The Revelation of God the Father
It might be assumed that there has never been any doubt in
this regard with respect to God the Father, but in fact, apart from the
revelation of the Trinity, even this is impossible. The concept of God as father, in the deepest
sense points to the existence of a Son.
But more convincing than this is the fact that without the Son’s
manifesting the Father, and the Spirit being to us the Spirit of adoption, we
would not know the Father as “our Father,” in the way we are meant to
do. This is clear from the request by
Phillip to his Master, “Lord, show us the Father, and it will suffice us.” Here, one of the earliest disciples, who had
been waiting for the one promised in Moses and the Prophets, expresses his
dissatisfaction with his knowledge of God the Father. The Savior’s reply is that there is no need
to feel thus, because in his knowledge of the Son, Phillip has obtained the
knowledge he desires.[1] Moreover, Christ makes it clear that apart
from him there is no knowledge of the Father.
Thirdly, through him, and him alone, they actually become the
sons of the Father (apart from him they are sons of the devil). To this we add, however, that even the
ability to grasp this most exalted of realities, is the result of distinctive
operations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is briefly expounded by Paul, for
example, in the fourth chapter of Galatians: "4But when the fullness of the time had come, God
sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5to redeem
those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6And
because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your
hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” 7Therefore you are no longer a
slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Though the revelation of God the Father is throughout the
Scriptures, comfort is especially associated with the revelation of God as
Father, of God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of God as our
Father.
God as Father.
Throughout the Scriptures, the title of Father is applied to
God to evoke that sense of proprietary care of the Lord for his people. In most cases, the revelation of the
Fatherhood of God serves to call his children to faith, or hope, or to motivate
them to repentance and imitation of Him in the ways of goodness. Even this last is most comforting, as it
reminds the child that he is not called to make bricks without straw, but to
behave in a manner which is possible for him, fitting for him, and assured to
afford him the supreme delight of the approval of God.
While there are many evil fathers in the world, unworthy of
the name, there is something about the idea of father that evokes feelings of
love, assurance, safety and security. Even
where these have been absent, there is the underlying sense that they ought to
have been present. For this reason,
there must be something lacking in any Unitarian, monistic conception of the
deity which speaks of the fatherhood of God, but can afford no real ground for
that title beyond creation—creation by a being who existed for an eternity past
in perfect solitariness until the creation of finite beings.
The revelation of God as father, with the comfort to be
drawn from that revelation, is progressively clear and strong in the
scriptures. It is certainly not lacking
in the Old Testament. From their
creation as a recognizable people, Israel is owned as God’s son, with
God asserting his right and claim on them.
Pointedly comparing His relation to Israel
to that of a human father and his son, he commands Moses: “Then you shall say
to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. “So
I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him
go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.”[2] The emotive element of this call is stressed
in Hosea 11:1, “When Israel
was a child, I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.” This was not only the call of a son, but a
redemptive call, which constituted them to a peculiar sonship, to the status of
the firstborn, and to the rights, privileges, and responsibilities attendant
upon that relation. So, Moses asks them,
“Do you thus deal with the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father, who bought you? Has He
not made you and established you?[3]
In the Old Testament, the character of this Father’s love is
revealed most often for the comfort of his children in their distresses: “A father of the fatherless, a defender of
widows, is God in His holy habitation.” “As
a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He
knows our frame: He remembers that we are dust.[4] This is particularly true of the distress
attendant upon sin and its punishment.
How shall the sinner have hope against the frowning of Providence ?
What greater encouragement can be found than passages such as these?
“Look down from heaven, And see from Your habitation, holy
and glorious. Where are Your zeal
and Your strength, The yearning of Your heart and Your mercies toward me? Are
they restrained? Doubtless, You are
our Father, Though Abraham was ignorant of us, And Israel does not acknowledge
us. You, O Lord, are our Father; Our Redeemer from Everlasting is
Your name."[5]
Or from Isaiah: "But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our
righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our
iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.
And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs
himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have
consumed us because of our iniquities.
But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and
You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand."[6]
God offers them this warrant for repentance, and a plea for
mercy: "They shall come with weeping, And with supplications I will
lead them . . . I will cause them to
walk by the rivers of waters, In a straight way in which they shall not
stumble; For I am a Father to Israel, And Ephraim is My firstborn."
