Knowing God as Father
I’ve had a couple of behind-the-scenes responses to the post last week on growing up without a father. Below is a comment regarding God being our father, from someone who wishes to remain nameless, that I thought was really helpful (though I still need to spend more time working it through!). If the first paragraph is slightly confusing, just keep reading:
“The one thing that helped me was realizing that God was Father and all other fathers just shadows of who he was, so my experience of God in Christ is my experience of God as Father: any other experience of any other father is just a shadow in comparison, even if it was good. It doesn't help all that much because it's knowing God (and therefore knowing God as Father) where I discover what it means to know God as Father anyway. We only know God in Christ, who introduces us to his father as his father. That way I didn't have to work out what father meant first, but could do it the other way around. And I could stop feeling 'left behind' by all those who had good father experiences!
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In terms of Scripture, you might find Ephesians 3:14-15 useful (so, I understand that as there can't be fathers without God who is the father and enables fatherhood to take place at all), and Luke 11:13, where Jesus is teaching about prayer and in helping us to understand that his Father loves to give good gifts, he points to earthly fathers and says "you're all evil and yet you give your children what they need rather than what is bad for them" - so unlike us, Jesus when he uses a 'fathers on earth show something of fathers in heaven' starts out by showing how different God as Father is (so earthly fathers are all evil at some level), and then moves to an area of similarity that still manages to exist despite the difference. We always start with God is a Father, therefore think of your father and it'll be a bit like God. Jesus seems to be doing something completely different: asking us to understand God, and using earthly fathers as an imperfect sermon illustration about one aspect of God's fatherhood - his generosity. Then John 14, where Jesus reveals the Father by revealing himself and explains how we know God through him, and the God we know is Father, Son and Spirit: we can't not know God as Father if we know Jesus because God is Father. It helps to realize that in the OT, there are only 2 (I think) references to God as Father and he is the Father of the nation of Israel in both. So, the Our Father prayer in Luke 11, and the revelation in John 14 and elsewhere is absolutely mind blowing: that the God who created the heavens and the earth is Father to us at the same time as being our God, and does so not just in playing a role, or being like a Father, but is a Father, as he is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. By sharing in Christ's sonship and being 'in Christ', we come to know God as father. Calvin said (major paraphrase here): we come to faith when we come to understand that God is towards us in Christ not as a judge but as a Father. (Because it is at that moment that we realize that we depend on Christ alone for our relationship with God).
So, even if we have a completely skewed idea of fatherhood (or whatever), when we know God and know he knows us, we are ‘fathered’ beyond any possibility of fathering here on earth (which does not take away the pain and loss of not having a father, but gives us something we could never have if we had only that earthly experience).”