The Father’s Name

THERE is a very important difference between the revelation of God as the heavenly Father in Matthew’s gospel, and the full unfolding of the Father Psalms 16:3, which is presented in the gospel by John.
Matthew presents the Lord Jesus as the Son of David, according to the prophecies of the Old Testament. In harmony with Psa. 16:3, we see Him at His baptism graciously entering into association with the believing company, in whom the Spirit of God was then working, by causing them to receive John’s testimony, and these He owned by this public act as the excellent of the earth in whom was all His delight. Having stooped in grace to associate Himself with such as personally needed the baptism of repentance, He was proclaimed from heaven as God’s beloved Son, in whom He was well-pleased.
Henceforth these believers were blessed, because this beloved Son had stooped to take up their cause, and He being in their midst, they had through Him the love and interest of heaven with them. This was their new place of privilege. It is developed in the sermon on the mount. There the Lord places them, as subjects of His kingdom in relation to His heavenly Father, and the precepts which He gives them flow from this place of blessing. In their conduct they were to exhibit the goodness and mercy of their heavenly Father, whom He declared to them; and in every circumstance of trial and difficulty they were to confide in their heavenly Father’s love and tare.
If we search the Old Testament, we shall not find a saint who ever expressed himself in this nearness to God. There is no such thought there, as a believer knowing that he had a Father in heaven, whose love to him was to be the measure of his own gracious walk towards the unthankful and the evil. Was the faith of the disciples brighter than that of the Old Testament saints? Quite otherwise. The increase of light and blessing flowed, not from any increase of faith, but from the blessed fact that God had visited His people in the person of His Son. Emmanuel, “God with us,” was in their midst.
The incarnate Son having associated Himself with men, He gave them to say, as man had never said before, “Our Father which art in heaven.” They could now draw near as men to God in heaven, displayed in the character of a Father; but they were not conscious of sonship through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost; for the atonement, whereby the great question of sin was settled, had not been wrought; neither had the Comforter been sent them from the Father, to give them the adoption of sons.
In John’s gospel we find a far deeper unfolding of the Father’s name. Here it is the personal relation of the only-begotten Son; that relationship which was His before all worlds. To the eye of faith the glory that shone from the Lord Jesus as the Word made flesh, was the glory of an only begotten Son with a Father. (John 1:14, Gr.) It was His own incomprehensible nearness as the eternal Son. “Veiled in flesh though “He was, the glory shone from Him as “the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.” (John 1:18.)
Hence in this gospel we find neither “heavenly Father,” nor “our Father.” Throughout the name of God as Father is blessedly declared, but solely in relationship to Jesus, as the only begotten Son. Others are not brought into association until He is risen from the dead.
In the first chapter, He is seen in the full glory of the Son of the Father. In chapter 3, the love of God to the world is declared in giving Him, ―His only-begotten Son. In chapter 6, it is His Father who gives Him, ―the true bread from heaven. In chapter 14, the heavenly house is His Father’s house. In chapter 17, eternal life is knowing His Father the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent. Throughout these chapters it is the Son revealing the Father, as He Himself knew Him.
When redemption is accomplished, and He has died to all connection with a world that neither knew Him nor His Father, He becomes, in resurrection, the living head of the family of God; and as He ascends to His Father, He declares, for the first time, that believers are His brethren, and that He ascends to His Father and to their Father. He, as the first-begotten from the dead, brings them into His own relationship to the Father; and this is entirely distinct from His graciously teaching them in the days of His flesh, that God was their heavenly Father.
Believers are now associated with Him, the first-born among many brethren, in His heavenly position in glory. He, the Sanctifier; and they, the sanctified (Heb. 2:11); and by participation in His eternal life, and being united to Him by the Holy Ghost, they receive the adoption of sons.
At the time Jesus was with them in the flesh, the disciples could say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” Now, consequent upon accomplished redemption, God having sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, believers can use the name Father in the nearness of the Son Himself.
Through the glorified Saviour, they have access by one Spirit in all that acceptance, which was personally His own, while He dwelt among men, as the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20.)
It is sweet to look to a heavenly Father in the trials and sorrows of an evil world, and to count on His interest in us, as those belonging to Jesus; but far deeper is the blessing of knowing that we are united in risen life by the Holy Ghost to the Son Himself, through His having borne our sins and having risen from the dead. We are thus placed by Him, according to His own acceptance, in that nearness to His Father, which was His unfailing joy as the man of sorrows in His journey through this world.
