What It Means to Call God Father, Part 2 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:2

We are eternally grateful for the implications of divine fatherhood that go far beyond mere creation. I like what Charles Spurgeon said about the fatherhood of God by virtue of creation. He said this, “I believe God has made many things that are not his children. Hath he not made the heavens and the earth, the sea and the fulness thereof, and are they his children? You say these things are not rational and intelligent beings. Ah, but he made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position. Are they his children? Unto which of the angels said he at any time, ‘Thou are my son’? No, beloved, it needs something beyond creation to constitute the relationship, and those who can say, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven’ are something more than God’s creatures.”

Spurgeon quoted, there, from Hebrews 1:5, a profound, marvelous truth. But to see what he’s talking about, that there is something more than just being God’s creatures, that is the meaning of God’s fatherhood. We need to go back to the beginning and see how it is that God created us, and see clearly that God did not intend to establish a fatherly relationship with mankind just by virtue of creation, but he established that fatherly relationship on a completely different basis. Go back to that first chapter in Genesis. Genesis chapter 1, should be easy to find, right at the beginning of your Bible. Genesis 1, we’ll look a little more closely at our origin. After God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:1, there’s a pattern that emerges, there, when God begins forming and filling the created world and the pattern begins in verse 3. It says there, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” If you skip to verse 6, “And God said, ‘Let there be…’” And then end of verse 7, “and it was so.” And then in verse 9, “And God said…and it was so.” And you see that flow throughout the chapter until we get down to verse 24.

God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds.” So all the livestock, creeping things, beasts, “And it was so.” Do you see the difference? The pattern has been “And God said…and it was so.” “And God said…and it was so.” And then it becomes, when it comes to the living creatures, God commanded the inanimate earth, and the earth, then, obeyed his command, so to speak, and brought forth all these animate beings, carbon-based life forms like us. So what’s he doing? He’s putting a distance between God the Creator and the living beings. He has widened the Creator-creature distinction.

When it comes to creating mankind, God does two things. He maintains that Creator-creature distinction, but he does something else that signals an interest not just in maintaining the distinction, but also in uniting God to man. Look at Genesis 2, in verse 7. This is when the special creation of man is, is expanded. We get kind of a focused view, here in Genesis chapter 2, of what happened on Day 6. The first part of the verse, Genesis 2:7, says this, “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground.” That is the same verb that is used in verse 19, formed, yasar, in reference to the “beasts of the field and birds of the heavens.

Clearly again with mankind, too, like the living beings, God is making a distinction; like the rest of the living creatures on the earth, we, too, have been formed out of dust. We’ve been drawn up out of the dirt. That’s actually what Adam means, dirt. How would you like your name to be dirt? Because that’s what it is. We’ve been formed out of dust. Adam was formed out of the dust. He’s drawn up and formed out of pre-existing material, and there is a distance in God’s creation of mankind. He could have just materialized Adam. Adam pops into existence. He wasn’t there; now he’s there, whoa! No. He forms him. He’s maintained this clear-cut distinction between ourselves as living beings and our creator. That point is sharpened if you look at Genesis 3:19 and the curse upon man. God told Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust shall you return.” It’s not an insult; he’s just pointing back to where his origin is.

So we’re not God’s children simply because God called us into existence, simply by virtue of the fact that he created us. We are most, more closely actually, more closely related to the dirt in terms of our origins. The dust of the earth is our father. God didn’t tie, and he’s trying to indicate this by how he made, called, called us into being, he did not tie his fatherly relationship to humanity by virtue of creation alone, especially so, in view of the nose-dive that Adam would take to plunge humanity into sin.

But listen, that’s not the whole truth, here, about how God made this distinction. That’s not the whole truth. There’s more to the story even at the point of creation. So let’s move from what fatherhood does not mean and consider what fatherhood does mean, Genesis 1:26, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” And then verse 27, “So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27. And how did he do that?

Again, go back to Genesis 2:7 and let’s focus in on that day, that special part of day 6, finish the thought so that we can see the whole truth, here. “The Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living creature.” What are we seeing here? Just this, since the very beginning, God has intended to stamp his image on to the human race, to inject his life into mankind. But he hasn’t done so in such a way as to confuse the Creator-creature distinction. He hasn’t done so in such a way that there’s a blending of God and man in a confusion of the essences or the substances. He’s kept them distinct. He doesn’t want to distract us from his greater purposes to show us mercy, to grant us grace, to unite us to himself in love.

What does the fatherhood of God mean, then, positively? First, it means the restoring of the image of God in man. It means a restoring of the image of God in man, but it’s going to be a fulness of the divine image, a fulness, not a partial image, not an incomplete image, and certainly not a distorted image, like what happened to Adam, corrupted by sin, corrupted by the Fall. God intends to restore his image in mankind and then to perfect it, such that others see in us the likeness of our father in heaven.

