The word "Father" is an emotive word, and an individual's reaction to it could be influenced by his experiences in relation to his own father. Fatherhood speaks of the relationship between a father and his child. At best, this relationship is based on love, authority, guidance, trust and protection. If a child does not know his father, or seldom has contact with him, then his experiences of this God-ordained, intimate relationship will not be good.
In eternity, before anything had been created, the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - existed in holy, unbroken union, communion and love. There is one God (1 Tim 2.5; James 2.19; Deut 6.4), but a plurality of Persons in the Godhead. God the Father is a distinct Person (Jn 1.1-2; 20.17); the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten, beloved Son of God, is a Person and is God (Jn 1.1; 5.20); and the Holy Spirit is a Person and is God (Jn 16.13; Rom 15.30). The three Persons are unchanging and eternal.
There is equality and unity of Divine Persons within the Godhead. In the salvation of sinners, the Father purposed to save, the Son made salvation possible, and the Holy Spirit leads sinners to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. In all these activities there is equality and unity of purpose and intent. Believers are to be baptized "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Mt 28.19). They pray to the Father through the Son and have access in the Spirit to the Father (Eph 2.18).
God the Father
In the Old Testament, God is revealed as Father in the sense of being the Creator (Mal 2.10). The word "father" is also used in an analogous way to convey His love and care for His people, Israel, as when we read, "is not he thy father which hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?" (Deut 32.6). In Jeremiah 31.9 we read, "I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn", and in Hosea 11.1, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt". In Psalm 103.13 God's pity for His people is likened to a father's pity for his children.
It is sometimes claimed that God is the Father of all mankind and if this were so it would follow that all men are brothers. This teaching is not found in the Word of God except in the sense, as was mentioned earlier, of His being the Creator. The Lord said that Satan was the father of those who had not been saved (Jn 8.44). The special, spiritual relationship of God being the Father of each of His children is found in the New Testament. Those who have been redeemed, saved by grace through faith and trust in the substitutionary suffering, bleeding and dying of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, have been "born again" (Jn 3.3-7; 1 Pet 1.23), they are "sons of God" (Jn 1.12-13; 1 Jn 3.1), and can call God "Father".
The Lord said, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him" (Jn 6.44), and "no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (Jn 14.6). When sinners come to the Father, they are adopted, being placed as mature sons in the family of God the Father (Eph 1.3-5). The Father sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, "To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Gal 4.4-5). In Romans 8.15 we read, "ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father". Believers are sons of God; they are children of God the Father (Rom 8.14; Gal 3.26).
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten, eternal and beloved Son of God. He is co-equal with the Father. He is the eternal Son of the eternal God (1 Pet 1.3), and could speak of the Father's love for Him and the glory He had with the Father before the world had been created (Jn 17.5,24). The Jews realized that when the Lord said that God was His Father He was claiming equality with God (Jn 5.18). He said that "all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (Jn 5.23).
There is complete and eternal agreement between the Father and the Son, complete unity in thought and intent. The Lord said, "I and my Father are one" (Jn 10.30), and "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work" (Jn 4.34). The Father's delight in His Son is eternal (Prov 8.30), and at the start of the Lord's public ministry, and towards the end of that ministry, His Father proclaimed from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mt 3.17; 17.5). The Lord is eternally sinless (2 Cor 5.21; 1 Pet 2.22; 1 Jn 3.5; Heb 4.15). He is "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Heb 7.26). He always did those things that pleased His Father (Jn 8.29). He was the perfect Servant and was "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Phil 2.8).
The Lord was God "manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim 3.16), and "God with us" (Mt 1.23). He never ceased to be what He is eternally, and that is God. During His time on earth, He was "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Is 53.3). He suffered, but sought at all times to glorify His Father and do His will. We read, "For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me" (Rom 15.3). The Lord endured reproaches and mockery. He was hated without a cause (Jn 15.25), and suffered the hatred, enmity and hostility of men to God His Father (Rom 5.10; Col 1.21). He voluntarily suffered, bled and died on a cross, glorifying His Father, whom He loved (Jn 14.31), and making possible our salvation.
We can know nothing of God unless He Himself reveals it to us, and He has indeed revealed Himself to mankind. In the Old Testament, the revelation was partial, piecemeal and gradual, but God who, in the past, spoke "unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb 1.1-2). The full and final revelation came in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, whose glory the disciples saw - "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1.14). He is "altogether lovely" (Song 5.16), and could say, "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (Jn 14.9). He is "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1.15), "the express image of his person" (Heb 1.3), and "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2.9).
The Apostle John was led to write, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (Jn 1.18). The loving relationship between the Father and the Son is eternal, unbroken and unchanging. The Son is eternally in the bosom of the Father, the place of infinite love, fellowship, intimacy and joy. He came forth from the Father, and returned to the Father (Jn 16.28). He came from heaven but never left the bosom of the Father, the place of love.
God is the "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 1.3), and the Lord always addressed God as Father except in the fourth of the seven cries He gave when hanging on the cross. As the three hours of darkness were coming to an end and His sufferings were at their climax, He gave the most awful cry of anguish which has ever been given by a man. He cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt 27.46). It was a cry of desolation, abandonment and unparalleled suffering. Such a terrible cry had not been heard since the creation of the world and never will be heard again. The Lord had been forsaken by His disciples (Mt 26.56); by the Jewish nation (Jn 19.15), and now by His God. Although the Lord did not, on this occasion, address God as "Father", His faith in God was absolute and unchanging, and He addressed Him as "My God". David wrote, "yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken" (Ps 37.25), but the only One who was truly and completely righteous was forsaken on the cross that the sins of those who would believe might be forgiven and that they might never be forsaken (Heb 13.5) but be with Him eternally (Lk 23.43; Phil 1.23; 1 Thess 4.17). God forsook Him; nevertheless, the Lord was always conscious of the eternal, unchanging love of His Father.
To be continued.
