Access to God the Father, Part 1 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:2

We are in a study of Luke chapter 11, verses 2 to 4, Jesus teaching his disciples to pray. He said to them in Luke 11:2 to 4, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come,” and then this, “Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” 

Look back, a couple maybe a page there, to Luke chapter 10 and verses 21 and 22. I want to remind you, there, of why Jesus broke out there in that portion of Scripture in this paean of praise. He was rejoicing, there, at the return of the seventy-two, who’d gone out to preach the gospel, to heal, to cast out demons. They came back, reporting that, yes, even the demons were submissive to them, and Jesus interacted with them about that, but then he pointed them to the greater miracle, the greater power, the greater reality of salvation itself, the fact that there were those who were being drawn into heaven as citizens of the Kingdom. And so he stops, and he gives praise to God and the Holy Spirit.

Then he praises God and rejoices in the father. He says, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.  All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Five times in just those two verses, Jesus refers to God not as God, not using a term of high regard like Lord in his address, but he does call him “Lord of heaven and earth.” So you can see that he is acknowledging the greatness and the grandeur and the majesty of God as he prays. Five times, though, Jesus calls God father. Father, that is what has the clear emphasis and now he invites us to do the same thing, Luke 11:2, “When you pray, say, ‘Father.’” 

And we understand that there is a difference between Jesus’ relationship to God as father and our relationship to God as father. He is the son of the father by direct generation, in his divine nature. Even as the Messiah, there is something different in his sinless perfection before God the Father, but for us, we are hidden in him. We have a relationship to God as father because of a different, we’re brought into it in a different way, we’re brought into the family by adoption, but Jesus does not regard us as lesser in the family, does he? When he brings us in to call God, father, he brings us in close. He holds nothing back from us. He’s not like a jealous brother in a family and says, who are you to call my God, father? He’s not jealous of his brothers and sisters at all; rather, he is magnanimous in sharing the love that he has of the father and the father has of him and sharing that with all of us.

He says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” and it’s those things that Jesus gives to us, that he reveals to us and he invites us to draw near to God as father. All that he knows about God, who the father is, what he’s like, and, and there’s, there’s eternal, infinite scope to what he says in those two verses. All that he knows about God? God, the infinite, everlasting from everlasting to everlasting, that God? There’s no end to what can be known about God, and he gives that freely to us. 

And by the way, we need to know it’s not that father is some kind of password that gains us entrance before God. Calling him father is not for God’s sake; it’s for our sakes. It’s so that we understand who he is and what he’s like. Father reminds us of the nature of the relationship that we have with this almighty sovereign, who is no longer our wrathful judge, but who is our kind and compassionate and good and wise and loving father. That’s for our sake. That is, the word father is to give us confidence to come before him and also to encourage us to come before him often, as often as we please, to come before him for everything. He’s now our God, and because he’s our God, that carries weight, that comes with infinite benefit we’ve only just now begun to realize. 

So a first question to ask for today is, number one: How is it that we have a right to address God as father? How do we have that right? How does anyone come to possess such a right as this, such a privilege? And then, number two, how can we know that we’re truly his children? How can we know this? How can we have assurance? Where does that assurance come from, that we are his children and he is our father? And then, finally, what privileges are ours now that we know God is our father? What does that mean? What’s the “so what” of him being our father to us and our being his children?

First, the right of access to the father, the right of access to the father. As we have acknowledged that there are many people who pray this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. There are many people who address God as father, and they have no right to do so, because they are not true disciples of Christ, and if they’re not true disciples of Christ, then they are not related to God in any way.

They’re not true children; they’re not authorized to call God father. So what makes us so special? How do we have the right to address God as father when they do not? The simple answer is we have the right, as the Bible teaches us, we have the right by regeneration and by faith, by regeneration and by faith. And at first glance, that answer seems simple enough, we could say regeneration and faith and then move on, but I want us to understand beyond the simple. I want us to go a little bit deeper than a surface-level answer. We have the right to call God father by virtue of regeneration and by virtue of faith and we need to understand that these are two sides of a profound mystery, what some refer to as a paradox in the glory of our salvation: Regeneration and faith. 

So two subpoints, here, sub-point A: Our right to call God father is ours by virtue of regeneration, which is God’s initiative. Regeneration is God’s initiative; it’s God’s work, through and through. So when I ask the question, by what right do we call God Father, if your mind went to John 1:12, you’re exactly right. So let’s turn over to John 1 just to see this for ourselves, just a few pages, should be, over to the right of Luke, you’ll find John 1.

When Jesus came in the incarnation, people did not recognize him for who he is, the Messiah of God. And John is talking about that and unpacking in this prologue of Johns’ Gospel, of his Gospel; John 1:1 to verse 18 is the prologue. So he’s talking about that, he’s explaining that, that people did not recognize, even though Jesus created the world, “All things were created through him and for him.” The people didn’t recognize him for their Creator. They didn’t see him as such. Even his own people, the Jews, they didn’t recognize him either. Seeing Jesus for who he really is, that is God in the flesh, the Christ of God, the Messiah, the Savior of all who believe. That requires a special grace of God. Look at John 1:12, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” So what does it take to call God, father? It takes being born again, specifically, being born of God. 

