Some years ago, at our church’s softball practice, there were a number of small children of some of the players present. One of them, not yet two years old, kept pointing and saying, ‘Daddy!’ It was very cute. The problem was that the man he was pointing to was not his daddy.
We Christians frequently do something like that in prayer. We say, ‘Father’ without really considering whom we are talking to. For example, we address our prayers to God the Father (‘Heavenly Father’), but along the way we say things like: ‘Thank you for dying on the cross for our sins’, or, at Christmas, ‘Thank you that you were born as a baby’, even though it was not God the Father but Jesus the Son who was born as a baby and died on the cross.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a vague notion for many of us. The doctrine of the Trinity, simply stated, is this: The Scriptures testify to one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not three Gods, nor are they each one third of God. The Father is not Jesus, Jesus is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is distinct from the other two. Somehow, mystically, there are three persons, each distinct from each other, relating to one another in community and relationship, yet in very essence and substance, one God, not ‘they’ but ‘he’. That is the Trinity.
We do not explain on this side of heaven. We can only state it and believe it. Is God one or is he three? The answer is simply, ‘Yes.’
Today we will turn our attention to the Father. We will do that under two headings.
First, the Fatherhood of God. That is, why God ‘the Father’?
Second, we will consider the pre-eminence, or priority of the Father. We as Christians have tended toward the understanding that it is all about Jesus, and to some respects it is: salvation is through Jesus, we share the character of Jesus, we are in Jesus, Biblical preaching is about Jesus, etc. But Biblical Christianity affirms the pre-eminence (not the superiority but the pre-eminence – they are different!) of God the Father.
(Before we do that, however, I want to acknowledge that we all have fathers that failed at some level, and some have been, literally, brutal fathers: fathers who have verbally, or angrily, or sexually, or emotionally scarred you. Because of them, you have come to believe that there is something wrong with you. But it’s not your fault. It is theirs. I repeat, it’s not your fault.
To call God your ‘father’, then, is difficult, almost repulsive. But – hear me – your fathers are not what a father should be or should have been. Is God a father like your father? No! It is the other way around: God is the real, the perfect father. He loves, he protects, he is present, he corrects. Your father, our fathers fail at some level because they fall short of God’s fatherhood, some by a hundred miles, others by twenty or ten. But every father in history has failed. It is God who has not failed. God loves you in a way your father can’t or won’t. I want to be clear on that. Remember, it is not that we look at our fathers and say, ‘God is kind of like that’, and so we call him ‘Father’. It is the other way around: human fatherhood is designed to be a reflection of God as a father. God is not like a father. Fathers are to be like God, at which we who are fathers desperately fail).
So, then, let us consider the Fatherhood of God. Why is he God ‘the Father’? He is the ‘Father’ primarily because that is how he has revealed himself to us.
The Bible reveals God as a Father in four ways:
First, he is the Father of creation.
He is Father of Creation in that he is the source of all things. He created ‘through’ (John 1:3) Jesus or ‘by’ (Col 1:16) him. All of creation passed through the fingers of Jesus, as it were. But the Father is the Creator.
The Bible begins with the words in the beginning God – the Old Testament God whom Jesus claimed as his father – created the heavens and the earth.
James chapter 1 calls him the Father of the heavenly lights, a reference to the sun, moon and stars, the ‘lights’ of Genesis 1.
Job 38 & 39 describe both the Lordship and tender care of God over creation, something Jesus himself affirmed in Matthew 6, when he pointed out God’s care of the birds by feeding them.
God is the creator of all things, and in that sense is the Father of creation.
Secondly, the Bible reveals God as Father, in a more particular sense, of Israel.
God called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their descendants to enter into a special relationship with him. They would be his people and he would be their God, but more than that, they would be his children and he would be their Father. There would be a special quality to the love and care that God showed to them, different from that experienced by any other nation.
Moses challenged Israel in Deuteronomy 32:6 Is God not your Father, your Creator?
Out of Egypt I called my son, God said in Hosea 11.
The prophet Isaiah said, You are our Father.
