As we read in the New Testament the sermons of Peter, the letters of Paul, and the theological reflections in Hebrews, we find described a new way of belonging to God through Jesus Christ. Formerly God's people had related to God through a system of law and sacrifice. God's people would strive to satisfy God's law, and when they failed they could strive to make satisfaction through ritual sacrifices of various valuable gifts. God ends up addressed in the ways we find in the Psalms, as rock, judge, king.

Jesus invites us to pray differently, because we belong to God differently through Jesus Christ. Jesus says to pray like this: "Our Father." This was a new way of belonging and praying that God's people had not known before. No more does our hope for belonging need to depend on our performance according to the law. We can now belong through the gift of our adoption as children of God. In Romans 8 Paul teaches us: "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (vs. 15-16).

It is not that God had never been thought of in intimate ways. In the Scriptures God is described like a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13) or a compassionate father (Psalm 103:13). The great German Professor Joachim Jeremias (who grew up in Palestine) observed about Jesus' form of prayer instruction in Matthew 6:9: Never before had the children of God been invited to address God in this intimate way, as our "Abba," an Aramaic word somewhat like our "Daddy."

That is what Jesus teaches us as God's children. We belong to God as children, not as slaves trying to please a master. This is a new way of belonging. It is why I love the Book of Common Worship, which offers this rubric to introduce the Lord's prayer: "And now, with the confidence of the children of God, let us pray: Our Father ..."

Next month:
A new way of seeing