God the Father

Last week I introduced a new mini-series in the Apostle’s Creed. This ancient statement of faith serves as a guide for what all Christians should profess. It is a very useful creed to memorize, and so, throughout this study, we are going to recite it together, so let’s do that now.

I stated last week that the Apostle’s Creed is structured around the Trinity. You’ll notice that each person of the Trinity shows up as a major clause of the Creed: “I believe in God the Father… and in Jesus Christ his only Son… I believe in the Holy Spirit.” But, it doesn’t just simply state belief in each person of the Trinity. It also provides what we should believe about them. Each section states the major works of each person of the Trinity. We see God as Father, Almighty, and Creator. We see the Son in his incarnation, obedience, sacrificial death, resurrection, and ascension. We see the Spirit in his empowering works of calling out the church, sanctifying and ultimately glorifying us. 

So, as we get into the meat of this creed, we start with the confession that we believe in God the Father. I think, because we are taught to pray to the Father and because Jesus uses “Father” to speak personally of God, we might just assume that Father is the name of God. However, Father is not his name but rather a recognition of his character. To put it simply, the God of the universe is a personal, spiritual being who acts in love, grace, and discipline towards his creation. It’s worth noting that the creed begins by stating belief in God as Father. This is significant because it serves to distinguish the true God from all other false gods. To understand this, I want to look at what we do not mean when we profess God as Father, and then what we do mean.

First, by confessing God as Father, we are rejecting the idea that God (or rather the concept of God) is a figment of human imagination. There exists, in our society, a strong current pulling us towards a false religion. This false religion worships the gods of Chaos and Chance. Its high priests are called scientists, and its Holy Scripture is Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. This religion is called Scientism. In speaking of this religion, I want to be clear that I fully support the pursuit of knowledge through the discipline of science. I am, after all, an engineer, and my study required a great deal of science. Yet, science is only useful for the exploration of the material world. Science is based on what we can experience through our five senses. But, Scientism is something very different from science. It is the belief that all truth can be known through Scientific discovery. It is the belief, based on that assumption, that nothing exists outside of the material universe, and therefore everything can be explained through natural, material processes. So, this false religion would say that other religions and a belief in God evolved within humanity out of a necessity for a common moral framework. However, those who would claim this can’t point to a single culture that does not have robust religious beliefs. They cannot point to a moment in time in which societies had no religion.

Besides that, scientism fails to explain the entirety of reality. Certainly, many things can be explained by natural, material processes, but many cannot. How does one measure Love? What chemical process motivates sacrifice? What natural law justifies morality? If this world is only atoms and chemicals and hormones and flesh and blood, how are we to ultimately distinguish between right and wrong? If the greatest law of the universe is “Survival of the Fittest”, what makes murder and rape and thievery wrong? Why would we view self-sacrifice and care for the poor to be good?

The Bible speaks against this false religion of Scientism. Look with me at Psalm 14:1. Here, David says that the person who would reject the reality of God is a fool. To be a fool, in Biblical terms, is to be one who does not understand the world. Isn’t that ironic?! Those who claim to be the truly enlightened ones of our age, who claim to understand the universe in its fulness, are the ones who understand it the least because they reject the knowledge of God. And, notice that there is a consequence to this foolishness: “they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds”. A rejection of the reality of God leads to corruption and abomination. If there is no God, there is no ultimate judge, there is no law giver. And, if there is no judge and law giver, there is no good reason to live a moral life. There is no common morality. And, thus you have the current state of our society, in which no one can agree on a common set of values. We can’t even define the most basic elements of a society: gender, marriage, and family.

Second, the creed rejects the belief that God is bound by his creation. Most people in this world are “spiritual” in one way or another, though they still deny the God of the Bible. Many believe in some form of paganism – whether it be a belief in animism, witchcraft, or polytheism. These beliefs all share a common element: God is contained within his creation, or the creation is contained within God. So, animists worship trees and stones because God is contained there, or pagans make idols to commune with their gods. But, the true God is not contained by this world. In 1 Kings 8:27, Solomon confesses, “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you.” God is Spirit, which means he is not made of the stuff of this world. God is not defined by this world, but rather he creates and defines all things.

Third, our creed rejects the idea that God is an impersonal force. Many people treat God, either implicitly or explicitly, as an impersonal force. The ancient Greek philosophers viewed God as the great “unmoved mover”, a force that draws all of the universe to itself. Islam teaches that God has no personal interest in this world – he gives his law and stands as judge, but he cannot show love and grace. Many Americans implicitly treat God like he is some sort of mathematical formula: “If you put good things in, you get good things back.”

Instead of professing that God is a figment or an idol or an immovable force, the Apostle’s Creed means two things by professing that God is Father. First, it means that he is a personal being. When we obey God, we are not applying a variable into the cosmic formula. When we pray to God, we are not appeasing an idol, trying to wake him up and get his attention. We are interacting with a real person who thinks, wills, loves, and delights.

Second, the creed means that God is fatherly towards his creation. In saying God is fatherly, we don’t mean that he literally fathered the human race, as the Mormons believe. We also don’t mean that he literally fathered Jesus, as the Muslims think we believe. To understand what we mean, consider Acts 17:24-28. In this passage, there are three characteristics of fatherhood that are attributed to God. First, in verse 24, Paul distinguishes the true God from the false gods of the Greeks by saying that he is the God who made all things. It is a fatherly characteristic to create life, and God is the author of all life.

Second, in verse 25, Paul says that this creator God gives life and everything to all mankind. God is the sustainer and provider for all of creation. Like a father who cares well for his family by working and providing, so God acts in a fatherly way towards his creation to provide all things. As Jesus says in Luke 12:24, “Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, and yet God feeds them.”

Lastly, in verse 27 we find that God is gracious to mankind. Paul says that he puts every man in his time and place so that he might seek him, though he is not far from any one of us. God loves humanity, and he has created us for relationship with him. He puts each one of us in our time and place so that we might fellowship with him. Just think about that! There are over seven billion people on this planet, with that many unique personalities and life situations. Yet, the Father is the infinite personal God who has made each one for himself.

Friend, God has made you for himself. He has made you that you might walk in fellowship with him. Yet, that fellowship has been broken by sin. God in his love and grace has provided a sacrifice for your sins through his Son, Jesus Christ. Won’t you turn to faith in him today?

Brothers and sisters, we serve a personal, loving, gracious God who walks with us as our heavenly Father. We are called to fellowship with him. May we leave this place and walk in fellowship with the God who made us, sustains us, and pursues us.