July 24, 2005
This I Believe: Exploring the Apostle’s Creed
I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY
INTRODUCTION
We’re continuing this Sunday our series of messages on the Apostle’s Creed. Today we consider the words, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” I’m going to focus our attention on the words “God the Father Almighty,” and particularly on the notion of God as father.
There are many biblical metaphors/roles for God: creator, revealer, judge, redeemer, shepherd. All are helpful images and metaphors, but it is crucial for our theology to be centered particularly on God as Father. This is really the role which lies at the heart of our relationship with God. It is hard to relate to God as revealer or judge – but Father is more intimate. Jesus taught us to pray to God as “Father”.
This understanding of God is central in Methodist theology. Reformed traditions (Presbyterian, etc) tend to view God primarily in terms of sovereignty, kingship. Wesleyan theology is systemically connected to its choice of God as father as the primary theological metaphor. There are at least four implications involved in knowing God as Father.
MASCULINE GOD-LANGUAGE: SEXISM?
But before we can talk about the implications of the metaphor, we must think about the whole issue of masculine and feminine God-language. We must begin by noting that in using the term father we are speaking metaphorically. God is not genetically male in any human sense. This is true of all our metaphors for God we have mentioned: shepherd, king, etc. We are only saying that God is something like the best of human fathers and that it is helpful to think of as a human father. If you had a bad father, think of God as being to you the best of human fathers. God’s loving concern and care for us, and God’s insistence upon our spiritual maturity and formation are both illustrations of what every human father should aspire toward.
The Bible also uses feminine imagery for God. Isaiah the prophet uses feminine imagery on several occasions for God - loving the people like a human mother (Isaiah 49:15; 66:13). Many people have found it helpful to draw upon these images in thinking about God’s care and love, especially if they have had painful relationships with their fathers. I think of God as my heavenly father and the biblical language consistently prefers the masculine language. The Bible uses feminine language for God only rarely and always metaphorically. Masculine language is used not only the vast majority of the time, but comes in both metaphor and simile. In other words, God isn’t only compared to our human fathers, the Bible says that God is Father. God’s loving concern is compared in a few cases to that of a human mother.
I understand that many people feel this preference for masculine language is a part of power-control – a means of keeping women in their place. Our skeptical age tends to think of everything in terms of politics and power. I believe the masculine language for God is theologically significant – it tells us something important about who God is in relationship to the world. Remember, ancient
There are several implications for us in thinking of God as Father.
OUR PERSONAL GOD
One idea that is demanded by using this father language for God is the highly personal nature of the language. One of the basic questions facing all people of faith is this: is God a personal being or an impersonal force. Perhaps all this language falls short in some way (God may be super-personal in some way), but the question certainly must be asked. Should we think of God as a force of love, a ray of hope, a blossom of joy, and little more? Is God, right now, personally aware and concerned for your presence? Does God actually exercise control over creation, or is it simply wound up like a clock with God off doing something else? Does God actually involve himself in creation in terms of miracle or is God unengaged and uninvolved?
Our father language speaks of the personal nature of God, God’s personal providential care for you, God’s willingness to step into human events and effect miracles. These beliefs are not wild-eyed religious extremism. They are the sequential results of what we believe about the fundamental nature of God. God is personal, personally engaged in this creation, lovingly concerned for us. And while we cannot say that faithful Christian living ensures divine protection from the normal sufferings of life, we can say that God is lovingly aware and engaged in terms of care and solace. God, in Christ, knows more human suffering than any of us here. We serve a personal God, a loving God, a fatherly God – or motherly if that suits your liking better.
Let’s state this as forcefully as possible. Right now, God knows you. God is really there, very much aware of your existence, and intensely desiring to work all of life’s ups and downs out to your spiritual/moral benefit. We are not alone in this universe. We are the objects of God’s passionate care and providential oversight. We simply must believe this, even when things seem to be going awry. Life is either, as Limony Snicket would say, a series of unfortunate events, or a unfolding of providential oversight. I’ll never forget my last conversation with my Grandfather. He said, “Joel, one thing I’ve come to realize as I look back on my life. God really had a plan and was at work things out for the best.” This is not pious sentimentality. It is truth upon which your soul can anchor itself. I believe it with all my heart. God is our father.
OUR FAMILY FAITH
When Jesus taught us to pray to God as “Father,” he places the Christian experience of God in the context of family. John’s Gospel speaks of Christian conversion is a “New Birth;” we are using language that comes from the family. Babies are born into families, not into cities or nations. A judge does not welcome the birth of children into his jurisdiction, typically wouldn’t even know about the birth of a child. But a father cries as the birth of his children. Our Christian conversion implies not just a new citizenship – though it does that. It implies more than new Lordship, although it does this also. It implies more than a new job and employer.
It speaks of a new family, with an overjoyed father in heaven and new brothers and sisters welcoming each of us into faith. The church is a family above all else. The church is at its best when it becomes a type of extended family. Church relationships ought to go deep, to be important. The person sitting in front of you is more than just the person sitting in front of you. Your relationship to those around you is vastly different from those who sit around you in a theater. They are your siblings of faith, those who share your spiritual genetics. We are in bonded relationship together. Like family, it can either be wonderful or it can be awful. But we’re still family.
