God the Father

Introduction

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.

The Baptist Faith and Message, Article 2A

How important is it that we would understand that God is our Father?

Well—listen to how Martin Lloyd Jones put it:

The Christian gospel does not start with the Lord Jesus Christ, it starts with God the Father. The Bible starts with God the Father always, everywhere and we must do the same—because that is the order in the blessed Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Saved in Eternity, 42

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

God the Father is the first Person of the Trinity.

God is a Father. The greatest Father.

And God the Father has chosen to relate to us in a fatherly way.

Psalm 103:13 ESV

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

This is where the Bible begins:

“In the beginning God...”

This is where the Gospel begins:

“For God so loved the world...”

And the Baptist Faith and Message begins as it discusses the Persons of the Trinity.

We will break down our study of Article 2A like this:

1. The Providence of God the Father.

2. The Attributes of God the Father.

3. Man’s Relationship to God the Father.

1. The Providence of God the Father

There is a difference between sovereignty and providence.

Sovereignty explains God’s kingly right to rule all of creation.

Providence explains that God has a purpose in everything that He does as the Ruler over Creation.

Providence comes from the word “provide.”

pro (on behalf of)

vide (To see)

We know that provide means to “supply what is needed.”

To be able to see and foresee needs and to act to fulfill those needs.

Understanding this, John Piper, defines providence like this:

So in reference to God, the noun providence, has come to mean, “the act of purposefully providing for, or sustaining and governing, the world.”

John Piper

Providence is most associated with God the Father, as opposed to God the Son or God the Spirit.

Providence includes God’s care of the whole creation.

However, the providence of God the Father is especially focused on human beings.

And the entire flow of human history has been according to the providence of God the Father.

There are a few ways in which God makes His providence known.

1. God’s providence is seen in His care and protection.

This is evident in the natural world.

God has given human an Earth to live on that has things like water and a breathable atmosphere.

God has given us a world with gravity and natural laws that sustain life.

He has put a natural order in the world.

Despite what some Darwinists made try to say, this world is not one of blind, pitiless indifference.

It is not ruled by randomness and blind chance.

God providentially orders and sustains the world around us.

2. God’s providence is seen in the moral structure of the universe.

There is a universal structure of cause and effect that exists in creation.

A moral structure of cause and effect.

Obedience leads to life.

Sin leads to destruction.

Moses presents this to the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Deuteronomy 30:19–20 ESV

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Loving God and obeying Him = Life

Rejecting Him = Death and Curses

This is the providentially ordered morality of God’s creation

Paul gives us a similar understanding in the New Testament:

Galatians 6:7–9 ESV

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Sow to the flesh = Corruption

Sow to the Spirit = Eternal Life

Some people look at the world and call this “karma.”

And they see what they call “karmic laws” at work and go, “See—see! Karma is real.”

In truth, they are mistaking God’s structured moral order that He has providentially put in place with Atheistic New Age mysticism.

They think the “Universe” is seeing to it that karma is enforced, when it is actually God’s providence that sees to it that a man will reap what he sows.

And within this moral structure, God’s governance does not take a back seat to man’s decision-making.

Remember what Article 2 said last week:

and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.

Baptist Faith and Message, Article II

And again tonight in 2A:

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

Baptist Faith and Message, Article 2A

You can see that God is sovereign with perfect knowledge over the free decisions of humanity and those decisions do not overrule or override His providential governing according to the purposes of His grace.

This is maybe best illustrated in the life of Joseph.

His brothers used their free agency to sell him into slavery.

They planned evil for him.

But God’s plan would not be overruled:

Genesis 50:20–21 ESV

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

3. God’s providence is seen in His provision.

God provides for creation and those who live in it.

For the animals:

Psalm 147:9 ESV

He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that cry.

For all the people of the Earth:

Matthew 5:45 ESV

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

God will grow the farm for the believer and the unbeliever.

The righteous and the wicked.

And then God especially provides for His children.

