By William Cooper 11-8-2015
Following his resurrection, Jesus made 19 appearances to groups of his followers. His message to all of them was that they should go into all the world teaching and preaching his good news message that God is our Father and that we are therefore family. That is the highly condensed or compacted good news. Jesus’ good news delivered in its fullness. The good news in its fullness is extensive and perhaps infinitely extensive. The following is a first step in decompacting Jesus’s sufficient but highly compacted good news by stating some of the logical corollaries involved in the statement.
- You are a spiritual person who inhabits a physical body. They are both you but the spiritual you is eternal.
- God is your loving spiritual parent. God the Father is your spiritual father and loves you and cares for you as your father. God the Spirit is your spiritual mother and loves you and cares for you as your mother. Both are very deeply, personally and constantly involved in your welfare and rearing. You are a first generation offspring of these two aspects of the one God who is the originator and creator of all that is. You are not a slave, a distant grandchild, an adoptee nor merely analogous to a child of God. You are the real thing.
- All people everywhere are children of God and therefore are entitled to the respect due to the immediate family of the most gracious, generous and powerful person in all of creation. Since all people are children of God, they are all brothers and sisters and should behave with affection and compassion for one another.
- All children of God have a fabulous, exciting and awesome destiny which is important to God and should be fostered and cooperated with by all persons.
- God’s domain operates as a loving family, not an arbitrary kingdom of servants.
- Immediate two way personal relationship between God and each of his children is available to each child simply for the striving to have such a relationship. The benefits of this relationship are immense, awesome and eternal.
- Each child of God can experience the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of God. For each child, God as father has in mind a career of growing knowledge, wisdom and progressive service to the family. As father, God will give power and authority to each child as soon as he/she is capable of exercising it responsibly. God as mother comforts, encourages and nurtures each child both physically and spiritually. From physical conception and ever after, God as mother supports, cherishes and comforts every child without preference or qualification. By paying attention to these parental ministrations, the children of God can experience and get to know their spiritual parents.