Spiritual Fathers by Sam Soleyn

Jesus came to show us the Father. The prophecy that proceeds His coming to do this is, in the last days God would send us the spirit of Elijah who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Elijah being the prophet had the function to announce this event of the LORD.

After Adam sinned, man was separated from his Father. God's plan was to reconcile us to Himself by sending the spirit of fatherhood back to the earth. That spirit of fatherhood came in the LORD Jesus Christ who carried as one of His titles, "The Everlasting Father."

When Elijah was departing, his servant Elisha saw him as he was going up and cried out, "My father, my father." (See II Kings 2) The intention of God is that He would show us the Father through a human father. It was God's plan to reconcile us to Himself.

In what way does He show us the Father? The principle of the spirit of Elijah is you will see the father, the natural father, whose ways, attitudes and character will be a reflection of the heavenly Father. In that sense it is, "My father, my father"; the human father, modeling the attitude and character of God the Father.

God created man in His image and likeness. Not only is God a spirit but man is a spirit as well. So the nature of man, meaning the substance of man's being is like God. In that sense; God is a Spirit, man has a spirit.

Man got a spirit because God gave him a spirit out of the Person of God. The likeness of God is a different thing; you have to be discipled into the likeness. If you're going to be the son of someone, you have to be discipled in the attitude and character of that person. That's why the home is so important because the home is where you learn how to grow up to be like your father in attitude and character.

The New Testament refers to the 'household of', instead of the 'church of'. Today we hear men always proclaiming loudly, "This is my church." But the church of Jesus Christ is one household, belonging to God. Everything in the household of God was meant to be put under the headship of Christ.

Christ has distributed gifts to men by the Spirit so all men might grow up and become mature. Part of their maturity is that they would disciple others who would become fathers through the maturing process.

The intent of the LORD Jesus, by His own declaration, was to show us the Father. He said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father because the Father and I are One." So He's saying, "Look at Me and you'll see the Father"..."My Father, My Father."

To the twelve, Jesus was the father who showed them the Father; He was the Everlasting Father, who showed them God the Father by His attitude and character. The twelve learned the fatherhood of God, from the One who was their discipler. This concept is not a New Testament concept, but generated in Old Testament and passed on in the house of God.

God's household has always been patriarchally arranged. The Old Testament gives us good picture of this. There are two types of fathers; there is a human father and a spiritual father. A human father may be also a spiritual father but it's not to be assumed that it's one and the same. For example, I am the natural father of my children and as such I had the responsibility to raise them up to become responsible citizens. I also had the duty to raise them to show them God the Father.

As a natural father who is also a spiritual man, I had the dual role of being a spiritual and a natural father. I was a natural father to my children when they were young, as well as a spiritual father. My own children have had to grow to the place of recognizing that I was also their spiritual father. You see, there's a point at which children should leave father and mother, and in the case of a man who is married, unite with his wife, the two become one flesh.

My son Nick has done just that; he left our house, married, and now has established his own household. Presently he's 25, has a wife who is 24; but he's not capable of being her spiritual father. Why? Simple, he's too young to be a spiritual father to anybody. When he has children he'll be a natural father who is teaching his children spiritual things, but God has arranged the order of mankind that way. So although he is the husband, he needs a spiritual father, and his wife who is a believer needs a spiritual father as well. He is not old enough, or mature enough to be both her father in the LORD and her husband. So she needs her own spiritual father as he needs a spiritual father.

When your children grow up, they need to acknowledge and recognize that you are not only their natural father but also their spiritual father. And they're not obligated to treat you as their spiritual father. For example, I am the spiritual father of a number of people who have natural fathers.

