The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our
Father,” have long been its most controversial.
It is not that the Jews of Jesus’ day were unfamiliar
with the concept of God as their Father. “Have we not all
one Father? Did not one God create us?” asked the prophet
Malachi (Mal. 2:10, see also Deut 32:6). Isaiah even prayed to
God as Israel’s Father, “But you are our Father,
though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you,
O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name”
(Isa. 63:16).
However, Israel’s theology emphasized God’s
covenant relationship to the nation as a whole, not God as the
Father of each individual Israelite. Jews did not commonly
address God in such personal terms. And Jewish religious
leaders took particular offense at Jesus’ repeated
references to God as “my Father.”
Today some are equally aggrieved that Jesus’ disciples
follow his example. Such objections, and the Biblical reasons
why they must not be sustained, come into focus as we consider
what it means to approach God in prayer as “Our Father.”
Father of us
In the Greek New Testament the Lord’s Prayer begins
pater
hemon, literally “Father of us.” Behind the
Greek
pater lies the Aramaic
abba, a term
whose nearest English equivalent is “Daddy.” This is
the word Jesus used when he prayed in the Garden of
Gethsamene, “
Abba, Father, everything is possible
for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what
you will” (Mark 13:36).
Abba implies intimacy, a relationship of love and
trust. It is a term a toddler would use of her father and also
a form of address an adult son could employ without
embarrassment. There is no parallel in Jewish literature for
addressing God in this way.
However, it was not the introduction of novelty but the
presumption of deity that concerned some Jews when Jesus spoke
of God as “my Father.” After healing a lame man on
the Sabbath, Jesus said, “‘My Father is always at
his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ For
this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not
only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God
his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John
5:17-18; see also John 10:30).
The Jews rightly recognized what many since have denied –
that Jesus knew he was God. But the idea that God could become
flesh did not fit their conceptual categories. So rather than
worship Jesus as God, they arranged to have him executed.
Much modern opposition to calling God “Father” is
similarly rooted in current cultural habits of thought. Some
demand that Christians abandon the Biblical teaching that God
is our Father because, in their view, this teaching is rooted
in the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel. They insist that
God was first called “Father” because fathers, and
males in general, held the positions of power in Israelite
families and society. Since modernity has rejected cultural
patriarchy, they argue, Christians must therefore reject any
understanding of God as “Father.”
However, such arguments assume that God is a merely cultural
creation, one that culture can name and rename as fashion
dictates. Identifying this often unspoken assumption helps us
see that behind both ancient and modern objections to
addressing God as “Father” lies the refusal to
accept God’s self-revelation.
God’s
self-revelation
“In revelation,” Diogenes Allen writes, “God
makes manifest divine purposes or intentions, and in that
manifestation God has the initiative.”
The consistent testimony of Scripture is that in our
relationship with God, God makes the first move. God spoke the
cosmos into existence and created humans beings (a paternal
act) to be in fellowship with him. God called Abraham and his
descendants into an everlasting covenant relationship. God
called out to Moses from the burning bush and made known his
name,
YHWH, “I am who I am.” God spoke
through the prophets, calling his people back to an unhindered
relationship with him.
Ultimately, God became incarnate in Jesus Christ so
that the world might know him and live in right relationship
with him throughout eternity. The world failed to recognize
who Jesus was or why he came:
“He was in the world, and though the world was made
through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that
which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all
who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God – children born not
of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s
will, but born of God” (John 1:10-13).
Our adoption
Jesus is God’s Son by nature. We are born again as God’s
children through faith in Jesus Christ. Developing this theme,
Paul assures us that all who believe “have received a
spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘
Abba! Father!’
it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we
are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God
and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:15-17).
God’s only Son came to earth to live as one of us. He
willingly died on a Roman cross, sacrificing his own life to
atone for our sins and reconcile us to God. Through faith in
what Christ accomplished on the cross, we become God’s
children. The salvation made possible by his death and
resurrection includes not only forgiveness of our sins and
deliverance from condemnation but also being placed in a
position to receive unimaginable blessings as adopted members
of God’s family (Rom. 8:22-23).
Some object to calling God “Father” on the basis of
hurtful relationships with their own fathers. But the Bible
teaches that our relationship with God as our Father
transcends the categories of human experience. God desires
that human fathers follow the model of his relationship with
us. Indeed, all human relationships are to be grounded in our
relationship with God. (For more on this, see the review of
Soulcraft. ) That human
fathers so often fail to meet God’s standard is evidence
of human sin. Human failures do not require that Christians
reject God’s ways of revealing himself and relating to
us.
Our Father
“Jesus knew what he was doing when he taught us that our
normal way of addressing God should be as Father,” Donald
Williams writes, “for it is precisely this personal
relationship that is the basis for the whole activity of
Christian prayer.”
To call God “Father” is not to invoke an outdated
archetype of patriarchal culture. Rather, it is to be reminded
that the One to whom we pray is the one who made us, who chose
us to be members of his family, and who loves and cares for us
in ways that are beyond imagination. Addressing God as “Father”
affirms our relationship with the One to whom we pray.
It is because of God’s unmerited love, poured out for us
through his Son Jesus, that we are blessed to be able to pray
“Our Father.”
For
Discussion
1.
What does Jesus' revelation of God as "our
Father" tell us about the nature and character of
God?
2. Discuss some of
the reasons given today for rejecting God's
self-revelation as "Father." How may we answer
such objections?
3. What are some
of the privileges, and responsibilities, of our having
been adopted into God's family? |