The image of God in man is not going to consist in what is material, in what is visible, since God is invisible spirit. Rather, the image of God in man will consist of what is immaterial, what is seen through spiritual eyes and known by its virtue, by intangible things like virtue, manifestation of communicable attributes such as are in God and will be in us. Well, like all those that manifest perfectly in Jesus Christ. First man Adam, by falling into sin, he permanently ruined the image of God in all those who follow, for all members of his race. All Adam’s offspring are under a curse. They were in the loins of Adam when he broke faith with God, his Creator, sustainer, and friend. And so all Adam’s progeny, you, me, every member of his race, those who come from Adam and Eve, they’re all alike, born into sin; all born with an innate proclivity to sin. As Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Jeremiah says that “the heart is deceitful above all things,” Jeremiah 17:9, “desperately sick. Who can understand it?” We go to Ephesians chapter 2, chapter 2 verses 1-3. Paul says there that we’re, we are all like stillborn children. We’re born dead. “We were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we walk, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” We are by nature, he says there, “children of wrath.” We have more in common, get this, as children of wrath, we have more in common with the devil than we have with God.

That’s what Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews, “If God were your father you would love me,” but they didn’t, so Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” You have the mark if his image on you. Listen, under the influence of sin, that’s us. We’re like unreasoning animals carried about by all our impulses, passions of the flesh, desires of the mind, as it says there. The Psalmist said the same thing, Psalm 73:22, under the influence of sinful thinking, he says, “I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you,” the beasts of the earth, with their origins in the dust, but without the image of God, that’s what they do. They rummage around to satisfy their desires and without the image of God in us, that’s what we do, too.

This is not, this is not, what God has planned for his children. It’s not what he has planned for his children. In Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 20, “That is not the way you learned Christ! Assuming,” verse 21, “assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to,” Get this, “to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

What is the new self? What is the image of God in man? “Created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” That’s the image of God. The parallel in Colossians 3:10 says it this way, that in Christ “we have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” The likeness of God, the image of our Creator, this is what God has intended for us from the very beginning. He is restoring that image in us by uniting us to the perfection of that image of God resident incarnate in Jesus Christ. So that’s the first thing that the fatherhood of God means, the full restoration of the image of God in man, the perfection of that image found in Jesus Christ.

Second, his fatherhood means an eternal, electing love. You’re in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3. This fatherhood, this fatherhood here, at a whole different level. We’re looking back into this vast timelessness into the eternal counsel of the triune God, and you know what we see there in eternity past? We see planning verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him,” When? “before the foundation of the world,” Back before time and space began, God chose us in him. How? So for what? “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” That’s what he chose us for, back then. “He predestined us,” verse 5, “for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” So he’s starting with the electing love and looking at the adopting love on the other side. “…to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.”

Here we see the electing, sovereign love of God, who chose us, who elected us in Christ, the beloved of God. God chose us, looking beyond the fall of our first parents. Looking beyond our own personal sin, he predestined us to live no longer as ignorant animals, rummaging around the earth, looking to satisfy fleeting desires. He looked at us and predestined us to be adopted sons and daughters of God. Isn’t this beautiful? We’re chosen members of God’s own family, planned from before time began, union in Christ, God’s one and only Son. So God is our father, first, by virtue of the restored imago dei, the image of God perfected in Christ and he is our father, second, by virtue of divine election. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to perfect his image in us.

Which brings us three, the fatherhood of God means, third, a redeeming and forgiving love. A redeeming and forgiving love. He doesn’t leave us in our mess. I’m so thankful. This involves several very significant theological concepts. I’ll just mention them to you, here, the incarnation of Christ, the propitiation that is won through his death on the Cross, and the justification of God that comes through Jesus Christ by faith in Christ. Incarnation, propitiation, and justification, I’ll unpack those here. What God put in motion at creation was his eternal plan to fill the earth with his glory, to perfect in his elect children the image of God, who bear the image of Jesus Christ, the one and only Son of God. That is the plan.

So when God breathed the breath of life into that first man, that man became a living being, that was not the end, but only the beginning. When God said, Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” he wasn’t looking at Adam. He was, God was looking ahead to the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “For he,” not Adam, “He is the image of the invisible God, and he,” not Adam, but he, “is the firstborn, the pre-eminent one, over all creation.” The incarnation goes way beyond God breathing life into inanimate dust. The incarnation is God sending the Author of Life to take on living flesh. It’s exactly what John 1:14 tells us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory,” what is that glory? It’s “the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Full of what? Virtue.

The incarnation, that in and of itself was not the end. It’s the beginning of the end, though, in the incarnation, Christ’s first coming, was in humility, not glory. He came in humility so that he might bear the sins of God’s elect, bear the sins of his own people, bear the sins of his flesh and blood.