For you to continue under the rule of your human father as your spiritual father there must be an adult agreement between both of you. My son and daughter would have to come to me and say, "Dad you're my natural father but now I recognize you also as my spiritual father." And your wife would need to come to you and say, "You're my husband but I recognize that you have come to that place of maturity where I'm willing and I'm able to submit to you as my spiritual father. You see, it's not automatic that someone is by virtue of human relationships, automatically part of a spiritual relationship. Spiritual relationships are by choice, that is, they must be chosen. You see, a child is born but a son is given and so relationships of a spiritual nature have to be chosen. And for that reason, I am not automatically the spiritual father of my adult children and I'm not automatically the spiritual father of my wife.

But you don't have to be an old man to be a spiritual father. Spiritual fatherhood is not determined by age nearly so much as it is determined by maturity. The household of God is arranged patriarchally; Jesus was the spiritual father of the twelve, and over the whole body of Christ, He is the Head of the body. So no man comes to the Father but by Jesus Christ who is our way and our truth and our life. He represents Himself to us by humans, humans who have adopted His character and it's His character in us that is the representation of the Father because He was perfectly representative of the Father. To this end, God has consented to be our Father because we are under the rule of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself is not our Father but He gives us access to the Father. You see, the fullness of who Jesus is...Jesus is the one, the human, earthly representation of God that we look to and say of Him, "My father, my father." So in that sense He is our father, but He really did come to show us The Father.

How is He today our father who shows us the Father? The answer is, He delegates His spot to a human being who becomes our human father. Now that human being has the character of the LORD Jesus Christ and so in that sense that human being is also our father; the father who represents Jesus' role out of which we see God the Father.

The model of the spirit of Elijah is a human father who shows us the heavenly Father. Jesus perfectly modeled the Father, when He was on the earth. Jesus showed the heavenly Father to the twelve. Jesus is not on the earth today, yet His character is in the hearts of human men, men who are like Christ. When we are like Christ, we are also like the Father. Why? Because Jesus was the perfect demonstration of who the Father is, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father." The vision of Jesus and the Father collapses into one and now a human father is able to show us the heavenly Father, "My Father, My Father."

Here is Paul's take on it (See 1 Corinthians 4:14 and following), "I am not writing this to shame you but to warn you as my dear children." "Even though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ (or teachers in Christ) you do not have many fathers for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel, therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending you Timothy, my son whom I love who is faithful in the LORD, he will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. Some of you have become arrogant as if I were not coming to you." Now he's speaking as a father, "But I will come to you very soon if the LORD is willing and then I'll find out not only how these arrogant people are talking but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What do you prefer; shall I come to you with a whip or in love with a gentle spirit?"

This is a father speaking, reminds me of my own father. We had a number of children in our household when I was a child, I had five brothers and often the boys would be fighting in the bedroom when the light was out, not fighting in a mean and aggressive way, but we would do what brothers would do, we would tussle and hit each other. Many times we would fall out of our beds with loud sounds as we fell to the floor, giggling. At some point I would hear my father say, "Do you want me to come up there and deal with all of you?" Now everybody would be quiet and turn out the light and go to sleep. This is what Paul is saying here, he is saying, "Do you want me to come and deal with you?" How could he do that, how could he say that to them? Because he was their father. He said, "I became your father through this gospel." Paul himself was not married and had no children, so how could he be their father? Simple, a spiritual father does not necessarily have to be a human, natural father; you could be both as I explained earlier but you need a spiritual father to disciple you in the ways of God. Jesus was that father who discipled the twelve and He has shown the father to spiritual men who now can be spiritual fathers.

Earlier I spoke about how a woman needs a spiritual father who is different from her husband when she and her husband are young. When that husband matures, because this is not a matter of the flesh but of the spirit, that husband may also be the spiritual father. But that husband has to become mature and mature with the sufficiency to be able to show his wife the attitude and the character of the Father.

I want to further clarify by saying, when we speak of being the sons of God, we're not speaking about the issue of being male or female because sonship is that He is the Father of our spirits. So a woman is a son just as readily as a man is a son, because 'neither male nor female' has to do with the qualifications of being a son. We are sons who are not males and sons who are not females; it's neither. But a woman needs a spiritual father as readily as a man needs a spiritual father because a woman is a son just like a man is a son. It's easy to understand a man as a son, not so easy to understand a woman as a son because we have the mental block of thinking of a woman as female and a man as male. But sonship to God has nothing to do with either being a male or a female because He is the Father of our spirits.

