Understanding the Fatherhood of God
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I. Meaning of Father God
I. Meaning of Father God
Why do we call God Father?
Some within our wacky world claim that we should refer to God more in a parental kind of way rather than in a masculine fatherly kind of way. Of course I think many of you would understand that those that make this claim largely come from or are sympathetic and swayed by the feminist party. So many of these things they say, we usually down right cast off as false. Nonetheless, I believe it’s good that we evaluate their claims so we can defend the truth in righteousness.
So what is it that they claim...
They claim God should be called more of parent “they” because God is genderless.
This claim I believe is indeed true.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
God is not made of atoms and material substance. He does not have a body and therefore has no gender. So this indeed this is Biblical.
The feminist also argue that many “more female-like” characteristics are attributed to God. They even pinpoint verses that describe God with motherly like tendencies such as....
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
But despite these claims of God’s genderlessness and the character traits that describe God, we as humans should still call God Father. Why...
(I)A. He has revealed Himself in this way through Scripture.
(I)A. He has revealed Himself in this way through Scripture.
Even though God does not have a gender, God has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity using masculine pronouns and imagery. In His Word, it is clear that He purposely chose to be called God the Father and not God the Mother. Never once would you see God being called mother. On top of this, if you were to search the Scriptures, you would find that God does not refer to Himself in gender-neutral terms.Both in Hebrew (which does not have a gender- neutral word) and in the Greek (which does have a gender-neutral word). However, the phrase, God the Father is used in abundance throughout the Bible somewhere around 170 times. No only do we see the term God the Father used, but the masculine pronouns used of God are abundant. 900 verses the word “theos” is used, the masculine noun is used. In fact, from the very beginning of the Bible, this is how God describes Himself.
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Furthermore, God described Himself always in masculine roles. He is not ever known as queen, as wife, or mother. Only King (Ps. 47:2), Husband (Is. 54:4, Hosea 2:2,16), and Father.
But what about theses verses that the feminist brings up about God being like a mother.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
The Lord goes out like a mighty man,
like a man of war he stirs up his zeal;
he cries out, he shouts aloud,
he shows himself mighty against his foes.
For a long time I have held my peace;
I have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labor;
I will gasp and pant.
It doesn’t say that God is a mother only that He will comfort His people like a mother does or that He will cry out like a woman in labor does. That’s what we call simile. Same with this other verse.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
God likens His care for his people to a nursing mother who is endeared to her baby. She simply cannot help but have compassion on the baby.
I’m fairly certain that most in this room have seen that in action. Typically who has the hardest time letting a child cry during the night. The wife the woman. Who typically rushes to the aid of a newborn. The woman. I can tell you that was one of the first (not the actual first) but one of the first times I saw my wife cry but she was literally fighting her natural instincts to run to our firstborn’s side during the night when he was crying but knowing that we were trying to train him to sleep at night and cry himself to sleep. That was tough for her.
What God says in these verses is that His care for His people far exceeds that of a nursing mother. That doesn’t make Him a mother, it just helps us in our very physical minds comprehend God.
God often does this to help us understand Him. He is beyond our human capacity to understand (we call that transcendent) and we are only limited in understanding a physical realm so God often speaks to us in physical terms that we can understand and relate to this so this is why He has used these comparisons of Mothers but He has absolutely and with no uncertainly revealed Himself as Father and nothing else.
Changing God’s chosen pronouns on our part is simply put, an attempt on man’s part to reverse God’s created order. Rather than we being created into God’s image, man is attempting to fashion God into their desired images.
Let this one sink in as it certainly proves the point of this last statement. It was reported that a well-known Bible translator was approached by someone who felt that the translation he was working on should use feminine pronouns to refer to God. The translator asked if feminine pronouns should be used to refer to the devil as well: “Resist the devil and she will flee from you.” That quip was not well-received.
So be careful that we don’t too fall prey into turning God into images that we think are “right” rather than what the Bible depicts
As we dig in further though the question remains, why has God chosen to use Father as a term that describes Him.
(I)B. He means to reveal truth by this.
(I)B. He means to reveal truth by this.
Namely the truth of His Divine Nature
Calling God "Father" is not like adding personification to an inanimate object.
Personification is a literary tool that we use to refer projecting human characteristics on lifeless objects to create imagery. Here’s some examples....
The sun smiled down on us today.
The flowers are dancing in the breeze.
Old Toby, (the car) he coughed and sputtered before finally starting.
But that’s not what God intends to do when He talks about Himself as Father. He reveals Himself as Father on every page of Scripture because this is who He really is.
In what ways does that help us understand God. There are quite a few ways we could speculate and agree to about the similarities of God and an earthly father role. We could look at God as provider and protector. We could also see the similarities of being in the roles of headship etc. But it is most helpful to see where scripture clearly wants us to understand why He is called Father and that is in His roles in…
1. The Trinity
1. The Trinity
The Triune God (the Trinity) is one, eternally existing in three divine persons who are equal in essence but different in personal expressions through one undivided and eternal divine nature.