“Will you not from this time cry to Me, ‘My father, You are
the guide of my youth?”[7]
The Divine Messiah, the son of David, the archetypal Israel destined to crush the serpent’s head,
shepherd Israel ,
bring blessing to the Nations, establish righteousness, and proclaim his Law to
the Gentiles is the Son of God in an obviously unique and exalted sense. We find him called the Son in the second
Psalm, “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My
Son, Today I have begotten You.” A son
of David, he is the true Solomon: “Behold, a son shall be born to you, who
shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies all
around. His name shall be Solomon, for I will give peace and quietness to Israel
in his days. He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son, and I will
be his Father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel
forever.”[8]
However, with the manifestation of God’s only-begotten in
the flesh, the revelation of the Fatherhood of God suddenly bursts into full
bloom. In all, including these few
messianic texts, God is explicitly called Israel’s father about fifteen
times in the Old Testament; as contrasted to sixteen times in the Sermon
on the Mount. Here and in related texts
in the Gospels, we learn that the Father in heaven is the source and pattern of
the good works of the saint,[9] that
He sees and hears His children in their secret prayers, knows and certainly,
abundantly, provides for their needs, forgives their trespasses, and rewards
them openly. He governs all things, down
to the least important; so much more so does He watch over the least concerns
of His children.[10] The best earthly fathers are evil, and their
good deeds of fatherhood are but the least tokens of His care. The children’s greatest need of all is for
God Himself, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father has promised and is pleased to
give.[11] In their fearful times of trial, when pressed
to give account of their faith, His Spirit will speak in them.[12] All that the Father has is theirs. When they stray and return home to Him, he
rejoices.[13] It is His good pleasure to give them the
kingdom He has prepared for them, in which they will shine like the sun.[14] They are His jewels, more valuable to Him
than anything,[15] and
it is His will, His sovereign decree, that none of His little ones will perish[16]. To that end, their preservation and
perfection, He will rebuke and chasten them in love.[17] To that end, He has given them to His only
begotten Son. To that end, He sent His
only begotten into the world to undertake all for them, to the fullest measure
of their need, to save and keep them, and raise them up on the last day.[18]
The Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ
Not only does the Incarnate Son the more splendidly reveal
character and person of the Father for the instruction and edification of the
saints concerning their relation to Him, but He provides an even more
wonderful, more intimate and vivid revelation of that character through the
unique relation which He bears to the Father.
What do we learn of God from the One who uniquely calls him “My
Father”? (Note: The answer to this
question must also provide us with much light on the person of the Son.)
First, the Father is like the Son. This is the main point. In the Gospels, we see the Son in his state
of humiliation, indeed. However, in
terms of his character, will and purpose, his “wisdom, power, holiness,
justice, goodness and truth,” he who has seen the Son, has seen the express
image of the Father. He does the work of
the Father, speaks the words of the Father, and carries out the will of the
Father. “No one has seen God at any
time, but the only begotten God, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, has
exegeted Him.” In him dwells all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily, and He is full of grace and truth.
Second, the Father is worthy of love, of absolute honor
and implicit obedience. The Son
demonstrates the full justice of the First Commandment to love God with all the
heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength. His entire life illustrates this, from His
incarnation, when He said, “Behold I come to do thy will, O God,” to his
decision to drink the cup the Father had given Him, simply because the Father
had given it. His life is an imitation
of the Father,
17But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been
working until now, and I have been working.” 18Therefore the Jews
sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but
also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. 19Then
Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do
nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the
Son also does in like manner. …. 30“I can of Myself do nothing. As I
hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will
but the will of the Father who sent Me.
For the Father’s honor, he drives the moneychangers from His
house, the house of prayer. His own
prayer life is a testimony to His delight in the Father’s fellowship, and His willingness
to be dependent on the Father’s direction and strength. The Father does all things for His own glory,
and all the Father does is good and right, merely because it seems good to Him. Christ was able to sum up his entire life
with the prayer, “I have glorified Thee on earth.”
Third, the Father is worthy of total trust. Famished in the wilderness he will trust his
Father, for “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
from the mouth of God.” When bereft of
any sense of the divine favor, able to see only the angry countenance of a
righteous God who is striking him with death for the sins of his people, even
then he knows that he is able to commit his spirit to the Father.
Fourth, the Father loves the Son. He has sealed him, and given him the Spirit
without measure. He shows Him all
things. He testifies of Him, “This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
He commands all men to “Hear Him,” believe on Him, and honor the Son,
even as they honor the Father. Because
the Son delights in the Father’s will, the Father delights in the Son, and
commits all things into his hands.