Turn a page or two over to the right to John 3 and Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, the, probably in his 60s or 70s, sitting on the Sanhedrin, a Pharisee, a man who’s highly regarded and respected, a teacher of Israel. And Jesus told Nicodemus in answer to his inquiry in John 3:3, he said, “Truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It can be translated as born again or born from above, which is probably more accurate, here. Again, in verse 5, “Truly, truly I say to you that unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” 

To call God father, you must be born again. You must be born from above. You must be born of God. So the right to call God father depends on God. It depends on his sovereign initiative. It depends on the mercy of his sovereign grace that grants us new life. To call God father, means we must become children of God, which happens when God chooses to regenerate us, to cause us to be born again. Okay, so then, we might back up and ask the question, well okay, how do I make that happen? How do I get that done? How do I initiate the process of the new birth? Is it by the operation of our faith? Do we exercise faith, and then God responds to the move we make toward him by granting us new birth, new life? 

No. Let me just emphatically say, NO. That is not how it works, because that would mean that God responds to us, that would mean that dead sinners, dead in our transgressions and sins, and dead is a metaphor that is meant to point us to a corpse. A corpse doesn’t have any life. You can yell at it, you can holler at it, you can scream at it if you want to. It ain’t going to move!

The metaphor of death and the need for new life is exactly what we’re supposed to understand is needed spiritually speaking. God doesn’t respond to us. We do not have a life where we can make a move toward him, would mean that we take the initiative toward our own salvation as dead, spiritual, spiritually dead corpses. It would mean that it’s our initiative, not his, but ours. We need to understand, we understand the Bible teaches us that God is sovereign in salvation. The new birth is something that happens to us at his initiative by the Holy Spirit and not ours.

And that’s why birth is used as a metaphor to illustrate the reality of spiritual regeneration. Let me ask you a question: How much initiative did you take in your own conception? What choice did you make in coming into being? In being conceived? None, right? Zero. That happened to you apart from your will, apart from any initiative of yours, apart from any good intention, any understanding. You weren’t, didn’t even have a brain for understanding anything, right? There was nothing before you were conceived.

And, and, let’s ask the next question, the follow up after conception. What about your participation in the birth process? What did you do? Did you decide one day, roughly around the nine-month mark, recognizing the discomfort of your poor mother, in whose whom you had grown to an unmanageable and uncomfortable size, did you decide to relieve her of her suffering, to be born, to crawl your way down the birth canal, relieve her and enter into the outside world? Uhh…no. Not that either. Did your first birth happen at your own initiative? Of course not. 

That is the way of the second birth, too. It wasn’t up to you. It was up to God to conceive you as a new creation in Christ, to cause you to be born again. And that is why Jesus told the perplexed Nicodemus, who said, okay, how do I get this done? How do I make this happen? He told Nicodemus the birth, the new birth happens by the sovereign operation of the Holy Spirit. He explained, John 3:7-8, “Don’t marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ I mean, the wind blows where ever it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

You know in Greek the word wind and the word spirit are the same? It’s the word pneuma. He says, “The wind blows, and the spirit blows.” He’s meaning to mix the metaphor with reality, here. The Spirit does whatever he wants. The Spirit does what he wills. He regenerates whom he wills and that’s because the Spirit and the Father and the Son share the same will. He regenerates whom he wills; he conceives new life. He delivers spiritual newborns, bringing them into this world, some of us even kicking and screaming, right? Like the effects of the wind, you see the evidence in the new life that comes from the new creation, a new nature. And that is how it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, to those God has chosen to receive this special right to become his beloved children in Christ. So regeneration is by God’s initiative, making us God’s children by the new birth. It’s what God has done that grants us the right to call him father.

So that’s one side of the paradox, here’s the other side of it, sub-point B, our right to call God father, it’s ours by virtue of regeneration, as we just talked about, but it’s also ours by virtue of faith, and that’s our responsibility. The right to call God father is ours by virtue of faith, which is our responsibility. So you can see divine initiative, on the one hand; now we’re talking about our responsibility.

Back to John 1:12, and let’s ask the million-dollar question, here. Which comes first? Does regeneration precede faith, as I have just explained and affirmed? Or does faith precede regeneration, which is the popular, wide-spread, Arminian view of this verse, that you believe, and your initiative God responds to with the new birth? The ESV translation reads, “But to all did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who are born, not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.” So are those who receive and believe, do they merit the right to become God’s children or is their believing the condition they fulfill? Is their reward, then, the, the right to become children of God. Is their receiving and believing, what results in the new birth, getting a new nature from God? To all those questions the answer is a resounding No.

But we just want to break this down little bit in this verse. First, when John writes in verse 12, “But to all who did receive him,” he’s contrasting those people with the people in verse 11. Most of Jesus’ own people, the Jews, who did not receive him. Here in the prologue of his Gospel, John has portrayed the historical fact that he witnessed for himself, the historical fact of the Jews receiving or rejecting Jesus as a whole. He’s summarizing these two responses of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He watched this happen. He saw it; he participated in the gospel proclamation that was either rejected or received. He entered into villages, where Jesus was either rejected, don’t bring him in here, or received, yes, bring him in. We’ve heard of his works, his miracles. We heard he’s the Messiah.

