God the Father

Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the saints send their greetings. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:11-14).

The Christian faith believes in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Each year on Trinity Sunday, we reaffirm that faith in our creeds and songs.  We are reminded that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united as one God, and that they share the same divine power and qualities.

Yet it occurs to me that of the three Persons, God the Father is getting short shrift.  We tend to focus most of our attention on God’s Son, who became a man we could relate to and died to take away our sin.  Some Christians devote most of their worship to the Holy Spirit, seeking His gifts and rejoicing in the new way of life that He makes possible.  But you don’t find many Christians who give as much thought to God the Father.

This is very odd.  In the Old Testament, God the Father was the primary focus of every believer’s faith life.  To be sure, the Son and the Holy Spirit were both active throughout the Old Testament.  When God first created the universe, the Holy Spirit was involved.  The Spirit made His power known through many people, including Samson, David and Ezekiel.  The Son of God was also active in the Old Testament.  He did not have a body or go by the name of Jesus until He was born of Mary, so when He appeared He looked like an angel—Scripture often referred to Him as ‘The Angel of the Lord.’  In that guise, the Son of God appeared to Abraham, Moses and Gideon, among others. 

But although the Son and the Spirit were at work in Old Testament history, worship, prayer and thanksgiving were most often directed towards God the Father.  So why is it that these days, God the Father takes a back seat to Jesus and the Holy Spirit? 

I think it’s because we don’t understand the Father properly.  Some folks have the mistaken notion that God the Father is an angry God who needs to be pacified by His Son who loves us.  God the Father is scary; Jesus is warm and cuddly.  If you think of God this way, of course you’re going to lavish your attention on God’s Son—after all, Christ is the one who keeps the Father from throwing us into hell. 

Other people look at Jesus as the one who frees us from God’s law.  In the Old Testament, there are pages and pages of laws and regulations.  When Jesus died on the cross, He freed us from all that.  We don’t have to bleed out animals on an altar to have our sins forgiven.  We don’t have to eat kosher food.  We don’t have to circumcise our children.  We don’t have to give 10% of our gross income to the Church.  Followers of Jesus don’t have to worry about making the Father mad by breaking His laws—do they?

When we set Jesus against His Father, we are making a grave mistake.  Our Lord never opposed His Father’s will, never disagreed with His priorities.  Jesus said, do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth come to an end, not even the smallest detail of the law will disappear until everything is brought to completion (Matthew 5:17-18).  Jesus made some religious laws of the Old Testament no longer necessary, but He did not exempt us from obeying God.  Peter wrote, Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God (1 Peter 2:16).  Jesus lived and died so that we could serve God willingly out of love, not grudgingly out of fear.

To see Jesus is to see His Father.  The writer to the Hebrews says, The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being (1:3).  Jesus makes this point clear to the disciples in John chapter 14: Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'?  Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”  Everything Jesus said and did was in complete agreement with the Father’s goals. 

Jesus never competed with His Father in order to get His own way.  Paul says, Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).  When He taught the disciples how to pray, Jesus pointed them towards the Father: This…is how you should pray: `Our Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:9). When Jesus urged His followers to live their faith, notice who He wants to receive the glory: let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).  Although we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit equally, Jesus never wanted to take His Father’s place in our hearts.

We also do God an injustice when we think of the Father as an angry judge and Jesus as our sympathetic friend.  This casts the Father in the role of our enemy, a lie that pleases our real enemy the devil.  God the Father hates sin, yes—but so does Jesus.  We tend to forget the harsh things Jesus did and said when angered by sin.  For example, in the Gospel of John chapter two we read this account: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.  So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.  To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"  And what about these words, spoken by Jesus to people who taught false religion: You snakes! You children of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? (Matthew 23:33) Jesus doesn’t tolerate evil any more than the Father does.

By the same token, God the Father is more than just an angry judge that condemns sinners to hell.  It is the Father who created the heavens and the earth by saying “let there be…”  It is the Father who gives us life and all that goes with it, as Paul told the Athenians: The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…He gives all men life and breath and everything else.  From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  `For in him we live and move and have our being'  (Acts 17:24-28).

And it was God the Father who arranged that we might be saved from damnation for our sins.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s law, it was God the Father who promised to give us a Savior, someone who would suffer the devil’s bite but utterly crush Satan in the end.  And this was no easy promise to keep—on two separate occasions God spoke from heaven and told us how He feels about Jesus: This is my Son, whom I love (Matthew 3:17 & 17:5).  Mothers and fathers know how hard it is to watch their children suffer physical or emotional pain; when Jesus suffered on the cross, God the Father suffered too—He suffered the pain of watching His beloved Son experience the hell which He did nothing to deserve.  But it was all part of God’s plan to save us—a plan motivated not by anger, but by love. 

John says, God is love (1 John 4:16).  Paul wished the Corinthians that the God of love and peace would be with them.  Love and peace describe all three Persons of God—Son, Spirit and Father.  Jesus said God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son (John 3:16).  God the Father hates sin—can’t stand to look at it, won’t abide it in His presence.  But God the Father loves life—He creates life, He preserves life, and He will do what it takes to keep those He loves from ending up in hell.  Yet God the Father does not act unilaterally—He doesn’t order around His Son or the Holy Spirit like they are His lackeys.  When God created mankind, listen to the heavenly conversation: let us make man in our image (Genesis 1:26).  Father, Son and Spirit work together in perfect harmony—it was the Father’s plan to sacrifice Jesus for our sins, but Christ did so willingly and the Spirit joined the Savior at baptism to help Him do this important, difficult work.  All three wanted us to be free from sin’s condemnation; love moved each of them to take extreme measures in order to make it happen.

God the Father holds a distinct position within the Trinity.  He is Father to the Son; our creeds say that Jesus is begotten of the Father before all worlds—begotten, not made.  Begotten is an old word that means ‘fathered.’  God made angels, animals and people, but He did not make Christ—He fathered him.  And that relationship began long before the world was made—the Son of God is eternal, just like the Father is.  The Holy Spirit is also eternal, but He comes to us from both the Father and the Son.  Jesus said, I will send you the Comforter—the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me (John 15:26).  God the Father is a God of relationships, a God of peace and love.

The Father’s relationship to the Son and the Spirit make Him distinct from all other gods.  When Muslims worship Allah, they are not worshiping God the Father because according to Islamic belief Allah has no son and sends no spirit into our world.  The Jews do not worship God the Father because they also deny that God has a Son.  No one can worship God the Father if they don’t acknowledge Jesus’ sonship—the Savior said, No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).  We cannot call God ‘Father’ unless we are adopted into His family, and that adoption is only possible through Christ.  In Ephesians chapter one Paul says, God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.  Jesus told His disciples, He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects Him who sent me (Luke 10:16). 

The Father God of the Old Testament is the Father God of the New Testament.  His feelings have not changed—He loves life but hates sin.  His priorities have not changed either; He wants to rescue each and every one of us from the devil’s grasp.  God the Father gives all that we need to live, love and serve. His Son offers the only way to be free of sin and find welcome in heaven.  His Spirit creates faith in our hearts and gives us the ability to share God’s priorities.  God the Father loves us just as much as do His Son and the Holy Spirit; He deserves respect, worship, thanks and praise for His immeasurable goodness.