December 20, 2024
Everlasting Father
By Michael Youssef, Ph.D.
Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, God told Isaiah about the Messiah, describing Him with titles. The third title given for Jesus is Everlasting Father (see Isaiah 9:6).
Isaiah was not confusing God the Father with God the Son. Often when someone is attributed with leading a certain field or founding an organization, they are labeled the “father” of that area. That is why the men who shaped our emerging nation are called the Founding Fathers. The early church leaders are called the Church Fathers. Hippocrates is the Father of Medicine.
The Bible uses the term “father” in the same way—to imply an originator or a pioneer. God wanted us to know that Jesus would be the pioneer of God’s revelation for eternal life and that He would be the founder of a new creation. God loves us so much that He has made a way, through the Everlasting Father, for us to be with Him forever.
Only Jesus could be Everlasting Father because only He knew the depth of our sin and the depth of God’s love. Because Jesus is fully God and fully man, living without sin and with perfect righteousness, He is the only one who can reveal every aspect of our sinfulness and wickedness. For we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), but He walked with us and lived perfectly.
Jesus also knows God’s heart. He knows the Father because He has experienced God’s love. And He knows that God did not want to leave us forever separated from Him because of our sin; His love is too deep.
God’s justice demands that our sin be paid for, but His love demands that we be close to Him. So Jesus, wholly righteous Jesus, satisfied God’s justice by giving His sinless life and paying the price for our sins. Then to satisfy God’s great grace, He offered us—hell-deserving sinners—eternal life. His sacrifice for us reveals God’s great love and is the foundation of the new creation.
Prayer: Everlasting Father, thank You for being perfectly just in paying for all sin and perfectly loving by offering me eternal life. Your grace is astounding. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
“[H]e is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, . . .” (Colossians 1:18-19).
Learn more in Dr. Michael Youssef’s sermon Jesus the Only, Part 3: LISTEN NOW | WATCH NOW
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