Abba Father, you are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is no one like you. You are above every principality and power both here on earth and in the heavens. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Yet you humbled yourself in the form of your Son to come to earth and walk among us as one of us. You were both fully God and fully human. You saw and felt and heard what we see and hear and feel. You came to earth during a difficult time and were born into poverty so you know how awful life can be here on earth. You are now able, through Jesus, to relate to every one of us and the most difficult and horrible things we go through. Yet you never wavered from bringing grace and love to even the worst sinners among us. We were able to see and touch and feel you. We saw and heard and touched and felt the only begotten Son of God in human flesh. We saw your character perfectly through Jesus. How wonderfully strange your words and actions seemed to us. Yet we saw clearly that you were fully human, just like one of us. Jesus was the perfect expression of you, Abba Father, in human flesh. We saw what you are like. We saw how you treated everyone, regardless of their status in life, with respect and dignity. When you saw the plight, we were in, you healed the sick among us, relying on the Spirit to do his work. Fully filled with the Spirit, you healed and spoke words of grace and truth and life. We did not deserve to see this, your glory, yet you came to us anyway. And in due time, you gave your very life for us on the cross – a most horrible way to die. Yet it was not the physical pain that saved us. It was the fact that you turned your back on Jesus when he took our sin upon himself and became sin for us. For the first time in his life, Jesus was cut off from you, descending into hell for our sakes. Experiencing the punishment that we deserved – complete and total separation from you, Abba. O how that must have crushed him! O what devastation of soul that must have been! To be cut off from the only one who loved him completely and fully. To be cut off from the one who was well pleased with him. Yet in those hours, he committed himself to you, trusting that you would be who you are and accept his sacrifice for our sins and raise him from the dead. In so doing, he brought many sons and daughters to glory. All of us who believe died with him that day. Death to our old self that was spiritually bankrupt. And then, according to your plan, on the third day you raised him from the dead. On that glorious third day, we who believe were also raised from our spiritual death to new life, a new creation, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that you planned for us to do from before the foundation of the world. For you foreknew that all of this was going to happen. You planned this from the beginning. You knew that being spiritually dead in our sins, we had no hope. All was lost until Jesus came and gave his life for us. All was hopeless until you raised him to a new life on the third day. That same power that raised him from the dead now works in us to raise us to new life in you. We are now new creations of yours. Our spirits cry out with his, “Abba Father!” For you are now our father and we are your adopted sons and daughters. That same power that raised Jesus from the dead continues to work in us empowering us to live lives full of you and your power. That same power that raised Jesus from the dead empowers us to do the good works that you destined us to do from before the foundation of the world. We are empowered to bring the good news of grace and truth to a lost and dying generation. We are empowered to live lives fully committed to you and your ways. We are empowered to live lives of righteousness. Not our own righteousness, but your righteousness which you have given to us. O Abba Father, what a wondrous thing you have done! We are so grateful to be your sons and daughters! We are so grateful to be rescued from our sin and to be clothed in your righteousness! Now we belong to you. Once we were lost, but now we are found. Once we were objects of your righteous wrath, but now we are objects of your love and affection. What great love it is that you have shown to us, that we are your sons and daughters! You went first. While we were yet dead in our trespasses and sins, you gave your most precious for us! You gave everything you had for us! You saw beforehand what precious, righteous, faithful, loving people we could become! And you paid the ultimate price for us! We humbly bow before you, casting our crowns of righteousness before you, proclaiming that this was all your work, your doing, your idea. We had only to cast ourselves on you in desperation, asking that you would take our lives and do something good with them. And you were delighted to do so! As the father was looking daily for his lost son, when we came to you in desperation, you ran to us, threw your arms around us, and proclaimed, “My son, my daughter is home! Brind the robes of righteousness and clothe them in them. Once they were lost, but now they are found!” How welcoming you were! How inviting you were! How forgiving you were! All because of what Jesus did for us! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Amen.
