"Our Father in heaven." With these words, God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children so that with all boldness and confidence, we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.
C.S. Lewis pondered that, and He wrote of the Lord's Prayer: "Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean, quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending. Because, of course, the moment you realize what the words mean, you realize that you are not a son of God. You are not a being like the Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greed, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death. So that, in a way, this dressing up as if Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it." That's what Paul means by "in whom," in Jesus, we have the confidence and the boldness to take that huge cheekiness in hand and turn to the Father and say, our Father.
-Pr. Will Weedon
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