6

6

“NOT MANY FATHERS”

D. J. Hutson

1 Corinthians 4: 15, 16; John 14: 7–9

I believe a time like this, beloved, is a time for gathering up

that which has been seen and has come into expression in our

beloved brother. As our brother has already said, we feel, all of

us, a sense of loss, and in that sense there is loss in the

testimony in that one who has filled out a valued place in it is

now no longer here, having departed to be with Christ. But the

word is to those of us, the living, who remain, that there may

not be any loss in one sense, that is, that what has been taken

away, the place that has been vacated, may be filled up in

view of the continuance of the testimony here until the Lord

comes.

I wanted to speak particularly of the feature of fatherhood

which we have valued in our beloved brother. An instructor in

Christ surely; how much we have learnt from the instruction,

the ministry of the word which has come through our beloved

brother. How much we have learnt and valued in London as he

has been local with us for so many years, but above and

beyond, may I say, what has come to us in that way is what

our brother has been. He has been one of those of whom it

says there are not many, “not many fathers”.

So I read in John’s gospel because it shows there, may I say,

the substantiality of what is involved in fatherhood. I have been

struck, as thinking of it in relation to the departure of our

beloved brother, by what the Lord Jesus says as to

fatherhood. It is not only what a person says, or what a person

does, it is what a person is. Therefore it must be a matter of

the heart and of love, as Paul could say elsewhere, “if I …

have not love, I am nothing”, 1 Corinthians 13: 2. It is

formation in love which comes into expression in a father, and

it is that which we have felt; it is that which we miss.