From the tract '10 Reasons Jesus Came to Die' by John Piper
#5) To show God's love for sinners
This week I wanted to convey an idea that is more complex so I felt the urge to draw something in the vein of abstract expressionism. This is my attempt to visualize God's love. The most fundamental form of love that we can express is the love of a parent for a child. I myself am not a parent so I've never possessed the overwhelming pride of a father or the abundant love of a mother. At best I'd only experience half of that equation. (The closest I'll ever be to male pregnancy is watching that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.) But God has love that surpasses both.
MISCONCEPTION CORRECTION: From a casual perusing of the Bible everyone knows God as our Father and thus we skew all his characteristics toward fatherly love. However there are also comparisons of God as a mother (for instance, Isaiah 66:13). This conflicts with our understanding of parental traits being separated into masculine and feminine (for example, Daddy's authoritative love versus Mommy's compassionate love). We can't comprehend the two combined, yet God possesses both simultaneously. Did your brain just explode? It's very limiting to think of God's love in comparison to fathers and mothers. God is love. We model our love after his example. My overarching point is that we often try to make God fit our ideals when we really should be expanding our ideals to fit God. If that's too much to handle, just start by thinking that God is some super-mutant father-mother hybrid.
As for the second layer of the picture, here's an analogy. You're at the park playing with your child, when all of a sudden this ignorant jerk walks by and knocks you to the ground. He spits on you, and walks off yelling at you for being in his way. In the process this jack-wagon is unknowingly about to walk into oncoming traffic. You try to warn him, but he just gives you the finger. You are too far away so in a last ditch effort, you yell out to your beloved child to run into the street of certain death to push ol' Turd Ferguson to safety. This second layer illustrates that God has this super-parent love for his own son and yet he loves you more. He sent his perfect son to die so that you could live. The most amazing part is he did it while you were still a evil jerk-face.
If you get God a present on Father's Day AND Mother's Day:
From some very quick research, I found that God only occasionally refers to himself as “Father” in the Old Testament. It's not until the New Testament that Jesus really pounds home the idea of God as Abba, Father. Perhaps that's due to the fact that Jesus had a human mother but God was literally his father.
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