What distinguishes the Father from the Son and the Holy Spirit is not deity because they are all equally and fully God. The distinguishing mark is the fact that the Father has a unique relationship with the Son and a unique relationship with Holy Spirit. “Father” is how He truly relates to the Son.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
The New Testament never explains why the Father and the Son are related to each other in this way. All that we can say is that both of them are eternally present in the Trinity, but why one of them is the Father and the other is his Son is a mystery unknown to us (John 1:1–3). What we do know is that it was the Father’s plan to save his chosen people and that the Son voluntarily agreed to become a man in order to carry out the Father’s intentions
2. Creation
2. Creation
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
One such person described the difference of fatherhood in this way.
What is the difference between fatherhood and motherhood? A father is the "principle" or "source" of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring�s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways. This helps us understand His fatherhood in creation. Being appropriate in apply correct terms to God.
3. Redemption
3. Redemption
We are said that the term “Father” is how God the Father relates to the Son. But it’s also how He truly relates to us as well. If you remember back to our prayer series, Jesus instructed His disciples to pray to the Father and especially as our Father. What enables anyone to do so is because the Son has united us to Him by his death and resurrection.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
As we already know, Jesus is the Son of God but by this act, Jesus has associated us with Himself as His siblings. The difference is that he is the divine and sinless Son of the Father by nature, whereas we are sinners who have been adopted by God through salvation. Jesus himself said as much when he told Mary Magdalene, after his resurrection in John 20:17 to go to his disciples, whom he now called his brothers, and tell them what was about to happen:
Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”
By nature we are not children of God. As his creatures, we have nothing in common with his divine being. Made in His image but do not share His divinity. Because of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, we have been given new life as part of God’s family. It is because of this presence of the Spirit in us that we are able to approach the Father and have a relationship with him. As Paul wrote to the Galatians:
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
When John told his readers in chapter 1:12 that those who receive Him are His children, that is not a promise which God will fulfill in the future. No, that is the truth even for right now. We currently enjoy the rights and priviledges our adoption entails, because we have come to know God as Father.
This is an absolutely incredible thing. It’s truly amazing. What God has gifted to us who believe and what Jesus proclaimed that we could call God Father or Abba Father basically meaning “daddy” an intimate and close term was something so foreign to the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. For the Jewish leaders, they didn’t call God Father, but when backed into a corner they did agree that they thought He was their Father in a covenantal sense.
They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.”
They wouldn’t admit that God was their Abba father, their intimate and close Father, but Jesus indeed said it was so. We have a closeness with the Father that supercedes any of the close relationships we can have on this earth.
So why then is it so hard for us as human beings to identify God as Father?
II. Misconceptions of Father God
II. Misconceptions of Father God
Is it possible that far too often as Christians, we mentally compartmentalize the Trinity? Perhaps we think of the Spirit as empowerment and knowledge, the Son as meekness and love, and the Father as judgment and righteousness. But is this how God is revealed in Scripture? I want us to consider this as we consider how we have misconceived who God really is and how we have failed to properly understand that term father and where that false concept came from .
We will start with the less obvious one...
(II)A. Because of pagan gods
(II)A. Because of pagan gods
In many secular and false worship systems, people are prepared to recognize the existence of a divine Father figure, as we see from the names like Jupiter coming from Roman gods meaning (“Father Jove” equivalent to Zeus), but it was not always clear what that meant. For some, their father god was a creator, but for others, and especially for Platonists in New Testament times, the Father was a hidden deity who dwelt above the heavens and had no direct contact with material things. Instead, he had a mind that produced thoughts and ideas, one of which was the Creator (Demiurge), who made the world. The reason for this distinction was that the Platonists knew that the world is imperfect, and so it could not have been made by the Father directly. In the early church, there were people whom we call Gnostics, who took over this way of thinking. They believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of the hidden Father, whom he had sent in order to redeem the world from the work of the (inferior) Creator.
So how does that affect our view of God. It affects us to the point that we believe that God is absent.
But is that what Scripture indicates...
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
When we don’t feel He is near, we must do as David did in Psalm 22:1-2
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
Then we find his turning point...
Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
Despite feeling rejected, lonely, and bordering on despair, David shifts his focus to two significant truths: God reigns in holiness and he’s faithful to deliver his people.
First of all, when you don’t feel God’s presence, rely on his character. His reign reminds me that he’s present everywhere. While I may not feel he is near, he is. Yet his holiness tells me I don’t deserve to be near him.
But our reigning, holy God has given us the free gift of access by Christ’s blood. He’s given us what we don’t deserve—the freedom to draw near to his throne of grace with confidence. So when we feel God has forsaken us, we rely on what we know to be true: God’s holiness reigns, and he has granted us endless access to his presence.
Second, when you don’t feel God’s power, rely on his faithful deliverance. David recalls that his forefathers trusted God to deliver them in the past, and God always did. He rescued his people after they cried to him, and he saved them from idols and enemies as they trusted him.