Many of God’s children have never gone beyond “the heavenly Father” of Matthew’s gospel, and have yet to learn that they stand in the relationship of sons through their union with the Son of God. Of this union He could speak, when on earth, as a future thing. He could say, indeed, to Philip, “Believe me that I am in the Father.” (John 14:20.) But He added, that when the Comforter was come, at that day they should know that He was in the Father; and, moreover, that they were in Him, and He in them. (John 14:20.)
They should not then merely address God as a Father in heaven, who cared for them upon earth, but they should know that they were in the Son, who was in the Father. They should not plead the name of Father merely for their needs as Christians, feeble disciples on earth, but they should know God Himself, in all the wonderful nearness of the Father of their Lord Jesus Christ. They should know Him in what He is to Christ. It is this unfolding of the Name of God in its deep and infinite excellency, and not merely as it met the earthly necessities of poor feeble disciples, which our Lord desired us to enjoy, when He said, “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26.)
And in conclusion let us remark that the unspeakable grace which puts us, as His saved ones, into His own relationship to the Father, places us also in His position towards the world. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (John 17:14, 16.)
The knowledge of God as our heavenly Father separates us from the cares and anxieties, and from the spirit of the nations of the world (Luke 12:30.) The knowledge of God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ separates us from the world itself. We are kept in His name from the evil of the world. (John 17:12, 15.) We judge by His name what is of the world. (1 John 2:16.) We overcome the world by believing that Jesus is the Son of God. (1 John 5:5.)
ABIDING in Christ is necessary for fruit-bearing.

Short Notes on Daniel.
No. 3.
Chapter 3. What particularly marks this chapter is the abuse by the Gentile power of the authority given to it by God: refusing to respect the conscience, disallowing His rights, pride of power, idolatry in religion, and making a law of unity in worship―religious oneness―thereby hoping to strengthen the kingdom. Nothing divides so much as a variety of creeds; and man, with his short-sighted wisdom, never rising higher than the things of this world, thus endeavoring to do away with this manifest cause of weakness, by disallowing all the rights of conscience of God in fact―laying His claim entirely on one side, and having set up a religion of its own, would insist on having it acknowledged by all men. We have, too, a perfect picture of what man will end in doing, ―the various principles of blasphemy which characterize the different heads of the Gentile monarchies in the book of Daniel, ―all reappear in the last day. In Rev. 13. we see the very thing done by the head of the revived Roman empire (the last of the four monarchies, as we have seen in chap. 2). An image is made of the beast, or political head, which the false prophet, or ecclesiastical head, (the one who develops himself more especially among Israel in the land as the Antichrist,) causes all to worship, as in this chapter, under penalty of death should they refuse. (Rev. 13:15.) It is a solemn thought, for it shows us what we are by nature; that the first use of the power given by God is to deny Him, to establish idolatry, thereby exalting man, who sets up a religion connected with politics for earthly purposes; and every system of man established on this ground of expediency, and connected with the nation, must bear, more or less, some connection with what we have here. It may not outwardly be so manifest, nevertheless the principles are the same, and, as we have already seen in Rev. 13, their end is identical. May God lead us to have more “understanding of the times,” so that when He comes, none of us may be found mixed up with any of those systems whose end we find so solemnly portrayed in a figure here, and literally in the chapter of Revelation we have referred to; but be found faithfully taking our place with Jesus “outside the camp;” the place of reproach it may be, but, if so, that of honor and blessing. There were however certain, we read, who would not worship this image, who feared God rather than man, — “Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego.” The will of God was peremptory to them, as it ever should be to the Christian. They were like Mordecai, who would not so much as nod the head to a man who was the enemy of God, one of those of whom it had been said by Him, (Deut. 23:3,) “that they should not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever,” but whose remembrance even was to be blotted out from under heaven. (Deut. 25:19.)
The course of these three men was clearly marked out. Where the heart’s allegiance to God is touched, or the rights of conscience interfered with, there can be only one path for the child of God, to stand by Him at all cost. And how blessed their answer to the king in reply to his impious statement, “Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hand?” “We are not careful to answer thee in this matter.” Like Peter and John in Acts 4, “Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” It was not a question with these faithful ones what the king either said or did to them. God’s will was supreme; He had their first claims, and like Paul, in Phil. 3, they were prepared to count “all things but loss.”
Faith in God, and obedience to Him, were just as absolute to them as was the king’s will to others. This gives us a third feature in the character of the faithful remnant. It is that which should characterize the faithful few at all times. In chapter 1 they do not defile themselves with the king’s meat (separation from the world). In chapter 2, they have the mind of God. (“Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.”) And here, in chapter 3, they are faithful in refusing to acknowledge any but Him.