And then Jeus came, they came, and Jesus came behind them. We studied that, all that not too long ago in Luke chapter 10, when Jesus sent out the 72. And he said, Luke 10, starting in verse 8, “Whenever you enter a town, and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” That’s a receiving response. But verse 10, “Whenever you enter a town, and they do not receive you,” that’s a rejecting response, “go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off as a testimony against you.’” 

That’s one way to see this. Is it John is summarizing a historical fact, here, in John 1:12. He’s contrasting the Jews who did not receive Jesus into their homes in John 1:11 with those who did receive him into their homes in verse 12. And they prove who they are, receptive, by believing in his name. And that’s the second thing to see. The ESV translates it “who believed in his name,” as if it’s a past tense finite verb, believed, but it’s neither past tense nor is it finite. It’s written as tois pisteuousin, and literally, that’s a participle. That is, those who are continually believing in his name. 

So what John is clarifying, here, is that a one-time receiving of Jesus, a one-time decision to show hospitality to Jesus, that is to receive him into your house, that’s one indication of a receptive heart, yes. But the real proof of genuine salvation is the continuation of a receptive heart, the one continues believing, the one who keeps on believing. As we like to say, time and truth go hand in hand. 

And that’s a third point to make, namely, that those with receptive hearts, those who continue believing, they receive and they keep on believing because God has granted them the right. What right? The right to become his children. And when did that happen? When did he grant them that right? As we’ve already said last week, and we’ll say it again, Ephesians 1:4, “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” He granted us that right, that exousia, you can translate that authority, right. He, he gave that before time began. That right, granted to become children of God, that divine election, that is something that is realized in time and space, at the point when God chooses to cause his children to be born again.

So God did that. He chose us before time began, but then in time and space, God caused them to realize that new birth. He caused us to be born again. He sends the Spirit, verse 13. It becomes apparent to all when they receive Christ, and when they keep on believing, keep on trusting, keep on obeying. Yeah, and at the same time, we have a responsibility to believe. That is not denied, here, that is actually emphasized, here, “To those who keep on believing,” yes, there’s a responsibility to keep on believing, to put our faith in Christ.

Again, look back at Jesus’ conversation again in John chapter 3 with Nicodemus. He says in verse 11, well, let me back up to verse 9, “‘How can these things be?’” This is an older man, sixty, seventy years old, maybe. He’s speaking to a younger man, Jesus, about 30 when he entered into his ministry. “‘How can these things be?’ And Jesus answered him,” not backing off a bit, “‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?’” Like, Buddy, where’d you get your seminary degree? Like, why don’t you know this? Have you not read your Old Testament? Are you the teacher, the teacher of Israel? You know what he’s saying there? If you’re the teacher, what hope is there for any of your students? That’s an indictment, isn’t it? Verse 11, “‘Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know. We bear witness to what we have seen.’”

Here’s the problem, Nicodemus. It’s not a problem with information. It’s not a problem with Scripture text. It’s not a problem, problem with theology. That’s all apparent. Here’s the problem: You do not receive our testimony. You don’t receive. You don’t believe. You reject. You doubt. Verse 12, “If I have told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” Like, you, you don’t even have the A-B-Cs down of understanding through faith. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, that is, the Son of man.” So what’s he saying there? He’s saying, that’s me, Nicodemus. Have you been to heaven? I didn’t think so. Have you come down from heaven? Didn’t think so. Has anybody done that? No. 

Jesus says, I have. Listen to me. “And as Moses,” verse 14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Nicodemus, look at God’s salvation, and believe. Look and believe. Trust in God that when he says, lift up the serpent, look and be saved, trust that that works. You don’t have to figure it all out. Trust him! When he says, believe in the son, believe. Take your responsibility seriously. God has even taken initiative by even commanding you to have faith.

So Jesus tells Nicodemus about his own responsibility to believe. He knows that believing comes from willing, our decision-making, and that is the fruit of our desires, that’s the product of our affections. Listen, what we want, what we desire comes from our nature. Why do dogs want what dogs want, meat, and cats want what cats want, milk? Why the difference? Because of their natures. A dog has a dog-like nature; a cat has a cat-like nature. We want what we want, desire what we desire, because we have a nature that desires that.

So an old nature desires old things; a new nature desires new things. Where does the new nature come from? From God, the one who gives us a new nature in the miracle of regeneration. He causes us to be born again, and not with some old nature. Why, why would he do that, cause us to be born again into the same old nature? That’s not a gift; it’s a curse. No, he’s given us a new nature. As every kid memorizes, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” New nature, new desires; new desires, new will; new will, new affections, new decisions, and the first decision of our newly regenerated life is to believe in Jesus Christ, to put our faith in him, to see him as beautiful, glorious, our true salvation in whom there is no lack. 

Beloved, if you are in Christ, that is what has happened to you. And because of God’s grace, we now have the right to be called children of God. We now have the right to call God father because it’s a reality by virtue of our regeneration and by virtue of our receiving Christ and continuing to believe in him.