And, as only wayward children can, Israel wounded the tender heart of God: If I am a Father, where is the honor due me? he laments in Malachi.
Some of you, because you have been wounded because of your love for your children, know something of the heart of God. His ‘son’ Israel abandoned him repeatedly and he watched as they spiraled into destruction. You and he know what it means to experience emotional pain because of your children.
God was Father to Israel.
Third, God is revealed as the Father of Jesus. Constantly Jesus refers to God as his Father, and God specifically calls Jesus his Son on numerous occasions.
The New Testament calls Jesus by the title ‘Son of God’, and God is frequently identified as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (as in 2 Corinthians 1:3, Colossians 1:3, and in Ephesians 1:3).
God did not ‘sire’ Jesus biologically. Mormonism teaches that God is Jesus’ physical Father, sired in the exact physical and sexual way that human parents have children. That is not what Christians have believed and taught.
But there is an eternal dynamic of Fatherhood and Sonship that characterizes the relationship of God the Father and Jesus Christ. We will revisit this idea in a few moments. But God is, and has eternally been, God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Son of God, Jesus, has been the Son from eternity. (In fact, it is because of Jesus Christ that the language of addressing God as ‘Father’ has come to us.)
So from the Fatherhood of God to Jesus his Son, comes the truth that, fourthly, God is Father to Christians. That is, he is our Father, in a real and particular way. Jesus taught his disciples to pray saying, ‘Our Father in heaven…’
The apostle Paul frequently began his letters, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have become his children. We are the ‘family of God’.
That God is our Father is an overflow, in a sense, of his being the Father of the Lord Jesus, for Jesus is the eternally beloved Son of God, and we are ‘in Christ’. It is less that we become God’s children, alongside Jesus, but rather, that Jesus’ Sonship is extended to us, that we participate in it.
The Apostles’ Creed begins: I believe in God the Father Almighty. He is Almighty, yes, but he is the Father Almighty, and it is not just the authority element of Fatherhood that God has, but the tender heart of the Father.
This has tremendous impact on how we view our Christian life and faith.
It means that God is not so much a boss interested in our job performance, or a dictator only interested in our toeing the line, or a judge ready to pounce on our every sin. He is Father, whose desire is for our good, who wants to love and be loved, whose discipline is always motivated by what is best for us. Always. Do you conceive of God only as ‘God’, or do you know he is your strong, loving, consistent Father?
So, number one, the Fatherhood of God: he is Father of all creation, he was Father to Israel, he is the Father of God the Son, Jesus Christ, and, therefore, Father to all who are in Christ, or Christians.
Number two, I want also to speak to the idea of the pre-eminence of the Father. As I mentioned earlier, Christians have tended toward the understanding that it’s all about Jesus. And on one level that is correct. It is through Jesus that our salvation has come. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Preaching is only Biblical if it proclaims Jesus. We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, and so on. But the danger is that we ignore or push to the perimeter the Father and the Holy Spirit.
As the Tri-une God who has revealed himself in Scripture, it is the Father who is pre-eminent (again, not superior but pre-eminent) in three ways: in the Trinity, in our Christian life, and into eternity.
First, his pre-eminence within the Trinity.
Let me immediately be clear and give some necessary context for what will follow: God, as we have already heard, is One God, made up of three persons who are nonetheless One substance. The three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are co-equal in essence, in power, in eternity, infinity, and so on. One is not innately greater than, better than, superior to the others. (I say this repeatedly because I want to be clear on that!)
But in terms of the dynamics of the inter-relationships within the Trinity, and in terms of the role or function of each, there is a certain first-ness of the Father within the Trinity.
He is pre-eminent in (small ‘r’) revelation, the first to be revealed in the Bible.
The Bible is ‘progressive revelation’. In other words, what we see is that throughout the Scripture, the revelation becomes increasingly clear and complete. Biblical revelation starts with God the Father.