20“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him
all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these,
that you may marvel. 21“For as the Father raises the dead and gives
life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. 22“For
the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, 23“that
all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor
the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. . . .
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me. 39“This is the will of the Father
who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should
raise it up at the last day. 40“And this is the will of Him who sent
Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting
life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Christ’s testimony concerning his relation to the Father,
such as that given in the fifth and sixth chapters of John’s gospel, have a
profound significance for our “comfortable communion with God.” They provide us with the ground of our faith
in Christ as the sole, willing, and all sufficient mediator who knows, reveals,
and carries out the Father’s will, from the giving of life to whomsoever he
will, to the preserving of that life for whosoever comes to him for it. They assure us of the good saving purpose of
God towards us, inform us of the duration and strength of the love of God, and
of the lengths to which God would go in the exercise of that love.
Our Father
In their lowest condition—disappointed, discouraged,
ashamed, and bewildered—the disciples of Christ heard what must be among the
most comforting of all possible sentences, when the resurrected Son of God said
to them, as he says to all believers, “I am going to my Father, and your
Father.” What a Sonship was his!--His
divine person eternally begotten, his human nature divinely conceived, his
status as “the son of God with power according to the Spirit of
holiness” lately “declared . . . by the resurrection from the dead,” and
acclaimed as the enthroned firstborn[19]
(“You are my Son, this day have I adopted you”). Nevertheless, it is not to emphasize
the uniqueness of his sonship, or the distinction of his from theirs, that he
puts it this way, but just the opposite.
It is to declare that His own Father is really theirs: that being
in Him, their resurrected brother, His sonship, for all its legal and
vital benefits and blessedness and duration, is theirs.[20] Indeed, he is the firstborn, but his emphasis
here is on the fact that he is “the firstborn of many brethren.” Thus, Christians are reminded that they are
“heirs of God, and joint heirs of Christ,” that “all things are yours, because
you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”[21] Moreover, since the coming of Christ under
the Law, the children of God have advanced to a status of “sons,” i.e., mature
heirs[22] as
opposed even to minor children.
Nevertheless, one thing further must be established before I
can draw comfort from this doctrine of God the Father. I must know, I must have assurance, not only
that some are indeed his true sons, the brethren of Christ, but also that I
am one of them. Because they are sons,
God has given them the “spirit of adoption.”
This is the Holy Spirit giving to them the most deep-seated assurance of
being the children of God. After all
that has been said concerning the blessedness of knowing God the Father, the
comfort of this wonderful reality is not settled in a practical syllogism. It is not by a bare intellectual deduction that
I satisfy myself that I have this God as my Father, any more than I am certain
that my earthly father is mine. Nor is
it a “new revelation” coming with a sensation, a “rush” of feeling, or a warm
glow inside my bosom. The assurance of
the Spirit of Adoption is deeper and more certain than that given by either of
these alternatives. John Owen describes
this operation of the Spirit thus:
Now, sometimes the soul, because it has somewhat remaining
in it of the principle that it had in its old condition, is put to question
whether it be a child of God or no; and thereupon, as in a thing of the
greatest importance, puts in its claim, with all the evidences that it has to
make good its title. The Spirit comes and bears witness in this case. An
allusion it is to judicial proceedings in point of titles and evidences. The
judge being set, the person concerned lays his claim, produceth his evidences,
and pleads them; his adversaries endeavoring all that in them lies to
invalidate them, and disannul his plea, and to cast him in his claim. In the
midst of the trial, a person of known and approved integrity comes into the
court, and gives testimony fully and directly on the behalf of the claimer;
which stops the mouths of all his adversaries, and fills the man that pleaded
with joy and satisfaction. So is it in this case. The soul, by the power of its own conscience,
is brought before the law of God. There a man puts in his plea, — that he is a
child of God, that he belongs to God’s family; and for this end produceth all
his evidences, every thing whereby faith gives him an interest in God. Satan,
in the meantime, opposeth with all his might; sin and law assist him; many
flaws are found in his evidences; the truth of them all is questioned; and the
soul hangs in suspense as to the issue. In the midst of the plea and contest
the Comforter comes, and, by a word of promise or otherwise, overpowers the
heart with a comfortable persuasion (and bears down all objections) that his
plea is good, and that he is a child of God.[23]
Communion with the
Father
Liberals of all sorts lose the Father by losing the Son and
re-creating the Father in their own image.
