This morning I reflected on one of my favorite passages by Karl Barth. Barth was a brilliant pastor-theologian. His writing and teaching hacked away at the diseased liberalism that captivated the Christianity of his youth. Like many brilliant people, Barth was brilliantly wrong about some important things. However, this morning as I contemplated two upcoming Sunday baptisms to be performed – my ongoing sermon series on God our Father – and all the things I have to be thankful for - well, my mind naturally went to this passage from Barth’s lecture on the Reformers and the Lord’s prayer. This is some good stuff:

“…we must admit that we have no right to call him Father, to be his children, to address him in this manner. He is our Father, and we are his children by virtue of the natural relationship existing between him and Jesus Christ; by virtue of this Fatherhood and this Sonship which were made real in the person of Jesus Christ; and for us they are made real in him. We are his children, he is our Father, by virtue of this new birth realized at Christmas, on Good Friday, at Easter, and fulfilled at the moment of our baptism. It is a new birth, that is to say, a new existence, really new, a life quite different from the one that can be born of our human possibilities, of our own merits. ‘God our Father’ means ‘Our Father of mercy.’ We are and always shall be prodigal sons who can claim no other right than that which is given us in the person of Jesus Christ.”