In 1911 a young man name Frank started making and selling butter cream candy from his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington. He dabbled in the confectionary sugar business and introduced malted-milk into candy bars. He and his son Forrest E Mars built a business that came to be known for it’s iconic candies: Milky Way, Snickers, M&M's, Twix, and Skittles—yes, that was the beginnings of Mars, Incorporated. Thirty years after Forrest Sr’s retirement he died transferring a vast inheritance to his three children: Forrest, Jacqueline, and John Franklyn "Frank" Mars. Each of the children in the Mars family, at the time, held a net worth in the billions of dollars.
In America we typically honor meritocracy and earning privileges the hard way. We don’t applaud the stability, security, prestige, and wealth of families who pass their social and fiscal advantages on to the next generation. However, the Mars family story is also, in a way, the kind of story people fantasize about—What would it be like to receive a huge inheritance from a wealthy relative?
Jesus’ inheritance passed on to you
Jesus ministered in a Middle-Eastern culture. The family honor and family wealth were highly prized and important aspects of the social fabric. It is to that culture that Jesus’ words of hereditary rights appear all the more radical: “All that belongs to the Father is mine.” By itself this statement is exactly what you’d expect. Jesus is claiming his rightful inheritance from his father. His next statement, however, comes with a shock, “That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and will make it known to you” (John 16:15).
Jesus, God’s rightful heir, is claiming to pass all of his inheritance from his Father onward to “YOU” after his death. Now this should make you sit on the edge of your seat. All of the family wealth and prestige is available to you!?! Unrelated to your deservedness, you’ve been granted access to God’s bank accounts. This isn’t meritocracy, it is heredity. The Apostle Paul confirms this language, “he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ…When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:5,13). Paul is claiming that the Holy Spirit is the means by which we access our bank account.
What belongs to the Father?
The question we should be asking is, what does Jesus mean when he says “All that belongs to the Father”? What belongs to the Father; what is the Father wealthy in? What wealth does the Father transfer to Jesus and then make available to us as his spiritual heirs?—remember we cannot accrue it or deserve; we simply inherit it from Jesus.
The scriptures speak of many blessings the adopted children of God inherit. My favorite, and the only one I want to share with us for now, is this—the wealth of God’s relationship. God is wealthy in love. Forrest E. Mars may hand over billions of dollars of assets, but God hands over the innumerable treasures of friendship. “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Psalm 103:11). He makes himself available, and knowable to you and I. Moses prayed, “teach me your ways, so I may know you.” The scriptures say God “met Moses in the tent of meeting where they spoke ‘face to face’” (Exodus 33:11). Over and over again, in consistent friendship God revealed his glory to Moses. And he is still available to you and I.
Notice how Jesus redefines eternal life in the following verse, “Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” John 17:3. Knowing God intimately is at the core of truly living. Eternity isn’t so much a location we go to when we die, it is a state of being we experience in relationship to the source of life and vitality. We can start living in the wealth of God’s eternal vitality right now.
In this series of startling statements Jesus makes in the gospel of John notice how he depicts the availability of intimate friendship and union with God:
- “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” John 15:9
- “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” John 14:21
- “…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.” John 17:21
- “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” John 14:20
- “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:23
Closing Summary:
God wants you to be wealthy in his love. He never wants you to run short of it or to doubt it. Through his Holy Spirit you have access to his bank accounts. And what are those bank accounts full of? What does an Almighty God possibly need to stock pile; what is the treasury of heaven that gets transacted as the universal currency of value?--Not money, but friendship, knowledge of the truth, and trusting love. God wants you to know him more, and trust him more deeply. That is what it truly means to be alive and to live eternally. To eat from God’s Tree of Life is friendship and communion with him.
Tags: god's love, intimacy, belonging, inheritance, wealthy
