God the Father

by Mick Taylor
Catford, UK

In archaeology tiny fragments unlock the secrets of the past. A shard from a shattered pot can reveal the date and social customs of a lost civilisation. Of similar significance are those few Aramaic words embedded in the New Testament. These are the relics of the language that Jesus spoke.

The New Testament authors wrote in Greek, the lingua franca of the empire, so that their message could be communicated to as many people as possible, but occasionally they deliberately included a word or two in the language of Palestine. They did this, it seems, because the truth conveyed was so precious. It was as though they couldn’t forget the time they first heard and grasped it. Amongst those few Aramaic words none is more significant than the word Abba, a word which brought a revolution to how relationship with God would be understood.

Abba

The Talmud, a record of the ancient rabbinic discussions, states, ‘When a child experiences the taste of wheat (that is after it has been weaned) it learns to say Abba (Daddy) and Imma (Mummy).’ Abba was often the first word a baby would say but it could also be used by a devoted adult son. The point was not age but loving devotion. It is a word that conveys warmth and closeness along with respect and honour. So ‘Abba’ is more like Dad than Daddy. And it was Jesus’ most characteristic term of address when speaking of God both in his prayers and to his disciples. In all the Jewish prayers that have come down to us from Jesus’ time from other sources, none addresses God in such an intimate fashion.

Father, but remote in the Old Testament

Of course, the Fatherhood of God was not a completely unknown idea before the coming of Christ. In the Old Testament God is seen as the Father of creation and of His people, Israel. Malachi declares, ‘Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?’ (Mal. 2:10). Paul echoes that thought in 1 Corinthians 8:6, ‘…yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live…‘ Here God is Father because He is the source of life and the one to whom we are ultimately answerable.

More specifically in the Old Testament, God was the Father of the nation of Israel and its kings. He lovingly rescued the descendents of Abraham from Egypt and provided for them in the wilderness.

‘When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son’ (Hosea 11:1).
‘…there you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place’ (Deut. 1:31).

God, as their Father, gave them instruction through the Law and expected them to be like Him and act for Him in the world.

But in all of this there was still a remoteness. He was Father of the nation rather than of the individual. Even their kings were seen more as representatives of the whole people than individuals in their own right.

New intimacy in the New Testament

When Jesus told the disciples to call God ‘Abba’ he took what had been infrequent hints in the Old Testament to unimagined prominence and depth. In the whole of the Old Testament there are only fourteen direct references to God as Father, while in John’s gospel alone there are over 100. As a result, ‘For Christians the number one name for God is Father… Fatherhood is … the central dominating idea in whose revealing light all other names of God must be read and interpreted’ (A. Skevington Wood, I Want to Know What the Bible says About God, Kingsway).

For the Christian, God is pre-eminently and most profoundly Father. Yet it is at this very point we need to take care not to become sloppy in our thinking. Early in the 20th century, liberal theologians waxed eloquent on the ‘Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of mankind’ which for them meant an unbiblical universalism and a naïve socialism. In our day, the danger for Christians in this matter is a sentimentalising mushiness that can result in a catastrophic casualness in discipleship. The image of an indulgent heavenly father produces undisciplined and spoilt children.

The way of understanding God as Father is not to extrapolate from our own family experience or culture but rather to consider what God being Father meant for Christ, His unique Son. For while our relationship is not identical to his, it is founded on that relationship and is analogous to it.

Eternal fatherhood

The deepest mystery here is that the Fatherhood of God is eternal. Before time started and worlds were created God existed as Father, eternally relating to the Son. And John 5:26 teaches that in some unfathomable sense the Son was eternally dependant on the Father but in a way that compromises neither his equality nor his deity: ‘For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in himself.’
The Nicene Creed conveys this idea when it states:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father

Such insights are beyond the limits of finite minds to comprehend but do act as an antidote against any trite and trivial thinking, and means at the very least that God is not just like a father but the essence of fatherhood. That’s what Paul implies, in Ephesians 3:14–15, when he writes, ‘For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.’

Relationship between the Father and the Son

When we move on from the mysteries of the inner dynamics of the Trinity to how that relationship worked out in the earthly life of Christ, we come to slightly easier terrain. Even a quick reading of John’s gospel maps out different aspects of this relationship. So it was God the Father who sent the Son and told him what to do and say: ‘…the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it’ (John 12:49).

More than that, the Father modelled what the Son was to do: ‘…I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does…‘ (John 5:19-20).

The father delegates and enables the Son: ‘Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son’ (John 5:22), and ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away’ (John 6:37).

Further, the Father listens to the Son, gives him approval, affirmation, honour and glory (see John 11:41: 12:26: 6:27: 8:54).

We have only been able to touch the hem of this wonderful truth but what significance it has for us! For we have been invited into such a Father/son relationship with God. He would teach and train us, He wants to empower us for the mission that He has planned for us. As we respond, He will enable us and allow us to know His approval and affirmation. He will be no distant God but Abba Father. But this experience of the closeness of God as Father will only be known in fullness as we respond as Christ did; with faith, humble dependence and radical obedience. The words of Jesus in John 14:31 need to become ours too, ‘…the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.’

We only truly know God as Father as we submit in the fashion of the Son. Such obedience is inspired by the knowledge that this relationship is only possible because, ‘…the one who was always Father gave the one who was always His only Son’ (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, IVP).

Knowing that our relationship to God is patterned after Christ’s underlines how close God wants it to be but it also undermines any notion that it is a guarantee of an easy life. Intimacy with God is often forged in the furnace of difficulty. The gate is narrow and the way can be hard but the Father will never leave us nor forsake us and it is His presence that makes all the difference.

Finally, all those who are fathers cannot but be humbled by such reflections on the Fatherhood of God. He has not just told us what is required but demonstrated it for us. We know too that our children’s confidence in God can be affected by the quality of our fathering of them. Our hope lies in the fact that He is willing to teach us His secrets and give us His heart. He is not a remote God who makes impossible demands but the One who is willing to come alongside to enable us, to be for us what we need to be to others – Abba Father.