THE FATHER IS GOD

Stuart Olyott

We are only just beginning chapter 3, and yet I must, at once, say something about chapter 4. In chapter 4 we shall see that the Lord Jesus Christ is God. Yet when He taught His disciples to pray to God, He did not invite them to pray to Him. He said, 'After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father...' (Matthew 6:9). Prayer to God is not to be addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, but to One who is distinct from Him–the Father! There is One who is God, who is not the Lord Jesus Christ, and who goes by the name of 'Father'. But before we pursue this, we ought to notice that the Scriptures do not always use the name 'Father' in the same way.

Sometimes, for instance, 'Father' is used, not of One who is distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit–a distinct Person in the Godhead–but of the Godhead Himself.

Let us give some examples of this. When Paul is writing to the Christians at Corinth, he reminds them that the idols who surround them are not real gods at all. This is not what their worshippers think, but it is the truth. The idols do not represent deities who have a real existence. There is only one God who has a real existence, and it is the One that Christians worship. So he writes, 'But to us there is but one God, the Father' (1 Corinthians 8:6). Here the word 'Father' equals the words 'one God', Paul is saying that there is but one God, and is not thinking of the Persons of the Godhead at all. It is in this sense that he uses the word 'Father', just as he does in Ephesians 4:6, where he writes of 'one God and Father of all.'

The writer to the Hebrews does something similar in chapter 12 verse 9. Here he explains that God treats Christian believers as His children. Just as a father chastises only his own children, so God brings unpleasant experiences into the lives of believers, in order to develop their characters. These experiences are not something to resent, but to accept. They should not decrease our regard for God, but should rather increase it. 'We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?' Once more the title 'Father' is used of God, but not of a distinct Person in the Godhead. This is exactly how James uses it when he writes, 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights . . .' (.James 1:17).

The name 'Father' is also used to express the fact that the Old Testament people of Israel had God as their Ruler and Head. 'The Lord ... is not he thy father that hath bought thee?', (Deuteronomy 32:6.) 'Father' is here simply an alternative word for God, without any thought of distinct Persons in the Godhead. So Isaiah prayed, 'Thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer… now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand' (Isaiah 63:16; 64:8).

Not all members of Old Testament Israel had such confidence in God. So in the days of Jeremiah, God says to them through the prophet, 'Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, "My father, thou art the guide of my youth"?' (Jeremiah 3:4.) In later times every Israelite spoke of God as the nation's Father. But he did not necessarily acknowledge this in practice. God was not given the honour due to Him, and the individual Israelites did not treat each other as brothers. This time the rebuke was: 'If then I be a father, where is mine honour?... Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother ...?' (Malachi 1:6; 2:10.)

So by the time the Lord Jesus Christ came, the Jews were used to using the name 'Father' as a substitute for the word 'God'. They taught that they, and they alone, stood in relation to God as children do to their father. This was an idea which Christ and His apostles had to correct. All men are certainly not the children of God. But nor are all Jews: this is a privilege which belongs exclusively to those who repent and believe the gospel. Only they enjoy intimacy with God, and the comfort of His tender care. Such people, and not the Jews, are the true Israel which God recognizes. They alone are therefore entitled to address God as 'Father'.

It was to His disciples only that Jesus ever spoke of 'your Father which is in heaven' (Matthew 5:45). It was to them alone that He spoke of 'thy Father... your Father... your heavenly Father' (Matthew 6:6, 8, 14). 'We are the children of God' (Romans 8:16) was written only of those who are right with God by means of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Adoption into God's family, and having Him as their Father, is their highest privilege. And it is theirs alone. It is shared by nobody else whatever. They, and they alone, can exultingly rejoice, saying, 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God' (1 John 3:1).

Now the Lord Jesus Christ is God, as we shall shortly see. But although Christians have God as their Father, it is not the Lord Jesus Christ who is that Father. God the Father is Someone distinct from Him. The Father of believers is also the Father of Christ, though in a different sense. Christian believers are His adopted children, while Christ is His eternal Son. Why did Jesus say to Mary, 'I ascend unto my Father, and your Father'? (John 20:17). Why did He not say, 'I ascend to our Father'? His words show us that God is Father of us both. But the words are put as they are to emphasize that God is a Father to Christ in a way that He is not Father to us.

It is in John's Gospel that we see most clearly that although the Father is God, and the Lord Jesus Christ is God, they are, none the less, distinct. Within the being of God, One is the Father of the Other, and One is the Son of the Other. Almost at the beginning of the Gospel we read, 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth' (John 1:14). This tells us that the Word, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, is quite distinct from God the Father. One became flesh, and the Other did not. And yet the glory of Christ is the glory of the Father, so they must obviously be God in the same sense. Christ is the perfect expression of the Father–which is what John meant when he described Him as 'the Word'.

Almost at once we read, 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him' (John 1:18). But we know from our previous chapter that there are people who have seen God! What the verse must mean is that nobody has seen God the Father. Whenever people have seen God, it is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, that they have seen. That is who 'the angel of the Lord' was. The Son is quite distinct from the Father, which is why He is described as 'in the bosom of the Father'. And yet to see Him is to see God, for He expresses and declares God perfectly. Both are God. But One is not the Other. Yet there remains but one true and living God. We must not think we have missed out in any way, because we have not seen God the Father. Jesus stands before the world and announces, 'I and my Father are one' (John 10:30); 'He that seeth me seeth him that sent me' (John 12:45); 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, "Show us the Father"?' (John 14:9.)

When Jesus spoke in such intimate terms about God the Father, the Jews plotted to kill Him (John 5:17-31). No one disputed the fact that the Father was God. It had never been questioned. But Jesus' language clearly implied that He was making Himself equal with the Father,–equal with God. They knew that there was only one God, and that the Father was that God. Despite the Old Testament clues which we have examined, they could not conceive that more than one could be God. The whole idea of a plurality in the Godhead escaped them. It seemed clear to them that Jesus was asserting Himself to be equal with God. They took this to mean that He claimed to be an additional God. To them this was blasphemy, and this explains why they wanted to kill Him. They held so fiercely to the deity of the Father, that they could not conceive of the deity of Another (John 8:53-59). They were wrong about the second, as we shall now see. But they were not wrong about the first. The Father is God.