The Intimacy of Absolute Trust

Our heavenly Father wants to hold us to his bosom.

Over the next seven weeks I plan to continue exploring the theme of God’s love by focusing more closely on how God’s love is revealed in his fatherhood. Here are subjects we will explore in the loving fatherhood of God:

The Intimacy of Absolute Trust: He wants to hold us to his bosom.
Daily Bread: He wants to provide for us.
Answering Requests: He wants to give what we ask.
Compassionate Help: He wants to sympathize and help us.
Wise and Loving Discipline: He wants to train us to be mature and righteous.
Security: He wants to protect us.
Inheritance: He wants to give us all he owns.
Identity: He wants us to be like him.

Today let’s take the first on the list.

Because God loves us, he wants our relationship with him to have the intimacy that comes from absolute trust. Intimate trust is what good fathers have with good children.

God calls on us to trust him absolutely, without reservation, as a young child trusts a good father. Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, ESV).

The example of God the Father and God the Son

Jesus displays what the intimacy of absolute trust looks like. Scripture says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained [Him.]” (John 1:18, NASB).

To be “in the bosom” of another person means to have your head on their chest, or to be in their embrace. The bosom is the front of the body between the arms. I have seen my son Brian carry his infant son Erlend in a harness that holds Erlend facing him chest to chest. Erlend falls peacefully asleep there in the bosom of his father, the top of his head just below Brian’s chin.

The bosom of the father is not just for infants. In one parable, Jesus told how one wealthy man now in Hades “saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom” (Luke 16:22–23, NASB). Lazarus was the poor man who during his life had lived in abject poverty, who had lain at the gate of the wealthy man with dogs licking his sores. But now Lazarus was in paradise, comforted by father Abraham himself, in the bosom, in the embrace, of the great patriarch.

In another example, we find that reclining in front of someone at the meal table could be described as being in the person’s bosom. In the culture of Jesus’ time, people ate special meals lying on their sides on mats, leaning on their elbow, with their heads at the table and bodies perpendicular to the table. The mats could be close enough that a person could lean back and lay their head on their neighbor’s chest. So it happened at the Last Supper. After Jesus revealed that someone would betray him, Scripture says, “There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. So Simon Peter gestured to him, and said to him, ‘Tell [us] who it is of whom He is speaking.’ He, leaning back thus on Jesus’ bosom, said to Him, ‘Lord, who is it?’” (John 13:23–25, NASB).

Here, the beloved disciple John was in the place to hear from Jesus directly in his ear a secret revealed. He was in the bosom of Jesus, able to receive confidential information.

In the Father’s embrace

John 1:18 describes Jesus as being in the bosom of his Father in heaven. This is God’s ideal. He wants each of his children to be in his bosom. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, when the prodigal finally came to his senses and was walking home from debauchery in a distant land, “his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). This is how our loving Father in heaven feels about his repentant children. He wants us against his bosom, wrapped in his arms, relying on him as our refuge. There the son or daughter can know they are perfectly safe, for in the bosom of the Father is the only place of true safety. There our souls can rest in absolute, unqualified trust, as peaceful and carefree as an infant asleep on daddy’s chest.

God wants you to trust him without reservation

Our absolute trust and the intimacy that comes with it is so important to God that he has determined to save only those who have faith in him and his words. (Eph. 2:8–9)

He calls us again and again to trust him.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5, ESV).
“Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit’” (Jeremiah 17:5–8, ESV).
“Those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you” (Psalm 9:10, ESV).
“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us” (Psalm 62:8, ESV).
“O Israel, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their shield. You who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their shield” (Psalm 115:9–11, ESV).
“O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!” (Psalm 84:12, ESV)
“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever” (Psalm 125:1, ESV).
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2, ESV).
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock” (Isaiah 26:3–4, ESV).
“Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:10, ESV).