Alphabet of Love - S is for Son

The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing John 5:19,20

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:6-7

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. 1 John 3:1

Becoming a parent revolutionized our lives in ways I can’t even begin to describe.  Overnight, I jumped from the world of being a child in a family, into a parallel universe of parenthood, now holding a child – a son – of my own! This role-reversal continues to send shock-waves through both my understanding of my past – especially my view of my mom and dad –my present, as well as how I see the future.  Not to mention how I view God and His family! When our daughter was born, the full scope of the complexity of family dynamics begun to dawn on us.  We went from two reasonably mature and responsible adults (or so we thought!) relating to a child, to two terribly immature kids relating to each other – mainly through the language of fists and bites, screams and scratches – and two frustrated parents, frequently tempted to resort to the same language – mostly trying to reason with and restrain the mayhem.  Ah, the joys of parenting!

Over the years I begun to notice more and more that our kids are both our mirror-images, as well as our amplifiers.  They don’t always do what we tell them to do, but they seem to be really good at mimicking what they see us doing, and repeating our words, unfortunately not always in the ways and at times we wish them to!

Having two pairs of impressionable eyes continuously watching me and then going off and broadcasting that to the entire world … it’s… well… both extremely humbling and insightful, to put it gently.  Dan Allender elaborates on some of these unintended consequences of parenting in his book, How Children Raise Their Parents. If he didn’t write this book, I would have done it.

Jesus, being the Son of God,  perfectly mirrored and amplified everything His Father said and did, and that in the same manner.  Not just what He said and did, but also in the same Spirit.  As a human, He was completely yielded to the Spirit of His Dad and did nothing that He didn’t see or heard His Dad doing.

God has given us the very same Spirit that filled the life of Jesus.  We are not His slaves, but sons and daughters. May we be attentive to the Spirit of His Son and mirror His love and compassion, His power and His liberating truth to the needy world around us… starting with our own household… where both children and parents are being raised to become fully grown children of God. 

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18