He is not often mentioned specifically as ‘Father’ (though sometimes he is) but simply as ‘God’, for there was not yet reason to distinguish between persons of the Trinity. Later the Son would be revealed in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the subsequent church. The Old Testament points to Christ, and the Holy Spirit is certainly present in the Old Testament, but God in the Old Testament is God the Father. It was the God revealed in the Old Testament that Jesus called ‘Father’.
Again, God the Father is not better, but he was the first person of the Trinity revealed. It was he that Israel and the prophets knew as God, the LORD Almighty. In the Trinity God the Father is first to be revealed.
He is also first in rank. Again, he is not greater or better, but what we find in the Trinity is that both the Son and the Holy Spirit submit themselves to the will of the Father:
Jesus lived his life in absolute submission to the Father. Jesus was ‘sent’ to earth. I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me, Jesus said. He also said, The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. Anticipating the suffering of the cross, Jesus prayed, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. (By the way, it was not just out of love for us that he gave his life, but – primarily? – it was obedience to his Father.)
Though the persons of the Trinity are equal, the Son and the Spirit delight to do the will of the Father, joyfully and willingly, submitting themselves to the Father even when it hurts.
There is a ranking of sorts, and the Father is first in rank.
So the Father is pre-eminent in the Trinity, being chronologically first in Biblical revelation, and being in a place of pre-eminence in the relationships and function of the Trinity.
Second, he is also pre-eminent in terms of our Christian life.
Consider, for example, the goal of our salvation. For what have we been saved? We often think of our salvation or conversion as ‘coming to Christ’. We use that phrase (and that’s okay).
But according to the Bible, salvation is primarily about the Father. John 1:12 that that to all who received him (that is, Jesus), to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
We have been saved in order that we might be restored to the Father as his children. That is the message of Ephesians 1: In love God predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. It is not so much true that we “come to Christ’ but we ‘come to the Father through Jesus Christ the Son of God’.
The goal of our salvation is restoration to God the Father. We had been estranged from him, rebels, enemies, prodigals…. Through the death of Jesus for our sins, we can become God’s children. That is why we are saved, that, just like Jesus, we become children of God.
Consider then also our prayer. It is, I believe, appropriate to pray to all three persons of the Trinity, but the Biblical model is that primarily, we pray to the Father.
When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he said, When you pray, say ‘Our Father in heaven’… and he gave them the Lord’s prayer. Paul said, for this reason I kneel before the Father.
What impact does awareness of this have on our life of prayer?
Subconsciously, do we still have this idea that God is too harsh or too distant, and so we pray to Jesus because he has an ‘in’ with God.
God is a Father. What Father does not delight to hear the joys and needs of his children? We come freely to the Father, confident of his love, his desire to do all that is best for us, his desire to relate to us in affection and fondness. This is the God to whom we pray. Doesn’t that free us? Doesn’t that give us boldness in prayer? Doesn’t that foster trust in prayer? Doesn’t that turn prayer from a cold duty to a joyful interaction? An increased understanding and experience of God as our Father would transform our prayer life!
But how is the Christian faith lived out? What is it we are called to do?
Jesus said in Matthew 12:50, whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. He also said, Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven’.
Many people, in trying to understand how to act in a given situation, ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ What Jesus did, always, was the will of his Father. So, therefore, what determines Christian conduct is also the will of God the Father.
What is God’s will?
· Love the Lord your God with all your heart…. Love your neighbour as yourself…. Love one another…. and love your enemies.
· Love mercy… Do justly… Walk in humility with God
· Let your character exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control
You will notice that these commands have to do – not with doing – but becoming. One person has said, ‘Don’t do what Jesus did; become the kind of person who would do what Jesus did.’ Becoming, not doing. Your kids will not turn out perfect. That’s their choice. But you will end up being the father that God, your Father, has designed you to be.
The goal of such conduct is that the Father receive honour. Let your light so shine in such a way that people will see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven, says Matthew 5:16.
In every facet of our Christian life, the Father is pre-eminent: the goal of our salvation is that we might be restored to him as his children… in our life of prayer, it is the Father to whom we primarily come… and in our conduct, it is the Father’s will we do, and do it for his sake.
