Read: John 6:35-51
25 year old Paul Burns, from Glasgow, is probably the most versatile and multi-talented clinical physiologist in Scotland. He combines his busy job at Gartnavel General with a professional career in Welterweight boxing. You probably couldn’t think of two things which are more different! You would never know from looking at him in his hospital scrubs that Paul Burns has aspirations to win the British welterweight boxing title by beating the living daylights out of his opponents.
Just like sometimes people can surprise you by who they are and what they do, God never stops surprising you. In particular, as we enter into a brief study of God the Father, we are caused not just to be surprised, but, along with the words of Professor John Murray, “stagger with amazement.” Who He is and what He does exceeds all we give Him credit for!
If I can remind you of where we are – we are studying Question 6 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which asks, “how many persons are there in the Godhead?” and answers saying, “there are three persons in the Godhead, – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and these three are One God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” Last time, we laid the general groundwork of the Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity, describing words such as Godhead, Person and Trinity, tracing the development of the doctrine through the Old and New Testaments, and applying the Doctrine in terms of our love, fellowship and society.
This week, I want to launch out into the deep by exploring the personality of God the Father. And I want to do so by asking three questions: first, what do we mean when talk of God the Father; secondly, how do we see God the Father working; lastly, how can we apply the personality of God the Father in our day to day Christian lives?
[A] What do we Mean when we Talk about God the Father?
How important it is that we understand the truth about ourselves and about other people! I was impressed at a recent newspaper advertisement for a Recruitment Agency called ScotCareers with the headline, “Put yourself in the shop window”. It’s important we portray ourselves correctly so that other people know what we can do and who we are. In the same way, it’s even more important that we understand the truth about God the Father. Remember that when we are talking about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit we are talking of One God and Three Persons – not Three Gods. Bearing that in mind, what do we mean when we talk about the person we call ‘God the Father.’ I’m taking these three points from the Dutch theologian Hermann Bavinck. When we talk of God the Father, we mean first and foremost, that He is the Father of His Son; secondly, that He is the Creator of All Things and thirdly, that He is the Father of His People.
1. The Father of the Son – first and foremost, God the Father is understood to be such because He is the Father of God the Son. He is not the Father by creation, or by birth, but by a process known as ‘begetting’. It’s a verb not nowadays used and frankly shrouded in mystery, but God the Father begat God the Son. According to Romans 15:6 and 1 Corinthians 15:20 (among other verses), He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father of His Son in a way He is not our Father. We are His children by adoption, as we shall see in a moment, but God the Son is begotten of the Father. He is, to use the classical terminology, the One and Only Son (John 1:18) – the ‘monogenhj’ of God the Father. Ultimately, shrouded in the depths of mystery and incomprehensibility, God the Father is the Father of God the Son.
2. The Creator of All Things – to talk of God as Father is to talk of the Creator-hood of God. When we talk of God the Father, we are talking about God the Creator. Ephesians 3:14 and 15 commence Paul’s prayer – a prayer he makes to the Father ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named’. The ‘every family’ here is a reference to the whole creation. Numbers 16:22 talks of God as ‘the God of the spirits of all flesh’. He is the Father of all by virtue of His being Creator of every being.
3. The Father of His People – in the Bible, God is spoken of as the Father of His People. In the Old Testament, Israel speaks of Him as Father and He speaks of them as His Son. The Kings of Israel were thought of, and sometimes addressed, as the Father of the nation. But at the same time, there is the definite understanding that only God is the True Father and King of Israel. In the New Testament, we are spoken of as the sons of God, the children of God, and He is spoken of as the Father of His People. And so, God the Father is His people’s King and His people’s Father.
So, when we are talking about ‘God the Father’ we are talking mainly about He being the Father of the Son – begetting the Son of God. But we are also talking about His being the Creator of all things and the Father of His People.
[B] How do we See God the Father Working?
Of all the persons of the Godhead, it has become easy to misunderstand the role, status and function of God the Father. He has been misunderstood and His character misaligned. He is presented as being against us – looking for every opportunity to crush us because we are miserable sinners. Jesus comes to save us from God the Father. But the reality is very different. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are intimately involved in the whole process of salvation. Each person of the Godhead works in His own way to bring about our salvation. In this vain, I happened to read two sermons from a collection by Professor John Murray on the topic of the role of God the Father in our salvation. According to Professor Murray, when we are thinking about the work of God the Father, we are to think along two lines:
1. The Love of the Father –in the New Testament, the predominant characteristic attributed to God the Father is love. When we think about Him, we are to think not first of wrath, but first of love. When we end our services with the benediction, we attribute grace to the Lord Jesus Christ, fellowship to the Holy Spirit but love to the Father. The source of our salvation is to be found in the love of God the Father. The Son did not die to make the Father love us; the Son died because the Father loved us. Paul says, “God demonstrates His love for us in this, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” And John Murray writes, “Calvary is the supreme exhibition of the Father’s love.” He continues, “The Father loved his people with such invincible love and purpose that he executed the full stroke of their condemnation upon his own Son. This is the Father’s love. We stagger with amazement, not the amazement of bewilderment, but that of adoring wonder.” 1 John 3:1 reminds us that the God the Father did not just manifest His love towards us at Calvary, but is continually bestowing His extravagant love upon us, for when Christ appears, God the Father will transform us so that we are like Him.
