God Our Father

In a recent conversation about Fatherhood, Prince William was cornered for a soundbite on changing nappies. His response?

"It's never straightforward"

Whether you are a parent or not, you can probably imagine that 'never straightforward' is not an uncommon sentiment for new parents.

It is also a sentiment that might come to mind when thinking about, let alone trying to explain, what it means that God is our Father.

Thankfully, the Church is blessed with theologians and thinkers who can help us to unpack what it means to understand God as Father. In his recent book, God in Himself, Steven Duby covers a huge range of questions about who God is and what he is like. One of the key scriptural ways of understanding God is to see him as Father. We thought you might enjoy this extract to aid in your thinking about what it means to know and enjoy God as Father...

The incarnation provides the fullest revelation of God’s relationship to the world and to the people of God. Christ’s actions and words disclose God’s many perfections in relation to us. Though it ought not to be sentimentalized or detached from Christ’s revelation of the divine wisdom, holiness, and so forth, his revelation of God’s love and mercy has a special significance.

Christ is God in the flesh healing the sick and socializing with sinners and outcasts.

He announces that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to bring us eternal life (Jn 3:16). As God incarnate, he gives his flesh for the life of the world (Jn 6:51). He loved his own who were in the world and “loved them to the end,” illustrating that great and condescending love for his disciples by washing their feet (Jn 13:1 20). Rarely would someone die even for a righteous person, but God demonstrates his love in the death of Christ for sinners living in open rebellion against him (Rom 5:6 8; cf. 1 Jn 4:10). When we were dead in transgressions and “children of wrath,” God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places. This he did in order to show the riches of his kindness and grace throughout the coming age (Eph 2:4 7).

The self-giving love of God in Christ then becomes the pattern we must imitate in the church (Eph 5:1 2).

The love of God revealed in Christ has a distinctly fatherly character. Though some elements of the Lord’s Prayer resemble an ancient Jewish prayer used in the time of Jesus, his instruction to call God “our Father” is a new development. Even if such language is not entirely without precedent, Jesus’ way of filling out its meaning throughout his teaching ministry invests it with a peculiar sense of the nearness of God.

He is our Father to whom we may pray in secret (Mt 6:6). He knows our needs, and his fatherly care addresses our anxieties (Mt 6:25 33). If we sinners know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more does our heavenly Father (Mt 7:11). In union with Christ, we are caught up in the love of the Father for his Son (Jn 17:20 26). In Christ we have the Spirit of God and of Christ, the Spirit of sonship who testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God (Rom 8:9 17).

God sent his Son in the fullness of time to make ussons and daughters who, by the Spirit, call God “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:4 6). The coming of Christ and of our salvation is the appearance of the “kindness and philanthropy” of God by which we receive regeneration, justification, and adoption (Tit 3:4 7)

What an amazing Heavenly Father we have! God in Himself is a technical, academic book of theology that invites us to consider who God is and what he is like. We would also love to recommend some other resources to help you understand and enjoy the great truth that God is Father.