Matthew 6: 9-13
I Believe in the Fatherhood of God

That first installment was about what it means "to believe."  "I believe in God the Father Almighty."  Today I want to talk about the assertion on the "Fatherhood of God," a doctrine of much comfort to the Christian and evidently much confusion to the non-christian. 

There are two aspects of the Fatherhood of God: the eternal, ontological fatherhood of the First Person of the Trinity ("ontological" referring to the eternal, Trinitarian being of God) and the other is the "soteriological fatherhood" ("soteriological" - referring to the sense in which he becomes our Father as a result of our "salvation" -- soteiria.)  The Creed is speaking about both of these senses but majors on the former.  The Lord's prayer from which I have taken my text clearly majors on the second of the two.  While I could find something to say about the eternal Fatherhood of the First Person of the Trinity, for now -- since I only have 30 minutes -- I want to confine myself to the second sense. 

Allow me to list five ways in which we confess and experience the Fatherhood of God: 

I. FIRST, OF COURSE, IS IN HIS BRINGING US TO ETERNAL LIFE 

1. Fathers are fathers because they have procreated offspring.  So God is our Father because he has given us life.  This is the teaching of I Peter 1: 3 if it is translated correctly: 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope. 

2. It does not speak of our creation but of our re-creation.  Those people who are talking about the "universal fatherhood of God" are confusing the two categories, mixing up the eternal Fatherhood of the First Person of the Trinity with the soteriological Fatherhood which we experience in our salvation (soteiria). 

But the Trinity is in view here also: God the Father saved us through the saving ministry of the Son, the Second Person; and by the actual working of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person. By this God the Father has become our Father -- our Heavenly Father, who is so important to our thinking that the relationship to our earthly father is comparatively small beside it, important though it is, and may seem to us. 

It is becoming fashionable to make one's response to the Fatherhood of God dependent upon one's experience of earthly "fatherhood" in a way that I think is unhealthy.  You may have had a father who was less than ideal -- or who may have been an outrageous scoundrel, for that matter-- but still have a deep relationship to God.  And people are now beginning to say that if you didn't have a good father/child relationship in your youth, you can't relate to God as a Father and must think of him as a mother! 

Listen!  We get our ideas of the fatherhood of God, not from our earthly fathers, but from our Heavenly Father "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named." as it says in Ephesians 3: 15.  And the Word of God is our starting place, not the experience we had in our youth. 

This Father is the one who gave you life -- not human life, for your "three score years and ten," but life forever, eternal life.  Draw near to him who is your Father for, irrespective of what may have been the case with your earthly father, this Father, your Heavenly Father, loves you infinitely and wants your love in return! 

II. THE SECOND WAY WE EXPERIENCE THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, IS IN HIS LOVE AND COMPASSION FOR US 

1. Psalm 103: "Like as a Father pities his children so the Lord pities those who are his. (103: 13) He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." (v.14) 

2. Those beloved verses out of Psalm 103 say it all. God loves his children with an intense, infinite, redemptive love -- a love that compels him to redeem, that compels him to provide an atonement, that compels him to forgive and be longsuffering.  I think you cheat yourself out of the wonder and grace and assurance of this love, if you do not understand the specificity of the love of God and, instead, hold to its universality, as is commonly done in this generation.  (Indeed, God is benevolent toward all mankind in general -- and even to the animal and inanimate world, for that matter.  But he loves and cares for us and interacts with us, who know the Lord, and is, like an ideal earthly father, looking after his children.  How can this be?  And yet, we know by the Word of God that it is so!) 

Both senses of the Fatherhood of God are true! He is your Father because of your faith in Jesus Christ and has thus begotten you; He is your Father because of the spiritual relationship he bears to you. 

Perhaps you have the distinct conviction that your have made a mess out of your life.  Don't feel sorrow without relief.  Perhaps many of us have not done as well as we wished we had done.  If you belong to the Lord, find your comfort in these blessed words of Fatherhood: 

Like as a Father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who are his own.  He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. 

1. Paul asserts in Hebrews that the fact that God disciplines you is a sign that you are his child and that he is your Father!  The word that is used there for "disciplines," is paideia, or "child training." 

2. As you know, that paideia comes in two forms: correcting you when you sin and, in the second form, general hardship and difficulty to build character and discipline. 

Might someone here be getting through a time of difficulty right now which has come upon you for no discernible reason?  Could it be the paideia of the Father -- not, in this case, for some correction for a misdeed, but just to make you more dependent upon your heavenly Father, and very much stronger in your Christian life?  That might well be the reason, for your difficulty. 

It is interesting how many people are saying now that if you know the Lord, your life will be like a charmed fantasy, with you feeling happy, healthy, and terrific all the time.  To the contrary, you can expect some of the Lord's paideia, which he will use to conform your life to his image.  But you can also expect the blessedness of his Fatherly presence to compensate for any negative thing he might permit to come your way as a part of the paideia.  And you will know the goodness of the presence of the dear Heavenly Father in your life in the midst of your difficulties. 

1. In this very sermon on the Mount that includes this "Lord's prayer," the expression occurs frequently -- v.8, for example --"Your Heavenly Father knows what things you have need of before you ask him." 

2. As earthly fathers are given the ultimate responsibility before God for the care and welfare of their children, so your Heavenly Father is repeatedly on record as being continually and absolutely responsible for your welfare. 

V. FINALLY, WE EXPERIENCE THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD IN HIS PROMISE THAT WE WILL BE WITH HIM FOREVER IN HIS BLESSED PRESENCE! 

1. "I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, there you may be also," said the Lord to his disciples toward the end of his earthly ministry (John 14; 3).  And in Revelation we read "And I heard a voice out of heaven, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people and God himself shall be with them and he will be their God." (Revelation 21: 3) 

2. That verse out of Revelation 21 is the culmination of Fatherhood.  A father loves to be with his children.  Unfortunately, in the earthly sense, geographical limitations, personality differences, child-parent clashes, generation gaps, sometimes preclude closeness.  But in this fatherhood we will be with our dear, loving, heavenly Father, forever!  No more of the disappointments and heartaches that sometimes encumber human father-child relationships.  No more of the separation created by geography or by psychology, or by sin, or differing perspectives, only blessed union with him whom we love and who has given us eternal life. 

Is it true of your experience that you have this kind of a relationship with the Heavenly Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ?  How blessed we are, not only that we have an objective salvation for an eternity to come; but that we are enriched by that relationship even here during the years of our pilgrimage as we make our way to "the City which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God!"