When I was a small boy, my dad would often drop by his office on a Saturday morning, and if I promised not to do any damage, I could go with him. Part of the office complex was an old warehouse four stories high, with a basement and a large elevator that ran through its center. The elevator was an ancient relic, with large metal gates that shook the building as they manually slammed shut. To me it was more like an iron cage.
It’s amazing what captures the heart of a six-year-old boy, but riding that elevator on my own was an adventure, particularly if in my mind I was James Bond or Batman or Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. The elevator had just two buttons: a green one and a red one. My dad’s only instruction was that I was not to press the red one. I obeyed, but on the way home I got curious. I asked my dad what would have happened if I had “accidentally” pressed the red button.
“Son,” he said gravely, “if you had pressed the red button, the elevator would have come to a halt, and I would never have been able to find you!”
If my dad was seeking to put the fear of God into me, he was successful. For months all I could think about when I went to bed was pressing the red button and condemning myself to being holed up in a dark elevator shaft forever!
All children need reassurance. I see it in my own children, and notwithstanding all that Jesus did for us on the Cross, the Father knows this need within His own children. It is, therefore, a truly wonderful thing that an integral part of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit is to continually reassure us of our status as God’s beloved children. St. Paul writes, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:14-15) Paul’s reference to adoption is very deliberate. To his first-century Roman readers, families were the building blocks of Roman society. Under Roman law, during the process of adoption, the adoptee received an irrevocable new identity; his old obligations and debts were wiped out. The adopted son (or daughter) became a member of the family, just as if he had been born of the blood of the adopter. He was invested with all the privileges of a filius familias. In the same way, St. Paul is able to write, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ…” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18a NRSV)
The Holy Spirit brings that reassurance to our hearts in relation to our adoption as God’s children. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” St. Paul writes in Romans 8:16. Jane Williams, Anglican theologian and writer, states, “The Spirit’s job is to make us able to stand in Jesus’ own place in relation to the Father.” This is a profound truth. Yes, we are that loved. Yes, we are that secure. Yes, we belong that much. The Spirit embeds that assurance within us, applying a familial belovedness to our deepest place of desire.
Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff wrote about our deep need for reassurance: “The most frightening and unbearable feeling is abandonment and rejection, knowing that we are not accepted. It is like being a ‘stranger in the nest,’ experiencing psychological death. When I say ‘Father,’ I seek to express the conviction that there is someone who accepts me absolutely. My moral situation matters little. [Because of Jesus] I can always trust that there awaits a parental lap to receive me. There I will not be a stranger but a child, even if prodigal, in my heavenly Father’s house.”
Several months after the fated elevator conversation, my dad came home late one night from work and came upstairs to check on me. He caught me sobbing into my pillow after I had thought long and hard about the elevator, that scary iron cage, stuck, with me in it, in the dark shaft of the vast abyss of a warehouse. I imagined myself pressing the red button and was gripped with fear, in the darkness of my own room, of being lost forever. When he finally convinced me to tell him what was upsetting me, I recall his response: “Son, if you had pressed the red button, I would have come looking for you. I would not have stopped looking until I had found you — and I would have found you!”
Fear melted away. That was all I needed to hear.