters and who would relate to Him as a Father. Luke even called Adam “the son of God” in his genealogy of Jesus, linking the Messiah to the first man God created. Because sin alienated God’s children from Him, Jesus came to deal with sin so that the human race could be reconciled to their Father and be restored to fellowship with Him in His family.

Jesus lived on earth as the model of a perfect son, to qualify as our substitute when He paid the debt for our sin but also to show us how to be sons and daughters of God.  it is on the basis of sonship that we have access to the Father and that we are privileged to have a share in His nature, His resources, His kingdom, a home, an name and an inheritance.

Like the password we use to have access to many of the benefits of the internet, so it is the “password” – son or daughter of God – that gives us access to all the benefits of being a member of God’s family. Prayer is the privilege of sons. It is the way in which we gain access to the Father, and to His heart and mind as we live in the world to do His will and to extend His kingdom on earth.

My book explores reason why every human being whether he is aware of it or not, is a son of God; the way to access and enjoy our sonship; the nature of Jesus who is the model son, and the privileges and responsibilities of being sons and daughters of God. Our role as sons and daughters is to follow Jesus, as He called His disciples to do, so that we can learn to be imitators of our elder brother.

In the next few weeks we shall explore the contents of each chapter of the book in the hopes that your appetite will be so whetted that you will want to buy your own copy.