Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him … “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father; …we have one Father, even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” – John 8:31ff
In this eleven-day exercise, we will meditate on what it means to be a father.
Fatherhood is not so much a job as it is an identity, a character, and a way of being. This exercise aims to help us grow into that fundamental identity.
To begin, we need to remember an important principle of the spiritual life: every one of us is in a serious fight for our identity.
The process of finding and growing into our true selves is an unavoidable battle.
Why is that? Because we are not yet fully created. God has brought us into being, but he has not yet completed the job.
He has given us the amazing honor of being called to work with him as he brings us to our final state.
We will not be fully ourselves until this life has passed. Meanwhile, the choice before us is either to cooperate with God’s plan or to declare independence from God and try to create ourselves apart from him.
Despite modern attempts to say otherwise, no one can establish his own self-generated identity.
Trying to do so only leads to self-deception. We were created in the image of Another.
We can only come to ourselves by taking on that image.
We need an image into which we can grow: the image of God. Christ shows us that, ultimately, there are only two images available to us: either we take on the image of God and become intelligent and possess free will, or we reject that image, lose ourselves, and become enslaved to the likeness of the devil.
Jesus was getting at this in today’s scripture passage. The Jews he was speaking to called themselves children of God.
He responded by telling them that their father was the devil, although they would not admit it to themselves.
This truth that we find our identity by “identifying” or acting in the image of someone else explains a lot of the spiritual warfare we face. God is constantly calling us to be his true sons, and the devil is insistently, and often subtly, trying to get us to abandon God.
This is one reason why imitation is so important in the New Testament.
Paul tells the Corinthians: “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).
Christ is the exemplar, the perfect “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
We come to understand who we are by identifying with Christ. Our unique identity emerges as we grow ever more rooted in the One who made us and who is still forming us.
When a man sets out to imitate Christ, he will find that Christ is calling him into the character of fatherhood.
As you continue to pray and ponder fatherhood in this formation packet, ask yourself what your identity is.
Do you see yourself as being rooted in Christ?
Do you act as though you are created in his image?
