It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
Father’s Day is a good occasion to contemplate what it means for God to be “father.”
Paul teaches in Romans 8 that the best way to describe the life of someone who is in Christ is as a child of God. “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom. 8:14). And this Spirit is what causes us to pray what is otherwise impossible, calling God our true “Abba,” or Father. Paul’s point is that we do not get God as Father without the Spirit making it happen.
This can be hard to appreciate, for two nearly opposite reasons. On one hand, we take for granted that God is our father. God created us, so doesn’t that mean that we are—by definition—his children, and that he is our father? If that’s true, why does Paul go on about how special it is to be able to call God “Abba, father”? The logic doesn’t seem to pan out.
On the other hand, we have trouble with the Bible’s talk of God as Father because we have trouble with fathers. This is not a problem of logic. The idea of father is not hard to grasp, and we all understand that fathers are technically necessary. The problem we have with fathers is social. So many people have experience with bad fathers, abusive fathers, absent fathers. As a society, we have come to regard fathers as, at best, dispensable; and at worst, more trouble than they are worth. [1]
I write as one with personal experience. My parents divorced when I was nine years old. From that point on, my father was only sporadically and tangentially involved in my life. And frankly, that was how I preferred it.
The details of my story are unique, but the general arc is so common that it is cliché. Parents divorce. Mother raises the kids virtually alone. Of course, I’m grateful that my experience was not worse. So many other families not only dispose of the father but are forced to actively flee for their own safety or well-being.
God is not “like” a father. Instead, God is Father.
The point is that in such a climate, God as “father” can be a pretty hard sell. Father? Who needs it? Why would God want to be associated with such a disreputable feature of modern culture? If the church thinks its job is to get people to trust God as “father,” how is that possible when people don’t trust the humans they have as fathers?
We need to recognize, however, that we’ve got the metaphor going the wrong way. God is not “like” a father. God does not portray himself as “father” to help us understand who he is by comparing himself to our earthly fathers. Instead, God is Father. And all human fathers are like God the Father—or at least that is God’s design.
Regardless, we know that this “father” stuff with God is tricky business for today’s ears. Still, we cannot back down from it. It is not simply a potentially useful metaphor for God; it is essential to God himself, part of his very name.
To receive this in a fresh way, let’s start with all this business of flesh and spirit that Romans 8 also offers. Paul says, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Jesus says the same thing his own way in John 3:8: “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Further connecting both Romans and John on this point is their agreement that what we are talking about when we distinguish flesh and spirit has to do with birth (or better, rebirth).
It turns out that yes, God is our creator, but God is not actually our father—not when we come into this world. As soon as we come into this world, we are kidnapped by a fake father. To “live according to the flesh” is not about material life—eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on. Flesh means rather that which is opposed to God. Flesh means to have the wrong father. As Jesus says, “you are children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil he does” (John 8:44).
If flesh is whatever is opposed to God, Spirit is its opposite. Spirit is whatever pleases God. But this is not a challenge laid before you to somehow find your way out of the life of flesh to a life in the Spirit. When Paul writes, “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body,” he is not telling you how you must behave to be considered living “by the Spirit.” Rather, through your rebirth in baptism, you are already in the Spirit (see v 9); he is simply stating truths about your life in the Spirit.
The fundamental problem we humans have, though, is not just that we are born into flesh, into the arms of this evil father. The problem is that flesh gives birth to flesh. We have absolutely no way out, no escape hatch, no pressure valve. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). You cannot accomplish what you are literally incapable of. And it leads nowhere good. If you live according to the flesh, you will die.
This is why the truest way to speak of salvation is as rebirth or adoption. We must be born again. All flesh can create is more flesh. And as flesh, you are so tortured and lost that you try to bend God’s promise into something that you are supposed to do. It comes out in Nicodemus’ dumb question: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4). The answer is: no, of course not. But even if you could, that would only lead to more flesh, more piling on of sin, because you’d still be a child of the wrong parents.
Instead, God must decide to take charge and become not just your creator but your Father. He must become to you a being who is not wrathful but gracious, who is not demanding but giving, who is not abusive but consoling, who is not deceitful but faithful. He must become for you a being who does not withhold good things but gladly gives what you ask.
This is where the Spirit comes in. From bow to stern, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. First, he sends you a preacher. Then he gives the preacher a promise to speak, the promise that God did not just “love the world,” but loved you, so much that he sent his Son into the world to save you. The Holy Spirit flies upon words such as these, causing you to believe them, even though you don’t want to—after all, you like your life in the flesh and want to keep it!
And the Holy Spirit is not done there. He not only saves you; he keeps you until the end. And in the meantime, he assures you that you have indeed been born again, that you have been given a new and purely good Father. And it is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
Trust me, you want this Father. And not just because he gives you good things. You want this Father because we know how this Father treats his Son—he raises him from the dead to eternal life. And so he will do, for you, his child.
[1] See Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2022), Chap. 3.
