Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him.
Welcome to Theology Thursday!
Today’s question:
What is God the Father’s role in the trinity? And why is he called “Father”?
Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
In last week’s inaugural Theology Thursday, we introduced the idea of the trinity. The Christian understanding of God is trinitarian: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons - one in divine nature, yet distinct in purpose and activity.
All of the attributes of God - he is transcendent, eternal, consistent in character, wise - apply equally to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Which is to say, there is a unity of substance. They are the same being.
The distinction comes not in substance but in relationship - their relationship to each other, and their relationship to creation (including humans). None ranks above either of the others, and each fulfills a specific role in the same mission.
The Father rules with the Son and Spirit, not over them. And the Son and Spirit are not creatures of the Father’s will; they have each existed eternally, apart from and greater than the universe they created.
Who or what, then, is God the Father?
Understanding God must begin with his primary characteristic: love. God as love (and God’s love!) is our starting point, even before and more so than creator, judge, good, immanent, holy, or any of the other (accurate and useful) labels we think of when we think of God.
God is creator, judge, good, immanent, holy, and the rest, because he is love.
God’s love is not just the first of many defining attributes, but is the very core of his essence. God is love, and John tells us in his first letter:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. - 1 John 4:7-8
Love is the fundamental attribute of God; the Father loves the Son, the Son reciprocates that love, and this love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.
Defining what is meant by “God is love” is a book-length topic, but we can say it includes the very act of creating the world, his work in creation (For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. - John 3:16), and even his protective jealousy and wrath.
God is holy and just, and seeks to maintain and defend his loving relationship with his people against disruption or destruction in the form of sin.
With love as the core of his essence, God breathed life into the world, called a special people and gave them the law, rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, established his covenant, and fulfilled the law and offered the world salvation through the person of Jesus.
He founded and sustains his church through the Spirit so that his people - no longer an ethnic group but all who profess belief and seek to follow - can have a relationship with him, forever.
The majesty and might of God is greater than our human minds can fully comprehend, but the biblical writers used a great many metaphorical images to try and convey his awesomeness:
God is like an eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11), a refuge (Psalm 9:9), a refiner (Malachi 3:3), a rock (Psalm 18:2), a fortress (Psalm 144:2), a tower (Psalm 61:3), and many others, including “Father.”
In the Old Testament, God is the “Father” of Israel in the sense of calling and creating the nation to be the children of his covenant (Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 32:6, 18; Jeremiah 31:9, Hosea 11:1). In Psalm 68:5, God is called a “father to the fatherless, a defender of widows.” The prophet Isaiah wrote that “You, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).
God as Father speaks to the transcendence, sovereignty, and love within the Godhead (the trinity as a whole).
The notion of God as father was central in Jesus’s life and teaching.
We learn about God’s fatherhood primarily as we see it in relation to Jesus’s own sonship. The Apostle John calls Jesus “the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father” (John 1:18). Jesus refers to God as “Father” or “my Father” something like 165 times in the gospel texts, often referring to what the Father has revealed to him and what the Father will do for him and others.
Jesus teaches about God’s fatherly love with moving and relatable symbolism, such as the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, where the father runs to meet his rebellious boy who has finally returned home. And there is the promise that whoever follows Jesus’s teaching will be loved by “my Father” (John 14:23).
Thinking of God as “Father” provides us an image of a being who is divinely supreme, yet full of equally divine paternal care. The Creator has great loving care for his creation, just as a father has for his children. This is one of the reasons God as Father is crucial to the notion of prayer in the New Testament and to us today.
Jesus himself prayed to God the Father when he prays for his disciples in John 17 and in his own agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:49, 42), and he instructed his followers to do likewise in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9). The Apostle Paul writes that because believers have been adopted into God’s family and share in the Holy Spirit they can cry out to God with the intimate words “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15).
Not only does the Bible explicitly reference God as Father, it also implies it by referring to his people as his children. The Apostle John again:
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!...Dear friends, now we are children of God… - 1 John 3:1-2
God as Father helps us elevate him to his proper place in our worship and theological adoration, while also helping us distinguish and separate him from the “gods” of other religious traditions.
Our God is not a distant deity, not an impersonal power, not an indifferent creator content on merely observing his world from afar. He is personal, involved, moving, and active.
Bible scholar Mike Bird says “God is the one who made Christ our brother and the Holy Spirit our comforter, and adopted us as sons and daughters of his royal and everlasting kingdom. God gives us gifts like a father spoiling his children.”
God made the universe out of his own glorious might and to share his glory with others. In the Psalms we see how God’s glory is the manifestation of his “love and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1).
God glorifies himself when he sends his love and shows his faithfulness to others. God is love (1 John 4:16), and there is divine love within the trinity as the Father loves the Son (John 3:35; 5:20), and the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between them just as he is in the church (Romans 5:5; 15:30; Colossians 1:8).
God the Father; God is love. And the ultimate, climactic revelation of God’s love to us is through his son, Jesus.
Stay tuned for more on that, in next week’s Theology Thursday.
Related Resources:
Article - God the Father: A Quick Intro To the One Jesus Called "Father"
Video - God
Video - Seeing God as the Perfect Father (access a free Right Now Media subscription HERE!)
Next week: We’ll continue this series on the trinity by turning to God the Son, Jesus.