And the good news is that the list of commands – love your neighbour and your enemy, love mercy and do justly, demonstrate peace and joy – all of these are the result of keeping the first one: love the LORD your God with all your heart. If we fix our eyes on the LORD, which is our best life, he will work in us so that we do not ‘obey his commands’ but naturally live out of our increasingly new nature. In other words, to be a Christian.
The Father is pre-eminent in the Trinity… he is pre-eminent in our Christian life….
Finally, the Father is pre-eminent in eternity. Here, too, we tend to think of Jesus as the central figure in eternity, but again, look at the testimony of Scripture.
Philippians 2, for example, describes the humanity, death and exaltation of Jesus, then says, Therefore God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
I want to close with a significant passage in 1 Corinthians 15, and it’s obscure because, when we read this chapter, we usually focus on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus but miss what it has to say about the pre-eminence of God in eternity. Having discussed the reality of the resurrection, Paul goes on to say:
But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says ‘all things are put in subjection’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected under him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Have we had this idea that in eternity the Father takes a quiet, back-seat role? That is not what the Bible says. As the Son makes himself subject to the Father, the pre-eminence of the Father will continue into eternity, for his honour and glory and praise.
Let me say again that Jesus is not less than or inferior to the Father, but that he submits himself joyfully and completely to the Father he loves, and that he has the Father’s glory in mind constantly.
Our faith is in Jesus; we seek to act and think like Jesus; our sins are forgiven because of Jesus; we are even in Christ Jesus, according to Ephesians 1, and at the end of the day, Jesus will take all that is his and say, ‘Father, I have done everything you have asked of me. I have been perfectly obedient to you. So here are the people I died for. Here are the people who have become my disciples and who have centered their lives around me. They are yours and, with joy, I surrender them to you forever.’
We would do well to contemplate the Father, and draw near to him. To do so is to be like Christ, and to experience in increasing measure the abundant life that God, his Father and ours, sent his son into the world to bring us.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts
as we also forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, power and glory
Forever and ever.
Amen.
God the Father
Some years ago, at our church’s softball practice, there were a number of small children of some of the players present. One of them, not yet two years old, kept pointing and saying, ‘Daddy!’ It was very cute. The problem was that the man he was pointing to was not his daddy.
We Christians frequently do something like that in prayer. We say, ‘Father’ without really considering whom we are talking to. For example, we address our prayers to God the Father (‘Heavenly Father’), but along the way we say things like: ‘Thank you for dying on the cross for our sins’, or, at Christmas, ‘Thank you that you were born as a baby’, even though it was not God the Father but Jesus the Son who was born as a baby and died on the cross.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a vague notion for many of us. The doctrine of the Trinity, simply stated, is this: The Scriptures testify to one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not three Gods, nor are they each one third of God. The Father is not Jesus, Jesus is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is distinct from the other two. Somehow, mystically, there are three persons, each distinct from each other, relating to one another in community and relationship, yet in very essence and substance, one God, not ‘they’ but ‘he’. That is the Trinity.
We do not explain on this side of heaven. We can only state it and believe it. Is God one or is he three? The answer is simply, ‘Yes.’
Today we will turn our attention to the Father. We will do that under two headings.
First, the Fatherhood of God. That is, why God ‘the Father’?
Second, we will consider the pre-eminence, or priority of the Father. We as Christians have tended toward the understanding that it is all about Jesus, and to some respects it is: salvation is through Jesus, we share the character of Jesus, we are in Jesus, Biblical preaching is about Jesus, etc. But Biblical Christianity affirms the pre-eminence (not the superiority but the pre-eminence – they are different!) of God the Father.
(Before we do that, however, I want to acknowledge that we all have fathers that failed at some level, and some have been, literally, brutal fathers: fathers who have verbally, or angrily, or sexually, or emotionally scarred you. Because of them, you have come to believe that there is something wrong with you. But it’s not your fault. It is theirs. I repeat, it’s not your fault.