Christ came to bear the sins of his people, to die on the Cross, to be a propitiation for their sins. Propitiation is a big word, it’s the word, the Greek word is hilaskomai, and it refers to a sin offering. Propitiation is an offering that appeases the wrath of an offended deity, and God is, make no mistake about it, God is offended by our sins. His perfect justice demands satisfaction, just as a perfect judge is going to demand that every crime has a proper punishment. That’s why Jesus came in the incarnation to do what only the perfect man can do. Hebrews 2:17, “He had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service to God, to make propitiation for the sins of his people.” He laid down his life on that altar.

So since the, all of us elect children have sinned, all of us have fallen short of the glory of God, “God put forth his own Son,” Romans 3:25, “to be a propitiation by his blood.” “In this is love,” 1 John 4:10, “not that we have loved God,” no, “but that he loved us and that he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That’s love. According to 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” What’s that saying? God accounted the sins of his elect people to Christ, and he punished Christ, not them, but Christ, for their sins.

And then God took the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God himself, and he put it on his elect, and he rewards them for what Christ earned and merited and did. We’re favored in him and the reward? The reward is justification. The reward is to be declared righteous by God, not just forgiven. What Christ’s propitiation accomplished in his death on the Cross, not just forgiven, but righteous, positively. He takes his atoning death, his perfect life, fulfills all righteousness for us. Romans 8, “Those whom God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among” whom, “many brothers.” Children of God. “All those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.” He speaks of a future event for us in past-tense language, as a done deal. He’s talking about us, beloved, foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. God justified all, through faith in Jesus Christ. The holy, just judge, he’s dropped the gavel on the bench, declared us righteous. Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.” Why? Because God loves to bless his children in Christ.

So God’s love is a redeeming love; it’s a forgiving love. It’s not a love that ignores sin. It’s a love that, that deals justly with every single sin, which is why our conscience can be clear. It’s a love that deals justly with our sin, but still shows us mercy in Christ. Listen, that’s what our father has done. He demonstrates his goodness, his kindness, his compassion, his mercy in the incarnation of Christ, through the propitiation of his Cross, and by the declaration of justification by faith in Jesus Christ.

So what does the fatherhood of God mean? It means a restoring love. God restores, perfects the image of God in man. It means an eternal, electing love planned before time began. It means and requires a redeeming and forgiving love, the perfect plan of redemption by incarnation, propitiation, and divine justification.

Number four, to call God father means, fourth, we understand that we’ve been adopted into his family and this is where it all comes together for us, and why we pray and say, father, when we pray. God breathed life into man, the crown of his creation, and that man became a living being, then God sent his son to take on flesh to become man, not breathing life, but sending life, “For in him was life and that life was the light of man.” Paul summarized this perfectly in 1 Corinthians 15:45. He said, “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

Listen, beloved, Jesus came to give life to you, to restore and perfect in you the image of God, to give you, the elect sons and daughters of God, life and now he stands before the father, Hebrews 2:13, rejoicing, saying, “Behold, I and the children God has given to me.” We are brothers and sisters in Christ. By faith in him we’re called sons of God because of God’s gracious act of adoption to sonship. We’re not sons in the same way Christ is a son to the father; we’re sons by adoption. Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Because you’re sons, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” It’s Romans 8, all over again. So you’re no longer a slave; you’re a son, if a son, then you’re an heir, you’re an inheritor of God, through God.

This is why Jesus tells us, Luke 11:2, “When you pray, say ‘Father.’” When you begin your prayers, you address God through the lens of this highly privileged relationship: Father and child. Jesus wants you to enter the throne room in your prayers, passing under the family crest, as it were, reminded of your relationship with the eternal God that engenders in you a sense of trust, that you know that the one you speak to cares, that he’s listening, that he loves you. He’s loved you before there was time. He loved you before there was any act, one act of yours, whether good or evil or anything. Reminded of your relationship with God causes your heart to warm to your father, a father who loves you very much.

So beloved, when you pray, say father, because there is no greater incentive to trust than calling him father, no greater encouragement to pray than this reality of God as our father. The father has planned to adopt us as his children from eternity past. When he created the world, the father created our world, he set up our adoption from the very beginning. Even in the way he created everything, he’s setting up our adoption. He’s looking to the end, he’s looking to Christ, he’s looking at the fulfillment of everything in Christ, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

So the father sent his one and only Son into the world not merely as a living being, but as a life-giving Spirit, to redeem us from our sins, to propitiate God’s wrath, so that God can justify all of us who put our faith in him in Christ. So we pray to the father, who sent his son to retrieve us for himself, to pluck us out of this filthy world, clean us off, purify us in Christ, make us holy, redeem us, sanctify us, purify us, so that when we come to the end, Christ presents us like a new bride, covered in white. He says, “Here am I and the children you’ve given me.” So “He who did not spare his own son,” that is our father, “this one who gave him up for us all,” how will that Father, not also with him, graciously give us all things. Amen?