Often people speak about ‘children of the Devil’ and ‘children of God’ as if God and the Devil are on the same level as creators. Ridiculous! There is only one Creator, one God and one Father of us all (Eph 4:6). And in the previous chapter Paul writes: “I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” The only thing Satan ever gave birth to is lies. Throughout the centuries man has adopted this foreign ‘father’ by submitting to his way of thinking, thereby adopting a foreign identity. Yet submitting to this lie did not change the truth of mankind’s origin, nor did it make the Devil an actual creator or father. It is in this context that Jesus said: ‘You are of your father the Devil’ referring to their actions and their way of thinking, immediately qualifying it in the next sentence by saying: ‘he is the father of lies’. I love the way in which the Message translates John 1:12:
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.

However, the being He imagined to be His companion, would be able to choose ‘its’ own possibilities. Love, by its very nature, is free. Love can be awakened, encouraged and stirred, but it can never be forced. And so God determined to create man outside of His control! This meant – and He knew it all before – that man would make wrong choices and in doing so create obstacles to … or maybe opportunities for, the love of God.

How could a completely free and spontaneous being be guaranteed to make the right choices? The ‘Logos’ calculated uncountable scenarios and configurations of the environment to see if there was a way to guarantee the right choice. The answer was produced after an exceptionally long period of timelessness. The fact that this being would not be all-knowing, yet be imaginative and free, meant that this being would indeed make choices and have preferences other than those chosen by God! This creature would be responsible for choosing ‘evil’! For any other logic, this would be an impossible situation – how to plan and purpose the conclusion of this plot, yet give another creature the freedom to choose what role to play within it. But for the Logos, nothing is impossible.

Before anything began, God foresaw the inevitable mistakes, the fall of man, the evil consequences … but He also saw a way in which to provide for every need, overcome every obstacle and restore man to the glory He intended. And so we read about the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began! (2 Tim 1:9). Before He created anything, He knew it would cost Him everything to redeem man and fulfil all His purpose … and so we read about the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. Once again, in His own freedom, He determined to give Himself in His Son, to step out of this eternal unsearchable realm, into the temporal, the realm of fallen man. In giving us grace and truth, He would give nothing less than Himself.

When we realise that our Creator foreknew the whole plot before a single event occurred, we are able to recognise His loving and guiding hand in all things. He knew about the temptations, the choices and the consequences of those choices, long before they happened. “He declares the end from the beginning”. Isaiah … He is not the author of all events, but He certainly is wise and able enough to steer even the most evil events toward the conclusion that He pre-ordained.

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The good news therefore begins, not with any form of human need, but with the free gift of God’s grace, which is nothing less than God Himself.

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These words reveal something about the God of love, namely: It is not His infinite knowledge or intellect, referred to as His omniscience, that is His most essential characteristic. Neither is it His limitless power, known as His omnipotence, that makes Him who He is. Love is at the core of who God is!

Love desires to give … love is not focused on itself, but desires the benefit of others. Love is not needy, lack-conscious or aware of what it does not have. Love is an expression of abundance; the overflow of joy and satisfaction. Love is not obsessed with its own importance … it does not need the recognition of others. There is no inferiority in love … it is not dependent on affirmation, because love’s attention is not on itself but on its target. All God is for man and all He does for man, is out of His own free grace. He does not owe us anything, neither do we have any claim upon this free grace, yet in utter freedom, without any obligation He desires to give it, because that is who He is. His love, His free grace is not some quality or property of His character that can be placed alongside other properties. This is essentially who He is. All other qualities proceeds from this central reality: God is love.

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In Ephesians 3, Paul seems to be grappling for words to try and give a sense of the awesomeness of this love: “…exceedingly … abundantly … above all that we can ask … or imagine”. In verse 16 he starts by praying that we would be strengthened by His spirit in our inner man … that we might be able to comprehend … that which surpasses knowledge. This is a different kind of comprehension – an awareness that surpasses knowledge.

What makes Paul’s writings so influential, so fascinating is not because he gives the impression that he has a broad and firm hold on the truth, but rather, the obvious fact that someone much greater than Paul had got a hold of him. In fact, in his letter to the Philippians he writes that his life’s ambition is to try and get a hold of that which got a hold of him. “I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” Phil 3:12

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When Satan reminds you of the past it is all about what you did or did not do, what you said or did not say – its all about your actions. When God reminds you of the past its all about what He did for you when you least deserved it, His initiative when you did not seek Him, His action when you were helpless. Despite our wrong choices and the ways it which we’ve excluded Him from our lives, He remained faithful, remained involved, committed Himself to pursuing us and making us His own. In fact David says in Psalm 139 that even when he deliberately wanted to flee from the Lord …”He found me, His arms surround me”

Even your past is beautiful from His point of view, because He is in it and He works all things together for your good!

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In my early childhood – I was about five years old – we moved into a new house. Most of these houses in South Africa had big back yards and these made ideal playgrounds for small boys. We called it a ‘yard’ instead of a garden because it wasn’t really a neatly kept garden – it was more like a large enclosure. On the day we moved in I noticed something very tempting: the neighbour had a small orchard of mango trees in his back yard … and I loved mangoes. My dad must have read my thoughts because at the moment I noticed these trees, he said to me: “Don’t even think of going into the neighbour’s yard – there is a vicious dog guarding the trees”. That was a very disappointing piece of information as through the days and weeks that followed I witnessed the mango fruit ripening.

I often played in the back yard in the afternoons and felt terribly tempted by the ripe mangoes over the fence, however my fear of the vicious dog prevented me from even attempting to pick a mango. One afternoon, while playing, I became desperately ‘hungry’ and the fruit seemed particularly inviting. I nervously sneaked onto the fence at the far end of the yard to have a better look at the dog, but I couldn’t see the dog anywhere. I took my chance and jumped over the fence, grabbed a couple of mangoes and jumped back into my own yard. They were delicious!

It did not take me long to realise that there was no dog! The moral of the story is not about temptation or repentance or anything deeply spiritual like that. The point is simply that my experience of hunger was real, my experience of fear was real, but these real experiences were based on the lie that I believed regarding a vicious dog. The moment I realised that there was no dog the fear disappeared … and as a consequence so did the hunger. How many of our real experiences are based on lies? How different would our experiences be, if we believed differently?

The truth that Jesus introduces us to is of a much higher authority than our experience – it is a truth that is able to transform our experience. He wants to introduce us to a truth much broader than our narrow experiences.

“… my judgement would be true because I wouldn’t make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father.”(John 8:16 MSG). If Jesus considered his own experience as narrow compared to a much greater reality, then we too might have to re-evaluate the importance we attach to personal experience.

In the same way as our personal experiences are to narrow to reveal our true identity, so too is our culture too narrow; our language too narrow; our society too narrow; our race too narrow; even our relationships, no matter how precious, are too narrow. He reveals that all the measures we’ve used to measure ourselves with are completely inadequate. “but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding” He shatters our illusions, but at that very moment He also brings to light the truth of our design. We are eternal beings, which means that anything temporal will not do justice to God’s estimation of our worth and He invites us to see ourselves from His point of view.