Like the moral structure of the Universe, we can see this in the OT and NT.

Think about Elijah in 1 Kings 19.

After the dramatic defeat of the prophets of Baal, the prophet is on the run from Jezebel.

Elijah sits under a broom tree and he is afraid and ready to die. He even prays for God to take him.

And then listen to what happens as he lays down:

1 Kings 19:5–7 ESV

And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.”

Elijah experienced the fatherly provision of God the Father.

And in the NT, Jesus makes promises regarding that provision to His followers:

First of all, in the Lord’s Prayer, He teaches us to address God as Father:

Matthew 6:9 ESV

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

And then, after praying for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done, He calls us to ask God for daily provision:

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Give us this day our daily bread,

Our Baptist forefather John Broadus said this about that portion of the Lord’s Prayer:

Bread naturally represents food in general, and all that is necessary to support life, of which bread is commonly esteemed the most important and indispensable part.

John Broadus

God gives us what we need to have our life supported, until the day comes when our numbered days come to their end, and our life comes to a close.

And that is not all Jesus has to say in the Sermon on the Mount about God’s providential provision.

Matthew 6:25 ESV

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

This is an argument by Jesus from the greater to the lesser:

Life is more than food.

The body is more than clothing.

If God has given you life and a body (greater things)—surely He will give you food and clothing (lesser things).

Then Jesus flips it and makes an argument from the lesser to the greater in v. 26-32:

Matthew 6:26–32 ESV

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

God feeds the birds of the air.

God clothes the flowers of the field.

If God provides for these lesser things—birds and wildflowers—won’t He provide for you—His children!

Believing these things are true, we are then freed up to seek His Kingdom first, believing all these things will be added to us.

We are free to NOT be anxious about tomorrow.

Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Concluding Providence

So this is God’s providence.

It is seen in His care and protection.

It is seen in the moral structure of the universe.

It is seen in God’s provision.

Knowing that God is providentially unfolding the purposes of His grace in our world, we are able to confidently pray to Him and trust in Him.

2. The Attributes of God the Father.

We talked about God’s attributes a couple of weeks ago as we looked at the doctrine of God proper in the beginning of Article II.

But this focuses more on the attributes most associated with God the Father.

I want to be careful that we would not think that the Father possesses these Attributes, but the Son and the Spirit do not.

And I want to be careful that we do not think that the Son and the Spirit possess these attributes less than God the Father.

If you’ll recall, the Triune God is without division of nature, essence or being.

However, the Persons of the Trinity do have distinct roles they play in relationship to God’s people and these attributes would be most often associated with the Father.

1. God the Father is all-powerful.

To say that God the Father is all-powerful is to say that He is not limited in any way.

He is Almighty.

In the Old Testament, God reveals Himself by a name that shows he is all-powerful:

Genesis 17:1 ESV

When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless,

“God Almighty” is translated from El Shaddai.

El Shaddai is the source of everything, which means there is no power or powers that did not come from Him.

And since He is superior to all powers, there is no power that can thwart His plans or frustrate His will or force His hand.

This should be a doctrine of comfort to God’s people.

A source of security.

No one can defeat God or stump His purposes.

What He sets out to do, He does.

No power in heaven or on earth can withstand Him.

Daniel 4:35 ESV

all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

It is this God who says that He is working all things together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.

No one and no thing will be able to stop that work from being completed.

And then, at the end of time, we will join in singing this chorus:

Revelation 19:6 ESV

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

2. God the Father is all-knowing.

The Father knows all things past, present and future.

God has never learned a thing because He has never needed to learn a thing.

There is nothing excluded from His knowledge.

This includes our decisions and our thoughts that come before and after our decisions.

I often encourage our church members to pray to God honestly, since He knows their thoughts before they even have them anyways.

There is no hiding from His knowledge.

Psalm 139:1–6 ESV

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

And yet, the fact that God knows our thoughts and decisions before we even make them does not take away the reality of human responsibility.