To know Him and to make Him known!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
Welcome to Theology Thursday!
Today’s question:
What is God the Father’s role in the trinity? And why is he called “Father”?
Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
In last week’s inaugural Theology Thursday, we introduced the idea of the trinity. The Christian understanding of God is trinitarian: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons - one in divine nature, yet distinct in purpose and activity.
All of the attributes of God - he is transcendent, eternal, consistent in character, wise - apply equally to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Which is to say, there is a unity of substance. They are the same being.
The distinction comes not in substance but in relationship - their relationship to each other, and their relationship to creation (including humans). None ranks above either of the others, and each fulfills a specific role in the same mission.
The Father rules with the Son and Spirit, not over them. And the Son and Spirit are not creatures of the Father’s will; they have each existed eternally, apart from and greater than the universe they created.
Who or what, then, is God the Father?
Understanding God must begin with his primary characteristic: love. God as love (and God’s love!) is our starting point, even before and more so than creator, judge, good, immanent, holy, or any of the other (accurate and useful) labels we think of when we think of God.
God is creator, judge, good, immanent, holy, and the rest, because he is love.
God’s love is not just the first of many defining attributes, but is the very core of his essence. God is love, and John tells us in his first letter:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. - 1 John 4:7-8
Love is the fundamental attribute of God; the Father loves the Son, the Son reciprocates that love, and this love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.
Defining what is meant by “God is love” is a book-length topic, but we can say it includes the very act of creating the world, his work in creation (For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. - John 3:16), and even his protective jealousy and wrath.
God is holy and just, and seeks to maintain and defend his loving relationship with his people against disruption or destruction in the form of sin.
With love as the core of his essence, God breathed life into the world, called a special people and gave them the law, rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, established his covenant, and fulfilled the law and offered the world salvation through the person of Jesus.
He founded and sustains his church through the Spirit so that his people - no longer an ethnic group but all who profess belief and seek to follow - can have a relationship with him, forever.
The majesty and might of God is greater than our human minds can fully comprehend, but the biblical writers used a great many metaphorical images to try and convey his awesomeness:
God is like an eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11), a refuge (Psalm 9:9), a refiner (Malachi 3:3), a rock (Psalm 18:2), a fortress (Psalm 144:2), a tower (Psalm 61:3), and many others, including “Father.”
In the Old Testament, God is the “Father” of Israel in the sense of calling and creating the nation to be the children of his covenant (Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 32:6, 18; Jeremiah 31:9, Hosea 11:1). In Psalm 68:5, God is called a “father to the fatherless, a defender of widows.” The prophet Isaiah wrote that “You, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).
God as Father speaks to the transcendence, sovereignty, and love within the Godhead (the trinity as a whole).
The notion of God as father was central in Jesus’s life and teaching.
We learn about God’s fatherhood primarily as we see it in relation to Jesus’s own sonship. The Apostle John calls Jesus “the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father” (John 1:18). Jesus refers to God as “Father” or “my Father” something like 165 times in the gospel texts, often referring to what the Father has revealed to him and what the Father will do for him and others.
Jesus teaches about God’s fatherly love with moving and relatable symbolism, such as the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, where the father runs to meet his rebellious boy who has finally returned home. And there is the promise that whoever follows Jesus’s teaching will be loved by “my Father” (John 14:23).
Thinking of God as “Father” provides us an image of a being who is divinely supreme, yet full of equally divine paternal care. The Creator has great loving care for his creation, just as a father has for his children. This is one of the reasons God as Father is crucial to the notion of prayer in the New Testament and to us today.
Jesus himself prayed to God the Father when he prays for his disciples in John 17 and in his own agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:49, 42), and he instructed his followers to do likewise in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9). The Apostle Paul writes that because believers have been adopted into God’s family and share in the Holy Spirit they can cry out to God with the intimate words “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15).
Not only does the Bible explicitly reference God as Father, it also implies it by referring to his people as his children. The Apostle John again:
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!...Dear friends, now we are children of God… - 1 John 3:1-2
God as Father helps us elevate him to his proper place in our worship and theological adoration, while also helping us distinguish and separate him from the “gods” of other religious traditions.
Our God is not a distant deity, not an impersonal power, not an indifferent creator content on merely observing his world from afar. He is personal, involved, moving, and active.
Bible scholar Mike Bird says “God is the one who made Christ our brother and the Holy Spirit our comforter, and adopted us as sons and daughters of his royal and everlasting kingdom. God gives us gifts like a father spoiling his children.”
God made the universe out of his own glorious might and to share his glory with others. In the Psalms we see how God’s glory is the manifestation of his “love and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1).
God glorifies himself when he sends his love and shows his faithfulness to others. God is love (1 John 4:16), and there is divine love within the trinity as the Father loves the Son (John 3:35; 5:20), and the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between them just as he is in the church (Romans 5:5; 15:30; Colossians 1:8).
God the Father; God is love. And the ultimate, climactic revelation of God’s love to us is through his son, Jesus.
Stay tuned for more on that, in next week’s Theology Thursday.
Related Resources:
Article - God the Father: A Quick Intro To the One Jesus Called "Father"
Video - God
Video - Seeing God as the Perfect Father (access a free Right Now Media subscription HERE!)
Next week: We’ll continue this series on the trinity by turning to God the Son, Jesus.
To know Him and to make Him known!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
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