As you consider the Father’s heart for your own life, let him be the Father of mercies to you. He is not cautious in his tenderness toward you. He multiplies mercies for your every need, and there is nothing he would rather do. “Remember,” said the Puritan John Flavel, “that this God is your Father, and is more tender toward you than you are, or can be, toward yourself.”

God’s Heart for You

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” So begins A. W. Tozer’s book The Knowledge of the Holy.¹ Christ’s heart is to clarify what God is actually like, instead of what we expect him to be like. I am trying to help us leave behind our natural, fallen intuitions that God is distant and cold and to step into the freeing knowledge that he is gentle and lowly in heart.

But our study focuses on the Son of God. What about God the Father?

Should the Son as gentle and lowly be “what comes into our minds” but should we think of the Father as something else? Is the Father a little less gentle, maybe?

There seems to be a common idea among Christians that the Son is the nicest member of the Trinity. The Father loves us too, of course. But he’s a little colder. More stern. The Son is the really loving one.

But this is not what the Bible teaches. It is true that the Father’s wrath was satisfied by the Son’s work on the cross. But the Father’s heart is just as filled up with love for you as the Son’s. The Son’s work on the cross opened the way for the Father’s love to flow down to us, but it did not increase the Father’s love for us.

The Bible is clear that the Father’s heart is just as full of love for his people as the Son’s heart. In 2 Corinthians 1:3, for example, we read:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.

“The Father of mercies.” As Paul opens 2 Corinthians he gives us a window into what came into his mind when he thought about God.

Yes, the Father is just and righteous. Perfectly so. Without such a truth, we would have no hope that all wrongs would one day be put right.

But what is his heart?

What flows out from his deepest being? Mercies.

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