Whenever you think that there is some contradiction between God’s perfect knowledge and human responsibility, the problem is simply that you don’t have perfect knowledge.

We are finite and as the Psalmist said, “Such knowledge is too wonderful,” for us.

The fact that God knows all things also does not mean that he necessarily causes them to happen.

God’s omniscience does mean that God directly causes all events.

In some cases He does and in some cases He allows things to happen.

But the Father’s omniscience does mean that He has foreknowledge.

He intimately knows the future perfectly.

Herschel Hobbs, one of the great Southern Baptist leaders of the 1900s, said it this way:

The foreknowledge of God is based upon His omniscience, or all knowledge. Since the Bible views God as present at all times and all places contemporaneously in His universe, He knows all things simultaneously. Thus He foreknows all things before they occur.

Herschel Hobbs

Again, this does not mean that humans bear no moral responsibility or have no freedom.

Instead, we have to see these two things as compatible in God’s divine wisdom.

Hobbs goes on to say:

The Bible does not try to harmonize God’s sovereignty and man’s free will with respect to His foreknowledge. It assumes them both to be true. This is a mystery to our finite minds but not to the infinite mind of an omniscient God.

Herschel Hobbs

One of the places we best see the compatibility between man’s will and God’s perfect foreknowledge is in Acts 2, as Peter preaches about the crucifixion:

Acts 2:22–23 ESV

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Jesus was delivered into the hands of the Romans by the plan and foreknowledge of God...

And yet He is also crucified and killed by Jews and Romans, who worked in tandem by their own agency.

3. God the Father is all-loving.

The Bible is clear and simple about this:

1 John 4:8 ESV

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love.

God is love because He has a self-giving nature, which He demonstrates by handing out countless acts of mercy every single day.

God is love because He is slow to anger and filled with compassion.

But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that God has the same type of love as us and He is just better at giving it out.

His love is not just a larger and more powerful version our love.

Instead, our love is an imperfect reflection of His love.

God’s love is transcendent—above and beyond ours.

And the reason we can state this in this way is because God’s love is based on God’s character.

Since God is constantly and perfectly holy, God’s love is constantly pure and perfect.

Since God is constantly and perfectly all-powerful, His love is constantly perfect and incapable of failing.

Psalm 33:5 ESV

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Human love often has mixed motives and uncertainties.

It is filled with hesitation and self-seeking.

God’s love is not this way.

It is a completely and totally perfect fatherly love.

Sometimes people struggle with the idea of God as Father because they had an earthly dad who struggled to love them well.

I would encourage you to have just the opposite reaction to God as Father.

His love gives you the opportunity to experience what you maybe experienced rarely or not at all from your imperfect earthly father.

Your heavenly Father has a perfect love for you.

Of course, there is no greater example of God’s perfect love than the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It shows us that God’s love is a redeeming love.

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

There is a reason that these are two verses we often share when evangelizing unbelievers.

We share them because we want the lost man to know the perfect love of the Father displayed in the giving of the Son.

See that Christ has been given to die and rise again for our sin and to conquer our death, should keep us from seeing God’s love as pure sentimentality.

His love is a costly love that is willing to sacrifice His one and only Son for His one and only people.

This is the steadfast character of God.

The reality of the Cross should keep us from questioning the purity of God’s love.

And yet the Cross also shows us that God’s love is not a love without standards.

For at Calvary, God executed perfect justice as He poured His wrath upon the Son instead of us.

We can see that our God of love hates sin and brings punishment upon it, when we see the slain Man of Sorrows dying in our place.

God’s love is accompanied by holiness and justice.

The Cross proves this as well.

4. God the Father is all-wise.

God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and finally all-wise. This is the final attribute that the Faith and Message mentions in connection with the Father.

Some may think that saying God is all-wise is just the same as saying He is all-knowing, but that is not the case.

Paul’s doxology in Romans 11:33 separates them:

Romans 11:33 ESV

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

The reason is that wisdom exceeds knowledge.

