“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:4-7)
All through this pandemic year we have waited on God, orshould have. We feared the worst but clung to our hope in God to carry us through this chaos. This is because, despite what is occurring around us, we know that God loves us and is using the crisis to draw us closer to Him as well as to call unbelievers to repentance and faith. After all, God has been faithful to His people over centuries of years. He promised to be with His people. He promised to redeem them. And at Christmas we celebrate the fulfillment of those promises. The Messiah has come and has saved us from our sin and its penalty.
So with Paul we cry those great and comforting words: “Abba! Father!” These words affirm our faith as they help us to grasp the loving relationship the Lord has with us. They remind us that the Lord is carrying us in His loving arms through the pandemic. He will protect and comfort us and lead us into His Heavenly Kingdom.
This is the Good News we must share with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones who do not have this relationship, that they too may cry out “Abba! Father.” Our modern media driven culture teaches us that everybody is a child of God, a member of His family. Yet the Word of God tells us something different: only those who have faith, who believe that Jesus is God andthat He died for our sins, are members of God’s family. God imparts His Holy Spirit into the heart of every believer, so only they are members of God’s family. Only those who have the Holy Spirit of God can call Him Father, and they are members of His family, the Church.
Therefore, when we look at other people in the Church we look at them as brothers and sisters because we are related through the Spirit, through Jesus. We have the same Father. So as we are truly members of God’s family we must love all those in our family. As we enter a new year, we must resolve by God’s grace to pray and do good things for everyone in that family. We must get along with them and love them despite our differences in language, customs, ethnicity, and race. After all we have the same Father.