Chuck Larsen

The first word of the prayer that Jesus taught us is “Our Father who art in Heaven…” James Montgomery Boice wrote, “If we are to understand the full importance of these words, we must realize clearly that no Old Testament Jew ever addressed God directly as ‘my Father’ and that, as a result, the invocation of the Lord’s Prayer would have been something new and startlingly original to Christ’s contemporaries.” Further along in his commentary, Boice adds, “Actually, in the time of Jesus, the distance between men and God seemed to be widening, and the names of God were increasingly withheld from public speech and prayers.” Jesus broke the momentum of a religious system that focused on man’s effort and returned us to a focus on a personal relationship with God, a relationship in which we can approach God as our father. The word for father might be translated for us as “Daddy” also.

Whenever Jesus prayed, he assumed the family relationship with God as His father. He assumed a relationship with God that was foreign and alien to all of his contemporaries, as well as those who are recorded as having a connection with God in the Old Testament. He brought something new to you and me! The contemporary religious leaders, the priests, and the scribes thought that His approach to God was highly irreverent and even blasphemous. But just as he came to God as His heavenly Father, He taught us also to come to God as our heavenly Father.  This is clearly seen in his post-resurrection appearance to Mary. He boldly instructs her, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ ” (John 20:17). Today, it is as God’s children that believers in the Lord Jesus Christ come to him.

Jesus instructs us to go directly to God as our heavenly father. In earlier teachings, Jesus also made it clear what we would find when we approached Him thusly.  We will always receive a warm heart, a listening ear, and a compassionate response. In Matthew 7:7-12, Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.  Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” I distinctly remember a time when my father responded that way. I was about six years old and fishing at Miller Park Lagoon in north Omaha. I was using a simple line and a hook because I didn’t have a rod or a reel like the big kids at the lagoon. My Dad drove by in his work truck, and he asked how we were doing. I explained I wasn’t doing very well because I didn’t have the right equipment. He took the rest of the day off of work and took me to the hardware store on 30^th and Ames, and he got me all I needed to catch fish at that Lagoon.  When that need was made known to him, he acted immediately.

I remember when my sister bought a t-shirt that said, “When God created man . . . She was only fooling.” Robert Morey rightly observed, “The modern radical feminist movement …attempts to liberate women from being ‘oppressed’ by white, European, heterosexual males.” He continues, “Many radical feminists feel they must liberate themselves from male dominance in any form. God the Father and the entire Trinity must be either recast in feminine images or rejected altogether. This is why the typical radical feminist today dismisses the Bible as so much ‘patriarchal claptrap.’” Mary Daly suggests that the only way to liberate women truly would be the killing off of God the Father.  Eliminating the idea and language that God as “father” would somehow, liberate women. She never says how. Some Feminist Theologians are arguing, “God is neither male nor female but encompasses all things. To speak of God as male only is to limit God and commit idolatry. Gender-free language is unoffensive but does not correct the traditional concepts of the church. The majority of references to God should be feminine to counteract past traditions.”^[1]

God spoke from heaven, declaring his fatherhood of Jesus. At Jesus’ Baptism, as recorded in Matthew 3:17, God spoke from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus often acknowledged God the Father.  When He taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9,  it began with “Our Father, who art in heaven.” In Matthew 11:27, Jesus said, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father…” Actually, according to Arnold Fruchtenbaum (a Messianic Jew), there are six different aspects of God “The Father.” He says they are “the Father of the Messiah, the Father of Creation, and the Father of angels, the Father of all men, the Father of Israel, and the Father of believers.” Jesus taught us to pray to “Our Father who art in Heaven.”

Surely, some fathers have irreparably marred the meaning of the term in the lives of their children, but to eliminate the thought of the “Fatherhood of God” would destroy much for men and women alike.  The scriptures always use the idea of fatherhood as it relates to God as a perfect father. In him is no flaw like in earthly fathers. James 1:17-18 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” To kill the Father would kill the one who takes care of us in our times of need (see Job 29:16).  It would eliminate the one who feeds us and clothes us and looks after our every need (see Isaiah 22:21).  It would kill the voice of wisdom because most of the Proverbs are written like a father speaking to his child. They show how to live wisely, with dignity, respect, and self-control. In human terms, there should be nothing more loving, comforting, caring, and protecting than the idea of God as our Heavenly Father.

^[1] Sailer, William, J. Creighton Christman, David C. Greulich, Harold P. Scanlin, Stephen J. Lennox, and Phillip Guistwite. 2012. Religious and Theological Abstracts. Myerstown, PA: Religious and Theological Abstracts.