I am a Jesus pusher! Don’t forget the reaction of the crowds to the message of Jesus. They were “knocked out of their senses, “explesso” (Matthew 7:28). Everything the Old Covenant law proposed, Jesus fulfilled. The world’s moral systems offered the goal of life to be gained by struggle, discipline, and merit. Jesus simply congratulated us on our arrival. Jesus gives us what other systems require us to earn. The Jews believed they could only achieve a relationship with God by strict adherence to the Old Testament law. Jesus changed the imagery of the relationship. We are not subjects desperately trying to appease a far-removed power to survive. He is our “Father.” He embraces us in our helplessness; He created us this way. It was His design to cradle us moment by moment in His person, as a father cares for his newborn son.
In Jesus, He carries us into a whole new content for the word “father.” The most exciting and vital term in the Gospels reflecting how Jesus thought about God is the simple word “Father.” “Father” speaks of God’s relationship to Israel as a people, not of His relationship to the individual. God is the Creator and Lord of His people; He can be called their Father. However, there are hints of God as the Father of the nation and individual believers. “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation” (Psalms 68:5). “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me” (Psalms 27:10). But Jesus brings us into the New Covenant, a new relationship with the Trinity God as our Father! The wonder of security and confidence in the Old Testament as suddenly magnified beyond compare. Live in His love! I am a Jesus pusher!