The household of God was always arranged patriarchally. This idea of having spiritual fathers is not a new idea. The household of God was always arranged according to a patriarchal order. Think about it, how long did Adam live? The Scriptures say Adam live to be 930 years, that's nearly a thousand years from the time of his creation to the fall and we may assume that he was created as an adult male. So Adam lived and had the experiences of a man nearly a thousand years old. Why? Because the way that God taught the fathers in antiquity was through the original father who had talked with God; Adam was that father. God kept Adam alive for nearly a thousand years because he was the father from whom all the fathers would have learned the ways of God. Adam was approaching nearly the time of Noah and the flood before he died. So all the generations learned the ways of God as long as Adam lived.

The fact that Adam sinned did not mean that Adam had no further use to God; God used Adam to instruct the generations in the secrets of the earth that had been given to him. He imparted his understanding of the ways the systems of the world functioned. Human society, as a whole, has always been arranged on the basis of fathers. What's fascinating to me is that matriarchal societies are springing up everywhere, but a matriarchal society is not able to cure the ills of mankind because God did not establish a matriarchy; God established a patriarchy. It is not that men are more important to God than women, and this is not a social commentary that denies the need for women to be treated equally before the law, for matters of employment, and a whole host of things. It's not about that, it's about the order that God has created.

There is a glaring example in America, 70% of births to certain segments of our society are to single women. Now what is normally the fallout of that? Please understand, God bless women for standing in the place where men refuse to stand. I'm not against in any way those women, especially grand mothers who have tried to raise these sons and daughters, it's a hard thing to have to do; this is not the perfect thing. God put an order in society, now if we ignore God then that's another thing, if we choose not to retain God in our knowledge, then everything we do is reprobate from God's perspective.

But the reason we have such dreadful consequences to fatherlessness is that it is important to have Godly fathers. Now I'm not talking, again, about wicked men who abandon their families; some families are better off without these wicked and evil men. What we have done is we have assumed the worse of the genre and agreed that something that's not as bad is the perfect thing, that's rubbish. If we live in a society that says 'No' to the things of God, then what I'm saying doesn't make sense and it's not meant to order a society that rejects God. A society that rejects God is full of problems, it's a society that's waiting to implode; judgment is on it already. I don't have to speak judgment on it, the society that will not receive the LORD is condemned already, condemned to being far less than what God meant for humans to be. That's not my point; I'm speaking about the restoration of the human race to God the Father. That's our gospel, how Jesus came to restore and to reconcile God and man and He is the reconciliation of God and man.
The order of God from the beginning of time was that of fathers teaching their households. There are no fewer than six different meanings of the word 'father', from the father of an individual to a father of a people, to head of a household, to ancestors, to originator such as patron of a class, to a producer or a generator, to a benevolent protector, to someone known for respect and honor, or a ruler and a chief.

In the next paper I intend to pickup and discuss more the actual nature of fathering and fatherhood. What we are to expect out of the restoration of the principal of fatherhood to the people of God in the day of the LORD. The spirit of Elijah was sent to restore the hearts of fathers to children and the children to fathers as an indication of God restoring and reconciling the relationship to us as His children. The way this is to be done is by a human father who takes on the character of God the Father and causes the representation of God the Father to be visible to those of his household.

The old and New Testaments were arranged according to households, so it's a patriarchal household; the fathers of the Old Testament were the patriarchs, the fathers of the New Testament are spiritual fathers who have households of faith. These are not to be confused with church groups, they're households of faith and we'll speak to that in future discussions. I'm encouraging you to believe that in this new season you're seeing the restoration of God's household as God restores the hearts of fathers to the children. He's not going to destroy the land; He will restore that which has been lost.

WWW.SOLEYN.COM