The Fatherhood Of God

“The Fatherhood of God”

Psalm 27:10

It been noted that it seems that typically on Mother’s Day in our churches we applaud the mother’s and on Father’s Day we scold the fathers for not doing a better job. Well I don’t want to do that today. Although I do not feel compelled to preach a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day message each year, today I want to take this opportunity to speak on the very important subject of “The Fatherhood of God.”

What we know about human fathers and what we have experienced as children will affect how eagerly or apprehensively that we approach the concept of the Fatherhood of God. If we had a great human father we gladly embrace the biblical picture of God as our heavenly father.

But some have grown up with fathers who came far short of the ideal. Father’s who were cold or distant, who were angry or critical; or whose own struggle’s sapped all their strength. Those kinds of things can impact one’s ability to relate to God as your heavenly father. If your father was abusive, emotionally distant or physically absent, it may take a concerted effort to overcome the distortions and misconceptions and come to truth about our father God.

Because of what they have experienced some people turn to their Father in Heaven looking for a parent who was different from their biological father. David captures the sense when he wrote, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me” (Psalm 27:10).

The importance of understanding our relationship with God as our Father cannot be overestimated. Author and theologian J.I. Packer wrote, “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity at all.” [J.I. Packer. “Knowing God.” Intervarsity Press, p. 182]

Understanding the father-child relationship with God can provide us with a profound sense of being loved. Everett Fullam a missionary to a remote tribe in Nigeria relates the salvation experience of one of the local natives. The native revealed some profound theological understanding when he spoke of the awesomeness of his new experience with God by saying, “Behind this universe stands one God, not a great number of warring spirits, as we had always believed, but one God. And that God loves me!” [as quoted in Kent Hughes. “Abba Father: The Lord’s Pattern for Prayer.” (Wheaton, Crossway Books, 1986) pp. 22-23.]

I believe that we should all share in the won-der that this man felt that the God of the Universe loves us! It is through this sense of being loved that we can come to truly understand forgiveness and the wholeness that comes from being loved and forgiven.

Indeed this is so important that it is the dividing line that separates Christianity from all the other religions of the world. Christianity is the only religion, if I can use that term, that even envisions the possibility of a personal relationship with God, as our Heavenly Father.

There are three simple but profound questions I want us to address today.

First, What does it mean to be a “Child of God?”

In response to being asked to teach His disciple’s how to pray (Lk 11:1) Jesus taught His disciples to begin their prayers by saying, “Our father who is in Heaven” (Luke 11:2). In two short words, “our father” Jesus profoundly changed the way that people looked at God. It is hard for us to understand just how amazing this concept was. But the Jewish society to which Jesus spoke, thought of God as distant and unapproachable in His holiness, to be taught that God was the “Father” was revolutionary.

Jesus is not teaching that we should just begin our prayers not with the words “our father” but with the understanding that God really is “our father in heaven.” He is not saying that we should merely say the words, but that we believe that He is our Father and we should relate to Him as a Father.

What Jesus is teaching here is pretty dramatic. The word that Jesus almost exclusively uses for “father” is “Abba” and is really an untranslated Aramaic word. This word was not a formal word but was the common Aramaic word with which a child would address his father – the word “Abba”. Of course everyone used the word, but no one under any circumstances used it in connection with God. “Abba” meant something like “Daddy” but with a more reverent touch than we use it today. It meant something like, “Dearest Father.” The fact that God is our “dearest father” is to be foundational awareness in prayer. Paul tells us in letter to the Galatians, “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6)