Abba:I Belong to You

If you haven’t read Psalm 103 recently you should.  It expresses descriptively and vividly the care of Abba our Heavenly Father toward us.  He “redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, [he] satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”   Also, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”

 

We are His children, and our adoption is the footing for this privileged position.  For it is “in love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”  Adoption is the legal theological term that ascertains our standing.  We enter the family and are given full rights through God’s action on our behalf. 

 

While “adoption” is the concept that well describes our standing with the Father, it is the expression “Abba” that paints a picture of our relationship with Him.  “You received the Spirit of sonship.  And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” 

 

One of the first words of a young child is “da-da-dada.”  Similarly for a Hebrew baby who says, “a-a-abba” (daddy).  That is exactly what adoption does for us.  It places us in an undreamed of, unheard of intimate relationship with our Daddy Father.  We now can speak of and to the infinite transcendent God with the same familiar term used by a toddler.

 

How different I would be if the primary identity carried through life was my place as a son in the family.  If only I nurtured this “Abba, I belong to you” relationship.  How different life would be if at the end of the day I viewed myself as my Father’s beloved child. 

 

Psalm 103 points us in that direction.  We will surely be enlarged as we contemplate this Abba relationship in silent wonder, radical amazement and affectionate awe.

 

Kenneth Jude Young