The TV show Father Knows Best ran on American TV from 1954 to 1960 and starred Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, and Billy Gray. It taught old-fashioned family values.
The other night I had a dream in which someone kept asking, “Does Father know best?” I was thinking in my dream that we were talking about God and that of course He knows best.
But do most people believe that? Do most people believe that God knows best? I think not.
The sexual revolution that started shortly after Father Knows Best went off the air was a rejection of God’s plan for humanity. Things have moved further away from God, with the social revolution that has taken place.
The creation mandate has been replaced with a humanist manifesto of freedom. We should do anything we want as long as we are not hurting anyone else.
But Father does know best.
Those who obey God’s plan are happy, contented, fulfilled, and purposeful.
Those who reject God’s plan are sad, filled with discontent, unfulfilled, and without any meaningful purpose. Nihilism is a terrible purpose in life.
Society has gone backwards, not forward, in the last sixty years.
Oddly, people have rejected God both in terms of justification and sanctification.
God’s way of justification is by faith alone in Christ, apart from works. But most Evangelicals replace that with justification by turning from sins, surrender of life, and perseverance in obedience until death (cf. John 5:39-40; Gal 1:6-9; 5:4). They call God’s way of justification easy believism and cheap grace. They think their modified gospel gives more glory to God than believing His gospel.
God’s way of sanctification is by having our minds renewed by the Word of God (Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18). For the most part, Evangelicals have said that the way to sanctification is by turning from sins, surrender of life, and perseverance in obedience until death.
You see, for most Evangelicals, justification and sanctification are intertwined—you can’t be justified without ongoing sanctification, and you can’t have ongoing sanctification without what is often called initial justification.
God’s way separates justification and sanctification. Man’s way combines them.
I think it is high time we recognize that Father knows best.