To call God your ‘father’, then, is difficult, almost repulsive. But – hear me – your fathers are not what a father should be or should have been. Is God a father like your father? No! It is the other way around: God is the real, the perfect father. He loves, he protects, he is present, he corrects. Your father, our fathers fail at some level because they fall short of God’s fatherhood, some by a hundred miles, others by twenty or ten. But every father in history has failed. It is God who has not failed. God loves you in a way your father can’t or won’t. I want to be clear on that. Remember, it is not that we look at our fathers and say, ‘God is kind of like that’, and so we call him ‘Father’. It is the other way around: human fatherhood is designed to be a reflection of God as a father. God is not like a father. Fathers are to be like God, at which we who are fathers desperately fail).
So, then, let us consider the Fatherhood of God. Why is he God ‘the Father’? He is the ‘Father’ primarily because that is how he has revealed himself to us.
The Bible reveals God as a Father in four ways:
First, he is the Father of creation.
He is Father of Creation in that he is the source of all things. He created ‘through’ (John 1:3) Jesus or ‘by’ (Col 1:16) him. All of creation passed through the fingers of Jesus, as it were. But the Father is the Creator.
The Bible begins with the words in the beginning God – the Old Testament God whom Jesus claimed as his father – created the heavens and the earth.
James chapter 1 calls him the Father of the heavenly lights, a reference to the sun, moon and stars, the ‘lights’ of Genesis 1.
Job 38 & 39 describe both the Lordship and tender care of God over creation, something Jesus himself affirmed in Matthew 6, when he pointed out God’s care of the birds by feeding them.
God is the creator of all things, and in that sense is the Father of creation.
Secondly, the Bible reveals God as Father, in a more particular sense, of Israel.
God called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their descendants to enter into a special relationship with him. They would be his people and he would be their God, but more than that, they would be his children and he would be their Father. There would be a special quality to the love and care that God showed to them, different from that experienced by any other nation.
Moses challenged Israel in Deuteronomy 32:6 Is God not your Father, your Creator?
Out of Egypt I called my son, God said in Hosea 11.
The prophet Isaiah said, You are our Father.
And, as only wayward children can, Israel wounded the tender heart of God: If I am a Father, where is the honor due me? he laments in Malachi.
Some of you, because you have been wounded because of your love for your children, know something of the heart of God. His ‘son’ Israel abandoned him repeatedly and he watched as they spiraled into destruction. You and he know what it means to experience emotional pain because of your children.
God was Father to Israel.
Third, God is revealed as the Father of Jesus. Constantly Jesus refers to God as his Father, and God specifically calls Jesus his Son on numerous occasions.
The New Testament calls Jesus by the title ‘Son of God’, and God is frequently identified as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (as in 2 Corinthians 1:3, Colossians 1:3, and in Ephesians 1:3).
God did not ‘sire’ Jesus biologically. Mormonism teaches that God is Jesus’ physical Father, sired in the exact physical and sexual way that human parents have children. That is not what Christians have believed and taught.
But there is an eternal dynamic of Fatherhood and Sonship that characterizes the relationship of God the Father and Jesus Christ. We will revisit this idea in a few moments. But God is, and has eternally been, God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Son of God, Jesus, has been the Son from eternity. (In fact, it is because of Jesus Christ that the language of addressing God as ‘Father’ has come to us.)
So from the Fatherhood of God to Jesus his Son, comes the truth that, fourthly, God is Father to Christians. That is, he is our Father, in a real and particular way. Jesus taught his disciples to pray saying, ‘Our Father in heaven…’
The apostle Paul frequently began his letters, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have become his children. We are the ‘family of God’.
That God is our Father is an overflow, in a sense, of his being the Father of the Lord Jesus, for Jesus is the eternally beloved Son of God, and we are ‘in Christ’. It is less that we become God’s children, alongside Jesus, but rather, that Jesus’ Sonship is extended to us, that we participate in it.
The Apostles’ Creed begins: I believe in God the Father Almighty. He is Almighty, yes, but he is the Father Almighty, and it is not just the authority element of Fatherhood that God has, but the tender heart of the Father.