2. The Donation of the Father –the passage we read together in John 6 contains the highest concentration of references to the Father anywhere in the New Testament. It speaks of the relationship of Jesus with His Father; and it speaks of the relationship of God’s people with God the Father. In particular, in vs. 37 it says, “all that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” This verse speaks of the donation of the Father to His Son of a people – we are God’s gift to His Son. He, to use the language of Professor Murray, “presents them to Christ as trophies of the redemption Christ himself has accomplished.” In other words, God’s choice of us to believe in Christ, and His drawing of us through the Holy Spirit to Christ, is first and foremost a function of His love for His own Son. Just like any father loves to give his child a gift; so we are God the Father’s gift to His Son.
Do these astounding facts change the way we think about God the Father; perhaps change it from thinking about Him as stern and unyielding, to being loving and generous? He loves us with invincible love and He draws us to Christ as His trophies.
[C] How can We Apply the Doctrine of God the Father?
In the context of one single prayer meeting, it is impossible to do full justice to the application of the doctrine of God the Father. I’ve got 5 practical applications, each of which I will just run through briefly. The Doctrine of God the Father ensures:
1. The Commitment of God –Romans 8:32 has to be one of the most outstanding verses of encouragement and Gospel comfort anywhere in the Bible – “If God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not along with Him, freely give us all things?” In Christ Jesus, God the Father has become our Father and He is utterly committed to us – committed through our faithfulness and our unfaithfulness. If that is what an earthly father does, how much more does our heavenly father love us? If He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up, then surely He will never forsake us lest He should make the deliverance of His Son of no value; lest He should minimise the gift He gives to His Son of a spotless people – and He would never do that. No, He is committed to us in eternally secure steadfast love. Therefore, should you commit a grave sin, or repeat a habitual sin, don’t stay away from God thinking that He doesn’t love you anymore – rather, go back to Him because He is everlastingly committed to us in Christ Jesus.
2. The Discipline of God –because God is our Father, He loves us too much to allow us to walk down profitless, fruitless and harmful paths. Rather, like the good Father He is, He will discipline us. The classic text on this matter is in Hebrews 12:5 onwards, where we read that being disciplined by the Lord is a function of His being our father and we being His children. It’s not a pleasant thing to be disciplined and chastened by your father – just ask my children – but according to the writer of the Hebrews there are three net results: first, holiness (vs. 10); secondly, righteousness (vs. 11) and thirdly, peace (vs. 11). Our Father so wants us to have and to be these things that He will discipline us and bring us back to these fruitful paths. We need to think of the painful and uncertain things in our lives in this way – God is training us for better.
3. The Resemblance of God – every child, to one extent or another, resembles their father. My children look like me – and rightly so. And we are to look like God our Father. And so, in the New Testament, there are various occasions on which we are called to resemble God – for example, in our peacemaking (Matthew 5:9). Never does a man look more like God the Father than when he makes peace. Do we resemble our heavenly father in our character, desire and behaviour? If not, then we must ask if God the Father is our Father at all. In His strength, we shall be like Him.
4. The Delight of God – it is the prerogative of a Father to delight in, and to take pleasure in, His children. We read that God the Father took such delight in God the Son that on two occasions, on baptism and transfiguration, a voice spoke from above saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I take delight”. That delight and pleasure is expanded to include we who are God’s children by adoption. Yes, we must continually figure on our servant-hood and pursue paths of humility and repentance; but surely it should amaze us to think that God the Father – supernatural, immense, all loving – that He should take delight in us! If I may say so with all reverence, He takes great joy in us because in Christ, we are His Children. Walk then with a skip in your step, and yearning after deeper purity, for God takes delight in you.
5. The Inheritance of God –as children of God the Father, we have an inheritance in glory to look forward to. In fact, it’s an inheritance we can enjoy now, but the fullness of it waits until we go to be with our Father in heaven. We read about it in verses like Colossians 1:12, where Paul gives thanks to the Father “who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” Peter talks about this inheritance as being ‘imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you’. This inheritance is not a thing as much as it is a person – the glory of knowing God face to face and seeing Him as He is; the glory of eternal life with Him. If enjoying the presence of God is to be our eternal occupation, then can we not begin that now by striving after and practicing the presence of God day by day – by living in and with the beauty of God in Christ?
God the Father is breathtaking! Let’s give to Him the honour He is due by understanding the role He has played in our salvation and by living day to day for Him. We close with the exuberant words of praise Professor John Murray has written, when confronted by the glory of the God the Father, “we stagger with amazement, not the amazement of bewilderment, but that of adoring wonder.” AMEN
