Biblical Intimacy and our Heavenly Father
What is true Biblical Intimacy and what does the Bible teach about our intimacy with God?
In Preventing Ministry Failure, Wilson and Hoffman’s opening comment regarding intimacy well states the underlying cultural issue around the topic of intimacy. “Unfortunately the word intimacy has been so overused and misused that some people cringe when they hear it.”[1] In our modern culture most people think of intimacy merely as romantic or sexual. This is because most humans fail to understand or achieve true biblical intimacy in their lives, so instead they boil it down to actions that should be the outflow of intimacy but in and of themselves fail to produce true intimacy. This leads to great disappointment and hopelessness. When the physical acts they believe to be intimacy fail to meet the need for true intimacy in their lives they are left empty and further disillusioned.
The authors also correctly pointed out that God created humans with a need for intimacy in three key areas: “with God, with others, and with a spouse.”[2] This points to the bigger stage on which intimacy is meant to play its key role, community. God designed humans for relationships. This is made clear both in the creation account in Genesis and the doctrines of the Trinity and Imago Dei. Made in the image of a Triune God who functions in perfect intimacy within His three beings we also were made to best function in relationships of intimate community. True intimacy was modeled in the Garden between God, Adam, and Eve. Prior to the fall they all fully knew each other and were fully known. However sin broke the natural flow of such intimacy by separating us from God and each other and introducing, “fear, shame, hiding, and blaming.”[3] These parts of our humanity became personal roadblocks to achieving the intimacy our soul so deeply craves. Yet, the truth of the matter is that without true biblical intimacy a person will never be satisfied or complete. Life will never be what it was meant to be short of intimate relationships with both God and people. Intimacy is essential to every human life because that is the way God designed it to be.
Three different New Testament passages including Matthew 6:6-13, Luke 15:11-27, and Romans 8:15 emphasize that a Christian’s relationship with God is to be a child/father relationship. This type of analogy can be very helpful or cumbersome to a person depending on their concept of a child/father relationship. In our day many people grow up without the influence or presence of a good father, and this can drastically taint their understanding of God as their heavenly father. Yet these passages go on to illustrate not just that God is our Father, but that He is our perfect, loving, and gracious father. In fact these passages show how God is actually the perfect fatherly model that we human father’s should ascribe to be. This is completely different than any other religion in all of World History. Never before has a deity described Himself as Father or sought such a level of familial intimacy with mankind. Nowhere else can we find such hope, trust, protection, love, and refuge than with our Heavenly Father, who is Lord over all things. He does not want distant servants, but close personal children. A fully orbed gospel relationship can only exist under this level of relational intimacy with God.