A Father's Love

A little girl lost her new diamond ring in the sand at recess. When she got home and told her father, he did not scold her for burying the ring in the sand. He simply smiled and took her back to the playground where they spent hours cheerfully sifting through the sand before finally finding it. The little girl’s eyes filled with tears as he put the ring back on her finger.

Dick Hoyt was the father of a man diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. One day, using a special computer that enabled him to communicate, the son asked his dad to push him in a 5-mile benefit run. Little did they know that this would be the start of something special. The two ended up completing over a thousand races, including Boston Marathons, Ironman Triathlons, and a coast-to-coast trek. Dick said he was simply “loaning” his arms and legs to his son.

These two stories epitomize a father’s love. What else would lead a man to sift through sand for hours pleasantly or push a wheelchair in a thousand races persistently? They are also a microcosm of an even greater love from even greater father.

God knew what awaited his Son. He knew they would spit in his face, strike him on the head, strip off his clothes, and sarcastically kneel before him. He knew that his Son would be scourged, spiked, and speared. None of it was a surprise. All of it was expected. From the stumbling Savior trying to carry his own cross to the scoffing soldiers casting lots for his garments to the sobbing sisters watching in the distance, this horror scene had played out in God’s mind many times. Yet he allowed it to happen for us.

God’s love is too great to describe with words. It is beyond the limits of human language. He “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us” (Romans 8:32). What earthly father would give up his son for someone else? Yet God did just that. As John wrote, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins… And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:9-10, 14). Notice that God sent Jesus (1) that we might live through him, (2) to be the propitiation for our sins, and (3) to be the Savior of the world. He loved us that much!

To benefit from the Father’s love, we must obey the gospel. This includes believing in Jesus, repenting of our sins, confessing our faith before others, and being immersed in water for the forgiveness of our sins (John 8:24; Luke 13:3; Romans 10:10; Acts 2:38). Have you done that?