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When Jesus taught and lived that God is a loving Father, it meant that Jesus trusted that God is more committed to bringing about good for us than God is committed to avoiding personal hurt and pain. As Ben Witherington III remarks, “to say God ‘is love’ is to say that God is the most self-sacrificial being in the universe, and as such he was prepared to go to incredible lengths to set humankind right.” (Found that quotation in an Archaeology magazine of all places!) Do you find it encouraging, scary, or perhaps both to realize that God is vulnerable and can be hurt by what you do and do not do?

The God described in biblical writings is creative, good, relational, purposeful, responsive, and personal. God is the God who speaks things into existence and who is the source of the spiritually energized “word.” Complicated, confusing, and even easily misunderstood at times from our human perspective? Yes! Silent sometimes when we want to hear—right now? Yes! But, still always a relational God, bent on communicating with us humans, seeking to show us that God is for us, and hurt when we don’t accept that grace and mercy.

If we take the biblical claims about the One God seriously, we humans are invited to enter a great adventure with God. Austin Channing Brown calls this adventure a call to live “wildly holy and free.” Not a bad way to capture the security and risk involved in relating to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.”

As mentioned in a previous blog, when Jesus called God Father, he was always referring both to God’s authority and to God’s commitment to our good. Although the biblical writers had, and used, words for “love” that are primarily emotional, the word usually used to describe God’s love for us and the love we are commanded to have for one another is not primarily about “good feelings.” In fact, you cannot command good feelings. What God is committed to, and we are commanded to learn to image, is a stubborn commitment to wanting, and acting toward, the best for the other person (agape/chesed).

It is not because God must, or because it is written in the stars, that God chooses to relate to us in this interpersonal manner. Rather, the God of the Old Testament (Elohim who is YHWH) chooses to create humans and to love humans because God desires to. This means God is more committed to good for us than God is committed to avoiding personal hurt and pain. Jesus’ relationship with God is so trusting and trustworthy that he embodies this commitment and demonstrates it at great personal cost. To put it in words Paul penned later that seem to describe his own experience with God’s Fatherly love coming to him through Jesus:

Romans 8:31 So what are we going to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. Won’t he also freely give us all things with him?

33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect people? It is God who acquits them. 34 Who is going to convict them? It is Jesus the Messiah who died, even more, who was raised, and who also is at God’s right side. It is Jesus the Messiah who also pleads our case for us. (CEB with change of Christ to “Messiah”)

What do you mean, what do I mean, when we say, “God is a loving Father?”

In the last post, I noted how important Jesus said his relationship to God as “Father” was to him. The relationship Jesus and God shared, and share now, also make possible a deeper relationship with God as Father for the rest of us humans. That is certainly the claim of several New Testament writers. For some examples:

Romans 8:15-17 — ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

John 14:7 — If you know me, you will know my Father also.

Galatians 4:6-7 — ⁶And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” ⁷So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

1 John 3:2 & 4:10-11 —  ²Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is….¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 

Of course, as it did for Jesus, this deeper relationship not only recognizes God’s desire to be more intimate with us humans than we seem to be able to imagine, but also God’s rightful authority as the “Father” of God’s forever human family. Let’s keep challenging one another to continue growing into what it means to be daughters and sons of “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.”

When Jesus referred to “God” as “Father” it was not a new revelation. Many of his Jewish forefathers and foremothers had done so before him. However, the New Testament writers indicate that Jesus’ way of relating to God as “Father” expressed a new and deeper intimacy with God. This expressed intimacy impressed some of his Jewish peers and angered others (Mark 14:36; John 5:17–18). Jesus’ use of “Abba” was so intimate that both Mark and Paul chose to leave it untranslated at points. Paul also indicates that through Jesus, God is extending this offer of intimacy to the rest of us humans as well—whether Jewish or Greek, slave or free, male and female (Gal 3:25–4:6; Rom 8:15).  

It isn’t just intimacy with God that Jesus is expressing in his use of “Abba.” It is also his recognition of God’s authority over his life. As many scholars point out, the designation “Father” in the cultures of the ancient world did not automatically focus on intimacy and tenderness. It designated a role with ultimate family authority. This role was often exercised without the gift of much time or intimacy.

Although Jesus’s use of “Father” never moves away from fully recognizing the ultimate authority that God has over God’s human family, it does always include intimacy. In both words and actions, Jesus demonstrates that the God who is Father is the ultimate authority in his own life–and ours as well–is a God who deeply cares about us.