This has tremendous impact on how we view our Christian life and faith.
It means that God is not so much a boss interested in our job performance, or a dictator only interested in our toeing the line, or a judge ready to pounce on our every sin. He is Father, whose desire is for our good, who wants to love and be loved, whose discipline is always motivated by what is best for us. Always. Do you conceive of God only as ‘God’, or do you know he is your strong, loving, consistent Father?
So, number one, the Fatherhood of God: he is Father of all creation, he was Father to Israel, he is the Father of God the Son, Jesus Christ, and, therefore, Father to all who are in Christ, or Christians.
Number two, I want also to speak to the idea of the pre-eminence of the Father. As I mentioned earlier, Christians have tended toward the understanding that it’s all about Jesus. And on one level that is correct. It is through Jesus that our salvation has come. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Preaching is only Biblical if it proclaims Jesus. We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, and so on. But the danger is that we ignore or push to the perimeter the Father and the Holy Spirit.
As the Tri-une God who has revealed himself in Scripture, it is the Father who is pre-eminent (again, not superior but pre-eminent) in three ways: in the Trinity, in our Christian life, and into eternity.
First, his pre-eminence within the Trinity.
Let me immediately be clear and give some necessary context for what will follow: God, as we have already heard, is One God, made up of three persons who are nonetheless One substance. The three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are co-equal in essence, in power, in eternity, infinity, and so on. One is not innately greater than, better than, superior to the others. (I say this repeatedly because I want to be clear on that!)
But in terms of the dynamics of the inter-relationships within the Trinity, and in terms of the role or function of each, there is a certain first-ness of the Father within the Trinity.
He is pre-eminent in (small ‘r’) revelation, the first to be revealed in the Bible.
The Bible is ‘progressive revelation’. In other words, what we see is that throughout the Scripture, the revelation becomes increasingly clear and complete. Biblical revelation starts with God the Father.
He is not often mentioned specifically as ‘Father’ (though sometimes he is) but simply as ‘God’, for there was not yet reason to distinguish between persons of the Trinity. Later the Son would be revealed in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the subsequent church. The Old Testament points to Christ, and the Holy Spirit is certainly present in the Old Testament, but God in the Old Testament is God the Father. It was the God revealed in the Old Testament that Jesus called ‘Father’.
Again, God the Father is not better, but he was the first person of the Trinity revealed. It was he that Israel and the prophets knew as God, the LORD Almighty. In the Trinity God the Father is first to be revealed.
He is also first in rank. Again, he is not greater or better, but what we find in the Trinity is that both the Son and the Holy Spirit submit themselves to the will of the Father:
Jesus lived his life in absolute submission to the Father. Jesus was ‘sent’ to earth. I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me, Jesus said. He also said, The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. Anticipating the suffering of the cross, Jesus prayed, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. (By the way, it was not just out of love for us that he gave his life, but – primarily? – it was obedience to his Father.)
Though the persons of the Trinity are equal, the Son and the Spirit delight to do the will of the Father, joyfully and willingly, submitting themselves to the Father even when it hurts.
There is a ranking of sorts, and the Father is first in rank.
So the Father is pre-eminent in the Trinity, being chronologically first in Biblical revelation, and being in a place of pre-eminence in the relationships and function of the Trinity.
Second, he is also pre-eminent in terms of our Christian life.
Consider, for example, the goal of our salvation. For what have we been saved? We often think of our salvation or conversion as ‘coming to Christ’. We use that phrase (and that’s okay).
But according to the Bible, salvation is primarily about the Father. John 1:12 that that to all who received him (that is, Jesus), to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
We have been saved in order that we might be restored to the Father as his children. That is the message of Ephesians 1: In love God predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. It is not so much true that we “come to Christ’ but we ‘come to the Father through Jesus Christ the Son of God’.
The goal of our salvation is restoration to God the Father. We had been estranged from him, rebels, enemies, prodigals…. Through the death of Jesus for our sins, we can become God’s children. That is why we are saved, that, just like Jesus, we become children of God.
