Life For The Innocent | A Study For The Fatherless, Widow, Orphan, & OppressedSample

Everyone has the Same Story

In John 13, in the wake of Jesus washing the disciples feet, predicting his coming betrayal, and foretelling of Peter’s coming unfaithfulness and three denials, the disciples were feeling pretty insecure, to say the least. In John 14:1, Jesus comforts his disciples and encourages them to “not let their hearts be troubled.”

What is most interesting about Jesus’s encouragement in this passage of John’s Gospel is how he comforts the disciples. He says in John 14:18; “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus recognizes that the state of humanity is that of orphans, lost without a father. 

In Day 1 of our study we considered how God’s home in Eden was just that, home. It was a place for God’s sons and daughters to dwell in safety. However, when Satan came in and poached God’s kids through deception, the Bible tells us that we became dead in trespasses, children under wrath, and followers of the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:1-3). Our home, safety, and peace was stolen and gone. Sin enslaved us and caused our sense of identity to shift from being “children of God” to defining ourselves by our shame.

Without Jesus, we are all to some degree “trafficked orphans,” and cut off from our loving heavenly Father through our sin. The reason why the visual problem of orphans and trafficking in our world today touches our heart is because we know that the story of the orphan is our story. Without Christ we were all once cut off from God! 

Praise God that he changes this reality through Jesus’ work. By the Spirit, who is our home, “we are led by the Spirit of God, and are sons of God. For we did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”