Having grown up in the Southern part of the USA, I grew up experiencing the use of “Papa” (the Southern English close equivalent to the Aramaic “Abba” and Hebrew “Ab”) as a title meant to convey authority, but hopefully intimacy as well. I understand the word “Baba” in India functions much the same way.

Two passages clearly illustrate this breathtaking combination of intimacy and authority in Jesus’ relationship with “God” as his Father–and ours.

Though “Abba” is not used in either Matthew or Luke’s Greek version of Jesus’s model prayer that we have labelled “The Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father,” the prayer clearly views the relationship Jesus has with God, and is calling us to share, as both intimate and authoritative. “Our Father” is authoritative, and we are called to pursue his “will” on earth just as it is done in the heavens. “Our Father” wants an intimate relationship that includes providing for us, forgiving us, and protecting us from evil (Matt 6:9-15).

Jesus demonstrated his own trust in the Father’s authority and intimacy in his prayers just prior to being arrested. “Abba, Father,” Jesus said to God, “Everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36). This level of intimacy and freedom in the relationship between Jesus and God who is his “Abba” is breath-taking. Equally breath-taking is the level of authority Jesus is willing to grant to his “Abba” in this high-risk situation.

No wonder several writers of the New Testament saw “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah” as the newly appropriate name for the God of Israel who is the God of all nations.

I remember being surprised when I began to notice something I had ignored in various texts of the New Testament. Apparently, it is surprising to many others as well. In fact, even in Bible College and in Seminary, no one ever called my attention to it. What am I referring to?

The New Testament writers continue to describe the relationship between the risen and exalted Jesus and God as a relationship between Jesus and Jesus’ “God.” Often implicit, this is made explicit at least eleven times in the New Testament.

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⁵May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, ⁶so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 15:5–6).

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. . . . (2 Cor 1:3).

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ(Eph 1:3, emphasis mine).

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better (Eph 1:17).

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. . . . (Col 1:3).

And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me” (Heb 2:13).

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet 1:3).

⁵ . . . and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, ⁶and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen (Rev 1:5–6).

Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I [the exalted Jesus] have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God (Rev. 3:2).

Him [the person]who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will that one leave it. I will write on him [that person] the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name (Rev 3:12 – actually 3 times).

¹⁷Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her (John 20:17–18).

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Except for the final quotation from the Gospel of John, which is post-resurrection and pre-ascension, each of the passages just quoted describes Jesus’s relationship with God after Jesus was raised from death, ascended to be with God in heaven, and was exalted to the right hand of God. In each case, the relationship is that God continues to be Jesus’s God.

It seems likely that the authors (4 to 7 depending on how you understand the authorship of these eleven passages) believed the relationship between God and Jesus provides us with a new name for God. Much as the covenant with humanity through Abraham led to God often being identified as “the God of Abraham,” now God’s renewal of the covenant through Jesus seems to have led to a new name for God—“the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.”

For an example of a text that implicitly, and almost explicitly, identifies the ongoing relationship as Jesus relating to God as “his God” forever see 1 Corinthians 15:28—^“When all things are subjected to him (Jesus the Messiah), then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.” Paul seems to expect Jesus, as the representative of us humans, to relate to God as “God” forever.

This is the beginning of a new series on how Jesus related to God. Hope you enjoy it.

My intention is to post a blog on the topic about once each week.

Jesus comes to us through the pages of the New Testament as a Jewish human who saw everything that he did and said as related to the God of Israel who was also God over all nations. From his earliest recorded words—“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”—to his final dying breath—“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”—Jesus lived in a trusting relationship with God, who he also knew as Father (Luke 2:49, 23:46).

The “Spirit of God” descended upon Jesus as he was being baptized (Matthew 3:16). Jesus talked about God, and to God, when resisting temptations. He said that he should respond to God just as God had earlier instructed all Jewish people to respond to God (Matt 4:4–10, 26:38–42). He talked about God’s kingdom when challenging others to repent and to follow him (Mark 1:14–17). He taught about God regularly (Mark 12:28–34).

Surely, he was speaking from his own experiences with God when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.” Don’t you think that Jesus was describing his relationship with God when he summarized the Old Testament’s instructions about how to relate to God—” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-39)?

Jesus was still talking to “God” as he took his final breaths before dying (Mark 15:34; Luke 23:46; John 19:30). How else could life be lived by this radically faithful Jewish Son of God?

Jesus claimed to know what God was like. He often began parables with “the Kingdom of Heaven is like . . .” Not only did he trust that he knew what God’s reign on earth looks like, he claimed he knew what he should do by looking and seeing what God was doing and joining in (John 5:19). What a bold claim! If you want to know what God is like, look at what I am doing. What I am doing is a direct reflection of what God is doing.