Knowledge is awesome, but knowledge without wisdom is just facts unapplied.

Wisdom is knowledge rightly applied.

Wisdom orders knowledge rightly.

Wisdom understands the meaning and significance of the facts and arranges life in accordance.

In saying that God is all-wise, we are highlighting something about God morally.

It is not just that He has perfect understanding.

He takes that understanding and acts rightly every time, all the time.

He perfectly knows and understands Himself and all that He has made and all that is occurring and God acts rightly within that context.

We may not always understand why He acts in His wisdom in the ways He does, but His wisdom is indeed perfect.

And if we had His perfect wisdom and nature, we would never question or disagree with His actions.

3. Man’s Relationship to God as Father.

Lastly, we have man’s relationship to God as Father.

The end of Article 2A highlights the two relationships that everyone on earth has with God.

Some people have experienced both and some have only experienced one.

1. God is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.

We cannot say that God is a Father to everyone in the sense that all people are in God’s household by faith.

However, we can say that God is fatherly toward all men and women on the earth.

If you have been made in the image of God, there is a sense in which God is a Father to you.

This is a common grace.

God has a common love for all humans.

This is why they have air to breathe.

This is why they have any good in their lives.

This is why they have any food on their tables.

This is why they have moral restraints upon, given by God, to keep them from ripping one another apart.

Restraints like the conscience, the family and the government.

But this is not a covenant fatherly love.

It is a general fatherly love.

God has a covenant fatherly love for those in His household.

2. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

God’s covenant love is reserved for those belong to Him through faith in Christ.

They are adopted into His family. They are called His children.

They are given the Father’s ear.

Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8:15-17

Romans 8:15–17 ESV

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

When a person becomes a Christian, there are some things that happen.

First of all, the Spirit makes the heart alive. He regenerates the dead heart and gives it spiritual life.

Titus 3:5 ESV

he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,

Secondly, they place their faith in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

Upon believing, they receive the gift of their sin being taken away and they are given the righteousness of Jesus, the Son, in return.

They are reconciled to God, as a lost son to a compassionate Father.

And now, they are not only reconciled to the Father, but by faith they are united to the Son.

And the Father promises that those united to His Son will receive His Son’s inheritance.

Psalm 2:8 ESV

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

The day is coming when this promise will be reality after the Lord’s return.

But even now, through Christ, a redeemed soul is truly a child of God.

Through Christ, a redeemed soul truly has God as Father.

State of Theology

Every two years, Ligonier Ministries conducts what they call “The State of Theology.”

They survey 3000 evangelical adults and ask them about basic Christian beliefs.

It is typically pretty rough to read.

2025 was recently published and here is one of the questions:

Does God love everyone the same way?

94% said YES.

But our Bibles don’t tell that story.

Neither does our confession of faith.

The reality is that God has a special fatherly love that He pours out upon His people.

It was this way in the Old Testament and it is no different in the New.

We should think of God’s love in this way:

Imagine a wonderful father of three children in a small neighborhood.

His three children often play with all the others in the neighborhood.

Go to school with them.

Have them over for birthday parties.

Imagine the wonderful father:

Coaches the neighborhood little league team

Sets up fun days in his yard with water games in the summer

Takes all the neighborhood kids on haybale rides in the Fall with his tractor and trailer

And even drops off Christmas presents at every door

There is a sense in which the whole neighborhood would say, “He is like a father to all the kids around here.”

And yet, we know that the majority of his affection, time and resources will not be spent on the whole neighborhood, but on the three kids of His household.

His unconditional covenant love is reserved for them, even through he is commonly benevolent to the whole neighborhood.

This is an imperfect picture of the way God is with the world and His church.

Conclusion

And so, if you want to know the perfect love of this Father, come to Him by believing in His Son.

If you want His ear, give your heart to His Christ.

If you want God as Father, surrender to Jesus the Son as Lord.