Matthew 7:11 Commentary and Bible Study

What fallen and sinful earthly fathers are able to do, faith should have no trouble believing that a perfect heavenly Father can do. If a child can go to his natural father with strong confidence that he will be heard in spite of inconsistency, impatience, bad temper, then he should have much greater confidence in the Lord to answer his petitions. Earthly fathers have within them a predisposition from God to care for their young. This is more than a blind animal instinct; it involves the highest feelings and rational thoughts which stir them to conscious and loving care for their children. These feelings survive even though man is capable of great violence to his enemies and many evil and selfish motives rule him and change his behaviour, making him unkind, cruel, and willing to sacrifice the good of others to his own personal interest. He is quite prepared to do evil when it suits him. But in spite of this God has left enough good in human beings for them to know how to care for their offspring. This urge to care is vital for the preservation of the race. Human children go through a prolonged period of helplessness and dependency, during which they are unable to fend for themselves. God provides human parents to supply their needs and to train them for adult life. This is so important that God has put within them a very strong parenting inclination, strong enough to allow the majority of parents to do justice to this task. But in addition, by leaving these sensitivities in man, God provides a language with which to communicate with man. This parenting instinct is a dim reflection of his own care and provision. This remnant of good left in us allows us to understand what he means when he describes his own faithfulness and loving care to his children. We understand in terms of what we are familiar with. If, after the fall, man had lost all sensitivity and compassion, and become no more than an animal or worse, then arguments such as the Lord uses here would have no meaning to us. We could not relate to what he said, for we would have no experience of the kind of sympathy and concern which a parent has for a child, and we would know what he meant, when he spoke of parental affection and the obligation felt in the parent’s heart towards the child. We grasp the truth that there is something much more noble and refined in God. This instinct in man is not enough for the darkened unregenerate mind to fully grasp God’s parental love, but it supplies the basic material on which the Spirit of God works when he opens our understanding. The unregenerate mind is not so dark that it cannot grasp anything of what God is saying, but rather it refuses to be open to his reasoning even though it has enough knowledge to be without excuse for unbelief. Faith must form an image of God before it can come to him. It must be an accurate image based on his revelation of himself. Christ teaches us to see God as a loving and kind Father in heaven, and so he encourages us to have that confidence in him which is significant part of faith. Conscience gives enough reason to fear God for us not to come to him, but the gospel teaches us that there is a fatherly concern in God that sets aside all wrath and anger due to us. In revealing God as a Father, Christ answers all questions about his willingness to receive us at a stroke. God is of course like the best of fathers not the worst, but, says the Lord Jesus, even the poorest of fathers have within them something of what we need in God. It is an argument from the less to the greater.