Many Evangelicals (including Reformed?), with their emphasis upon
Christ, and many Pentecostals, with their emphasis on the Spirit, also lose the
Father in one of two ways. Some lose Him
as modern Sebellians, merging Him with the Son or the Spirit, praying, for
instance, “Father, I thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.” Others, while ostensibly elevating the Father
to the highest heaven, practically, in terms of their thoughts and affections,
treat Him as one might an aloof and inaccessible C.E.O. who keeps to himself in
his upper office while Junior runs the factory.
Obviously, all of these are wrong; but how do we have communion with the
Father?
John Owen had much to say to encourage our “communion with
the Father in love.” In the application
of his exposition he said,
At the best, many think there is no sweetness at all in him
towards us, but what is purchased at the high price of the blood of Jesus. It
is true, that alone is the way of communication; but the free fountain and
spring of all is in the bosom of the Father. “Eternal life was with the Father,
and is manifested unto us.” Let us, then, —
(1.) Eye the Father as love; . . .
(2.) So eye it as to receive it. . . .
(3.) Let it have its proper fruit and efficacy upon thy
heart, in return of love to him again. So shall we walk in the light of God’s
countenance, and hold holy communion with our Father all the day long. . . .
In reinforcing this, Owen makes the very important
observation that,
. . . . Every other
discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul fly from Him; but if the
heart be once much taken up with this the eminency of the Father’s love, it
cannot choose but be overpowered, conquered, and endeared unto him. This, if
any thing, will work upon us to make our abode with him. If the love of a
father will not make a child delight in him, what will? Put, then, this to the
venture: exercise your thoughts upon this very thing, the eternal, free, and
fruitful love of the Father, and see if your hearts be not wrought upon to
delight in him. I dare boldly say, believers will find it as thriving a course
as ever they pitched on in their lives. Sit down a little at the fountain, and
you will quickly have a farther discovery of the sweetness of the streams. You
who have run from him, will not be able, after a while, to keep at a distance
for a moment.
. . . .
Moreover, what a safe and sweet retreat is here for the
saints, in all the scorns, reproaches, scandals, misrepresentations, which they
undergo in the world. When a child is abused abroad in the streets by
strangers, he runs with speed to the bosom of his father; there he makes his
complaint, and is comforted. In all the hardy censures and tongue-persecutions
which the saints meet withal in the streets of the world, they may run with
their meanings unto their Father, and be comforted. “As one whom his mother
comforteth, so will I comfort you,” saith the Lord, Isaiah 66:13. So that the
soul may say, “If I have hatred in the world, I will go where I am sure of
love. Though all others are hard to me, yet my Father is tender and full of
compassion: I will go to him, and satisfy myself in him. Here I am accounted
vile, frowned on, and rejected; but I have honor and love with him, whose
kindness is better than life itself. There I shall have all things in the
fountain, which others have but in the drops. There is in my Father’s love
every thing desirable: there is the sweetness of all mercies in the abstract
itself, and that fully and durably.[24]
[1]
John 14:7-11
[2]
Exodus 4:22f.
[3]
Deut. 32: 6
[5] Isa. 63:15f.
[6] Isaiah 64:6-8
[7] Jeremiah 31:9; 3:4; cf. 3:19
[8] 1
Chron22: 9; cf. Psalm 89:26
[9]
Matthew. 5:9, 45, 48; Ephesians 2:10; 5:1f.; Philippians 2:15f.; 1 Peter
1:14-16.
[10]
Matthew 6
[11]
Luke 11:9-13
[12]
Luke 12:11f.
[13]
Luke 15:22-32
[14]
Luke 12:32
[15]
Malachi 3:16f.; Zechariah 9:16. True
regardless of the reading of John 10:29.
[16]
Matthew 18:14; John 10:28; 6:39
[17]
Hebrews 12:5-11
[18]
John 3:16f.; 6:50-58; 17 all, etc.
[19]
This term signifies an heir's legal priority.
It is usually, but not always nor necessarily, the first in order
of birth. cf. Romans 8:29; Colossians
1:15, 18.
[20]
See the Lord's quotation of Psalm 2:8-9 in his amazing promise to overcomers in
Revelation 2:26-27.
[21] 1
Corinthians 3:18
[22]
Legally adult children, such as would be capable, for example, of being
business partners. This aspect of
maturity, with its privileges, is central to Paul's argument in Galatians
4. The sons of God have grown up from
their Old Testament childhood.
[23] Communion
with God, in Works Vol. II, p. 241
[24] Ibid.
p. 32-38.
posted by Dr Rick Daniels at 8:44 AM
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