I find this to be a very helpful truth—the love of God the Father, the grace of the Father being the source of salvation—because I happen to be a father myself, and therefore, I know something about a father’s love. I know what it is to have children that you love at such a deep level that you yourself cannot really plumb the depths of that love. I have five little people who have the right to call me Daddy and I know that I love them. Now they can make me angry. They can cause me to reprove them; they could testify to that. They can cause me to take things away, but they cannot make me stop loving them. And there is nothing more wonderful to me - this is true for all the other fathers and their mothers here. Nothing is more wonderful than to see them growing in grace and godliness, to see God working within them. I like to share even silly things with them, because they are my children and I am their father.
Now, if only I was able, and I am not, but if I was able to secure for them a wonderful future and a hope and an eternity of blessings in heaven, would I do that if I could? I absolutely would, and my love is nothing compared to the love of God the Father, and he is able where I am not able. That means that if I am a child of God through faith in Jesus, and God’s Word says that through trusting Jesus, I am a child of God, then that fatherly love is set upon me. He is going to see to my salvation and my provision. He is going to bless me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and so in response, there is nothing wiser for me than to yield my heart and my life and love to him, to serve him and praise him. I have always loved the line, which I think is the heart of the book of Proverbs:
My son, give me your heart(Proverbs 23:26). And the father who says that has already given his heart to his children, and God the Father has given his heart to you in Jesus Christ. He says,Oh, my children, give me your heart.You see, we can trust him. We can trust his love. He is our heavenly Father.Paul emphasizes that it is this fatherly love working for our blessing in salvation, that especially causes God to be praised. What a source of joy it is to know that it honors and glorifies God as Father, that I should be forgiven, that I should be accepted, that I should be adopted, that I should be renewed and sanctified and ultimately, I will be an heir of glory. Hugh Martin writes, What a wonder it is that I should be called not only to receive freely an infinite, sovereign and undeserved love, but that my reception of it should be the means of throwing light to the angelic beings during eternal ages to come, on the glorious character and perfections of God. It is for his glory that I am blessed with his love."1
Dr. Richard D. Phillips
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,