Church is not a club, a society, a community, it is a family. We worship our heavenly father together. Jesus taught us to pray to God as, “Our Father.” Notice he didn’t say, “My Father who art in heaven.” He intended this to be a family prayer to a father God: Our Father who. . . God as Father – indicates the depth of God’s passionate love for the family. We don’t worship our judge in heaven, or our divine uncle – but our father. (story of Peter’s near drowning). I had the love of an uncle – shocked, desperate, frightened. Seth was weeping uncontrollably on his knees over the body of his son. He didn’t care one bit who saw him crying – that was his little boy who nearly drowned. He had the love of a father, I that of an uncle.
This gives us a picture of the depth of God’s love. The story of the Prodigal was read because it illustrates more than any biblical text God’s fatherly love. The passionate love of a father looking daily for the return of his wayward son is Jesus’ image of God. Is this your image of God? Is this your God? Or primarily the judge/taskmaster/King?
INTIMACY WITH GOD
This leads into our next point. Knowing God as Father implies a new level of intimacy with God. In several different places in the NT – beginning with the prayers of Jesus - we hear the strange word for God, “Abba.” Abba is the Aramaic word for Father. It used to be said that it meant, “Daddy” – it does not. It doesn’t have that childish nuance at all – although it could in the right context. But the word meant, “Father” with the intimacy of “Daddy” but not the childish implication. Maybe Dad works best. What would you think if you heard someone pray, “Dad in heaven. . . .”
Abba used for ‘God’ is drawn directly from Jesus own Aramaic prayer life yet it was remembered and used even in the Greek speaking church. Jesus taught us to pray to God as our Heavenly Father and called God roughly “Dad.” Jesus called God “Abba, Father” in his prayer in the
This was a new emphasis – more personal and intimate than any prayer tradition in any religion to that time. Calling God your Heavenly Father is unique to Jesus and thus to Christians. It is not something done by other religions. We do it specifically because Jesus did it and taught us to do so – right out of the box the Apostle’s Creed calls God Abba. This implies a particularly intimate relationship with God. This is the great teaching of Jesus himself - God is glorious and magnificent, creator of heaven and earth, your king and creator, loves you like the best of human fathers.
Paul says that the Spirit of Christ is in our hearts, crying out, “Abba Father.” Just as Jesus cried out in the Garden, Abba Father, take this cup from me, so the Holy Spirit fills our souls with a love for God that cannot be explained. Love of God is the hallmark of the Spirit’s presence in our lives. This divine love that provides assurance of salvation and intimacy with God.
DOCTRINE OF PERFECTION
Knowing God as Father helps us to understand the doctrine of Christian Perfection. A lot of Methodists fail to appreciate the Doctrine of Christian Perfection, yet John Wesley taught that the attainment of perfection was the goal or crown of Christian life. This language of perfection makes many people very uncomfortable. How many times to we hear the saying, “to err is human.’ So, to be perfect is inhuman – perhaps inhumane!! The doctrine which once was the crown of glory of our Methodist tradition eventually became a burden on our backs, and finally a pebble in our shoe.
Understanding God as Father helps us capture the Wesleyan Spirit. Wesley never taught that we could attain absolute moral perfection. But he insisted that the Christian life is about moral improvement. A Christian whose faith is not moving them toward deeper levels of moral perfection and purity is arrested in some spiritual bondage. the goal of moral perfection was attainable in this life Wesley believed. He insisted and wrote into church law that every ordained minister must confess this theological principle. I had to do this when I was ordained in June.
We can be perfect in love – so that we live our lives completely in the love of God. The essence of the moral life is to live a life of love. A moral person constantly desires and seeks what is best for others. A moral person loves God fully with their soul – this is the core of ethical living.
In Matt. 5:48, “Jesus said, “You are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Headline!!! – it wasn’t only Wesley that calls us to perfection. Jesus himself issues that challenge to us. It is clear from the context that Jesus is talking about a perfection of love. He says just a few verses above, “Love your enemies . . . in that way you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.” Matt. 5 is also indicates that we are to seek perfection – not in an absolute sense, but in the sense that we seek to constantly abide in a relationship of love with God, as Father, and with others.
When we think of consistently loving God, we are loving a father, not a judge or creator or master. We are reminded that God as father looks at our hearts and knows our intent. A father sees the soul of his child, and judges as a father. Our moral calling is to seek to live so that every action flows from a heart of love toward God and love toward all God has made – to consistently seek the best for others. It is a very high moral calling indeed! You may feel it is impossibly out-of-reach.
Al Coppedge, a theologian at Asbury, tells a great story to illustrate this. He tells of watching his son preach his first sermon – 11 year old kid. His son wanted to preach so his dad worked out a Sunday evening service somewhere. Of course, a very childish sermon, in terms of homiletical and hermeneutic skill. If he had heard that sermon in a preaching class, as a preaching professor he would have failed the person. But, as a father, he looked at the heart of his child, and said, ‘That was a perfect sermon!’ - it could not be improved upon!
CONCLUSION
Do you know God as that kind of father – who thinks even your stumbling confused spiritual efforts are marvelous, who consistently cheers you on?