Baptist Faith and Message 2000 AII.A

A. God the Father

God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.

Preface

Whenever we focus on any one Person of the Godhead, we must keep in mind these three important doctrines:

The Simplicity of God: God is not the composite of parts and that whatever each Person is singly, the whole Trinity is together.

The Unity of the Divine Will: Though God exists in three Persons, the Triune God does not have three separate wills.

A necessary doctrine if the three Persons share the same nature, since the “will” is a property of nature, not of persons.

The Inseparable Operations of the Trinity: The external works of the Trinity are indivisible. Each Person is operative in all God’s external works.

Studying the Divine Attributes

A benefit of knowing the divine attributes is that we can better know who God is and how we relate to Him.

Some things to keep in mind:

We must be careful not to consider God as somehow dissectible when using the terminology attribution. God is a living, unified, and holistic Being and not loosely connected categories.

Our knowledge of God is a gift and we must not assume that our knowledge of Him is perfect. He is perfect and humans are not.

As we consider these divine attributes, we must be careful not to distinguish divine revelation from human speculation. The BFM limits itself to the nature of God found in Scripture and not abstract philosophical definitions.

“I Am”

Exodus 3:13–15 “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

“I Am who I Am”

Before you worry about my name, understand my being.

Apart from anything else, He is.

“I Am has sent me to you”

God is bridging His being and His name.

The one who is has sent you.

“The Lord”

Hebrew: “Yahweh”

“LORD” in most modern English translations.

YHWH - Tetragrammaton

What should we gather from the “I Am”

God is absolute and eternal. No beginning or end.

God is absolute reality. No reality exists outside of Him.

Everything depends totally on God and is nothing apart from Him.

God is the absolute standard of truth.

God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace.

Have you ever thought about what it means for God to be a Father?

God the Father: Creator

Psalm 104:24 “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”

Providential - Divine intervention. God did not step back and allow things to run its course. He upholds and commands creations every move.

Gnostics - believe the physical world is bad and the spirit world is good.

Epicureans and Stoics believe the divine, if there is one, believe He does not participate anymore.

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

There was a time when it was only God. Nothing else existing besides the triune God.

Self-sufficient, self-contained, self-satisfied.

Creation is the willed existence of all that is.

Genesis 2:7 “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

Man is fully reliant on God for life.

Acts 17:25 “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

Acts 17:28 “for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”

Godliness starts here, with God the sovereign Creator as the first focus of our thoughts.

God the Father: Redeemer

The Father’s plan of salvation for His people was laid from eternity past and carried out by His Son.

Doctrine of Adoption - As those who have put their faith in Jesus, we have the ability to cry out to God as Father through the indwelling of the Spirit and redemptive work of the Son.

Galatians 4:4–8 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.”

John 20:17 “Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ 

According to the Purposes of His Grace

Nothing happens apart from His will

Prescriptive “Revealed” Will - What God has given to us to know; His Commands and Prohibitions

Decretive “Secret” Will - That which He ordains to happen; Salvation of mankind for the glory of His name.

Isaiah 46:10 “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’”

God’s providence over His creation is ruled with wise and powerful Sovereignty.

All-Powerful

God’s Omnipotence - “The power to do everything that in His rational and moral perfection God wills to do it.

Job 42:2 “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

Romans 1:20 “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

God’s omnipotence does not mean He can lie, change His nature, deny the demands of His holy character, or cease being God. But all that He wills and promises, he can and will do.

All-Knowing

God’s Omniscience - “knowing everything”

Proverbs 15:3 “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.”

He knows everything about everything and everybody at all times. Past, Present, and Future

He does not have to “access” information about things.

Matthew 6:32 “For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”

As Christians, we can rest in the assurance that God has not forgotten us and are being cared for according to His promises.

All Loving

1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

He is the source of all love, and He is the end of all love.

1 John 4:7 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

Whether through our creation or redemption, everything that we have is due to divine grace, and divine grace is motivated by divine love.

All Wise

Isaiah 40:28 “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”

Knowledge presumes the awareness of facts and wisdom entails the utilization of those facts.

Knowledge is recognizing that there is a creator and wisdom is worshipping that Creator.

Isaiah 55:8–9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

1 Corinthians 1:23–24 “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Wisdom is entirely rooted in God’s character and He has demonstrated that supremely in the death and resurrection of Christ.

So my question to you is: Knowing that God is our Father through the redemptive work of Christ, how does this cause us to love Him more?

Genesis 1:3 “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”

1 John 4:7–8 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”