Consider then also our prayer. It is, I believe, appropriate to pray to all three persons of the Trinity, but the Biblical model is that primarily, we pray to the Father.
When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he said, When you pray, say ‘Our Father in heaven’… and he gave them the Lord’s prayer. Paul said, for this reason I kneel before the Father.
What impact does awareness of this have on our life of prayer?
Subconsciously, do we still have this idea that God is too harsh or too distant, and so we pray to Jesus because he has an ‘in’ with God.
God is a Father. What Father does not delight to hear the joys and needs of his children? We come freely to the Father, confident of his love, his desire to do all that is best for us, his desire to relate to us in affection and fondness. This is the God to whom we pray. Doesn’t that free us? Doesn’t that give us boldness in prayer? Doesn’t that foster trust in prayer? Doesn’t that turn prayer from a cold duty to a joyful interaction? An increased understanding and experience of God as our Father would transform our prayer life!
But how is the Christian faith lived out? What is it we are called to do?
Jesus said in Matthew 12:50, whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. He also said, Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven’.
Many people, in trying to understand how to act in a given situation, ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ What Jesus did, always, was the will of his Father. So, therefore, what determines Christian conduct is also the will of God the Father.
What is God’s will?
· Love the Lord your God with all your heart…. Love your neighbour as yourself…. Love one another…. and love your enemies.
· Love mercy… Do justly… Walk in humility with God
· Let your character exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control
You will notice that these commands have to do – not with doing – but becoming. One person has said, ‘Don’t do what Jesus did; become the kind of person who would do what Jesus did.’ Becoming, not doing. Your kids will not turn out perfect. That’s their choice. But you will end up being the father that God, your Father, has designed you to be.
The goal of such conduct is that the Father receive honour. Let your light so shine in such a way that people will see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven, says Matthew 5:16.
In every facet of our Christian life, the Father is pre-eminent: the goal of our salvation is that we might be restored to him as his children… in our life of prayer, it is the Father to whom we primarily come… and in our conduct, it is the Father’s will we do, and do it for his sake.
And the good news is that the list of commands – love your neighbour and your enemy, love mercy and do justly, demonstrate peace and joy – all of these are the result of keeping the first one: love the LORD your God with all your heart. If we fix our eyes on the LORD, which is our best life, he will work in us so that we do not ‘obey his commands’ but naturally live out of our increasingly new nature. In other words, to be a Christian.
The Father is pre-eminent in the Trinity… he is pre-eminent in our Christian life….
Finally, the Father is pre-eminent in eternity. Here, too, we tend to think of Jesus as the central figure in eternity, but again, look at the testimony of Scripture.
Philippians 2, for example, describes the humanity, death and exaltation of Jesus, then says, Therefore God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
I want to close with a significant passage in 1 Corinthians 15, and it’s obscure because, when we read this chapter, we usually focus on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus but miss what it has to say about the pre-eminence of God in eternity. Having discussed the reality of the resurrection, Paul goes on to say:
But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says ‘all things are put in subjection’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected under him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Have we had this idea that in eternity the Father takes a quiet, back-seat role? That is not what the Bible says. As the Son makes himself subject to the Father, the pre-eminence of the Father will continue into eternity, for his honour and glory and praise.
Let me say again that Jesus is not less than or inferior to the Father, but that he submits himself joyfully and completely to the Father he loves, and that he has the Father’s glory in mind constantly.
Our faith is in Jesus; we seek to act and think like Jesus; our sins are forgiven because of Jesus; we are even in Christ Jesus, according to Ephesians 1, and at the end of the day, Jesus will take all that is his and say, ‘Father, I have done everything you have asked of me. I have been perfectly obedient to you. So here are the people I died for. Here are the people who have become my disciples and who have centered their lives around me. They are yours and, with joy, I surrender them to you forever.’
We would do well to contemplate the Father, and draw near to him. To do so is to be like Christ, and to experience in increasing measure the abundant life that God, his Father and ours, sent his son into the world to bring us.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts
as we also forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, power and glory
Forever and ever.
Amen.