It is easy for me to fret that maybe, just maybe, this will be the instance when God forgets to be faithful, forgets to come through for me. When we feel this way, we can take him at his Word, clinging to biblical accounts of his faithfulness. We can pray his promises, knowing he hears our cries. We can also remember and reflect on his past faithfulness in our lives.
So God is not far of, as the pagan gods man has created have imagined. No He is near and He is active.
But where else have we received false notions of God from… through our views of
(II)B. Because of earthly fathers
(II)B. Because of earthly fathers
and this is the sad part, because God created fathers in a way to help us better understand Him, but because of our sinfulness, it’s actually caused people to assume the wrong assumptions about God.
One such misconception is that God the Father, as a righteous judge, can’t wait to punish people for their sins.
quick to throw out punishment, but show little by way of love… and where do we get that idea from.
Certainly it can because we have become lopsided in our study of God. But it can also be because that’s what we see in our earthly fathers.
Quick tempered, swift to rebuke, non-patient, easily agitated, always looking to pounce, very rarely finds anything good worth praising,
But what does Scripture really say about who God is? Is He like this? By way of reminder, God is love, God is Good, and God is Longsuffering.
1. God is Love
1. God is Love
We should now know this.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
It’s not just a thing He does, or a tool that He uses. It’s His actual divine nature. GOD IS LOVE. His innermost being, what describes Him is love. He perfectly exemplies it. What is love. Check out 1 Corinth 13. Patient, kind, forbearing, forgiving, it’s believing, hoping, enduring all things for the one you love.
So it only make sense that because of God being love, He naturally pours out love in abundance.
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
This passage begins with a command: “See.” And what does John want here his audience to see. John wants us to observe the magnificence of the Father’s love. In fact, that is largely the purpose of His writing 1 John. The theme of love is central to that book. When John wrote for them to see or behold “what great love” which by the way is huge, look at this. The Greek word translated “what great” is found only six times in the New Testament and always implies complete astonishment and overabundant admiration.
I like how the NIV calls this out. And I think does justice to the text.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
God has indeed lavished His love upon us.
God is not only love which so many struggle to see because of misconceptions, but He is also good.
2. God is Good
2. God is Good
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
What has God given us that is good?
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Every thing in life that we consider good, to clarify that, God declares as good, comes from Him. Everything. Things that we know and are aware of like possessions, places, people.... but also things we don’t often consider like hope, and peace, and life, and even things like trials and growth. All of these are from our benevolent Father.
3. God is Longsuffering
3. God is Longsuffering
It has been said that longsuffering means “suffering long.” That is a good answer, but a better definition is needed. The word longsuffering in the Bible is made up of two Greek words meaning “long” and “temper”; literally, “long-tempered.” To be longsuffering, then, is to have self-restraint when one is stirred to anger. A longsuffering person does not immediately retaliate or punish; rather, he has a “long fuse” and patiently forbears. Longsuffering is associated with mercy (1 Peter 3:20) and hope (1 Thessalonians 1:3). It does not surrender to circumstances or succumb to trial.
God is the source of longsuffering because it is part of His character (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18–20; Psalm 86:15; Romans 2:4; 1 Peter 3:9; 2 Peter 3:15). He is patient with sinners.
Does that mean He doesn’t discipline. Not at all… in fact, quite the opposite.
If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
When He disciplines, it is for good. As our Father, we should think of His discipline as loving corrective, but never as simple vindictive punishment. He reserves that wrath for the unbeliever and for those who openly reject Him. Choosing to cast off their creator and worship another. Because of this treachery, God will cause retribution for their deeds. But for His children, He disciples out of love for their good and does not take pleasure in dishing out punishment.
We could go on and on about who God is. These are just a few that we need reminded of often. His character is incomprehensible. But the reality is, we haven’t done a good job knowing Him but letting others distort our view of God.
Unfortunately, in our society many mothers do reflect the loving, caring, and providing nature of God better than fathers do as they often failed to live up to their God-given responsibilities. Many people would testify that they have trouble with the concept of God as Father because they associate Him with their absent or abusive human fathers. The solution is to get to know God the Father as He really is, not to substitute Him with God the Mother.
Application
Application
2 applications
1. When someone is your father, you take on their characteristics.
So what does that mean for us. Well it means even more so that we should take on the characteristics of God if He is indeed our Father.
Going back to John 8 again. Jesus clearly identified what His followers should look like.
You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
So as a child of God, do you live like a child of God.
2. My second application is for fathers. I hope today you now come with a deeper appreciation of who God is and that you also walk away with a deeper sense of your responsibility to represent a Biblical father well. This responsibility is massive. This task is vital because people look at you as a father and either come to the conclusion that fathers are good or fathers are bad. And how we live our lives as father has drastically shaped how people have come to view their heavenly Father. Do our kids look at us and see an image of their heavenly father depicted through your actions or does that “Father” term for God not make sense because of what they have seen in you. We carry that with us.
So let’s live,love,serve, lead, protect, train, discipline, and give like our Heavenly Father has and show the world by our example how truly good our Heavenly Father is.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.