His God & Ours
Patrick Henry Reardon on Why We Can Be Brothers & Sisters in Christ
Shortly after he assumed office earlier this year, the newly elected governor of Alabama created a considerable stir when he mounted a Baptist pulpit and declared, “If you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
The ensuing comments on this declaration were predictable. For example, did it mean, asked his political opponents, that the governor of Alabama would favor Christian citizens of Alabama over non-Christian citizens of that great state? Would Jews, Muslims, and atheists receive equal protection and enjoy equal concern from the governor’s staff and administration? Since the makeup of Alabama’s population is roughly 107 percent Christian, these questions certainly appeared legitimate.
The dust from the controversy seems largely to have settled now. The governor’s office issued the appropriate explanations. His staff quickly researched the archives to find the politically correct clarifications. The more liberal religious leaders decried the governor’s narrow-mindedness. Apologies were offered to those offended. And so forth.
Perhaps it is now safe to suggest that the governor of Alabama was trying to make a theologically valid point. There were better ways to make the point, to be sure, and an elected political figure is the absolutely last person who should make it. But the point itself is important.
Customary for Jews
Let me see if I can say it better: God has only one Son. The Holy Spirit enables the rest of us to become children of God by our identification with this one Son, in whom we become brothers and sisters to one another. We pass no judgment on anyone else’s conscience, but the Christian faith obliges us to declare that this one Son is the sole mediator between God and man, and in his name alone is eternal salvation. This is the doctrine that defines Christian existence.
We learned this doctrine from Jesus, who spoke on the subject in several places and at some length. It is not hard to trace the development of this thesis in the Gospels.
In Jewish worship, it was customary to address God as “Father.” Abinu, Malkinu—“Our Father, our King”—has always been a standard praise formula in the synagogue. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find this form of address in the teaching of Jesus, even as we find it in his own prayer (Matt. 11:25–26; 26:39,42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42; 23:34,46; John 11:41; 17:1,5,11,21,24,25).
When, in his sermons to the people, Jesus spoke of God as their Father, the ascription contained nothing to which his adversaries could object. No Pharisee would complain at being told, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26). Nor would the declaration, “Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (6:32), give offense to the high priest. The Jewish leadership recognized these ideas from the teaching of the Torah and the prophets.
Unique to Jesus
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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