Everlasting Father

High in the White Mountains of eastern California lives the oldest tree in the world. The U.S. Forest Service has kept its location a secret in order to protect the 4,854-year-old bristlecone pine from vandalism. The nearly five-millennia-old tree is appropriately named, Methuselah, and dates back to the days when the real Methuselah walked the earth.

As remarkable as Methuselah’s lifespan is, it is only a sigh compared to the eternality of God. We marvel at ancient things and yet when the topic of eternity comes up, we often shy away from it. Trying to understand a God who has no beginning and no end, is sometimes like trying to see the end of our reflection in a funhouse mirror. Our reflections go on forever, just like God. Such thoughts stretch the limits of our finite minds.

However, these truths shouldn’t frustrate us but stir up more wonder, awe, and worship in our hearts. We’re introduced to the eternality of God in the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1.

“In the beginning, God…”.

Before anything existed or was created, God was there. Isaiah refers to the Messiah’s eternality and holds the tension of the eternal nature of the Child to be born, by also calling him the Everlasting Father.

On the surface don’t these statements seem contradictory? How could a child be born in time but exist outside of it? Or how could a newborn son also be the Everlasting Father? No wonder scholars scratched their heads at Isaiah’s prophecy for centuries. No mortal could be all these things simultaneously unless God in his infinite wisdom made it so.

But take heart, there is no contradiction in naming the Son, the Everlasting Father. He is both/and. The attribute of his everlasting fatherhood doesn’t diminish or contradict his sonship but rather perfectly complements it.

The original Hebrew of “Everlasting Father” is translated as Abi’ad (ab = ‘father’ and ad = ‘eternal’) which literally means “Father of Eternity.” Since he is before, above, and beyond time, he is also the possessor of eternity. And because he owns eternity, only he has the right to bestow eternal life on his children.

But Jesus is not only the possessor of eternity; he is also a father. Not in the same sense that God the Father is our Father (since they are two distinct and separate persons). Jesus is one with the Father in nature and essence, and therefore, the only one who can reveal the Father’s love for us. He is the Father’s love with skin on.

Undoubtedly, this stretches our imaginations like the funhouse mirrors. Only in the infinite mind of God, could Jesus be both a child born in time and the one who stood outside of it.

The baby born to Mary is from everlasting, and as the son given, he is fatherly in his love for us. Praise God that Jesus is our Everlasting Father! Such knowledge is too wonderful; it is high, and we cannot obtain it.

How could we have known that we needed a Messiah who stands outside of time, only to then be born and constrained by it? Or that to be a saving Son, he would need to embody the compassionate, tender love of the Father toward his children? Isaiah could only foretell these seemingly paradoxical characteristics of the Messiah, but we know them to gloriously converge in the person of Jesus Christ.

While it may be uncomfortable, it wouldn’t hurt us to regularly gaze through the funhouse mirrors and consider our Everlasting Father. If they and the Methuselah tree teach us anything, it’s that life is short, and eternity is long.

What really matters in light of eternity? Only to know the Everlasting Father and spend forever with him.

Let's Pray

Dear Everlasting Father,

When we consider your eternality, we're filled with both awe and discomfort. We are bound by time and space and cannot fathom your everlasting Fatherhood. Yet these thoughts stir up worship in us, too! During this season, when we're contemplating your humility in coming to us as a baby, cause our hearts to be freshly amazed that you stepped out of eternity to take on human flesh. You are the exact imprint and representation of the Father's love for us. Thank you for being both the Son born in time to a woman, and the Everlasting Father who stood outside of it.

In your everlasting name, we pray. Amen.