IS GOD REALLY "OUR FATHER?"

While listening to Pastor Brian's sermon on the Lord's (model) Prayer, I began noticing the many times phrases like "thy Father," or "your Father," surrounded the example of how to pray.  Within the same chapter of Matthew, they occur nine verses (6:1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 32)!  So I began wondering what His audience thought when Jesus kept referring to God as their Father.  Was it a new concept to them? 

The answer is no.  In Psalm 68:5, He declares Himself to be "A Father of the fatherless."  Isaiah wrote of God:  "Doubtless Thou art our Father" (Isa. 63:16), and "But now, O LORD, Thou art our Father" (64:8).  As one writer pointed out, some Old Testament names mean God is Father:

"Some attention is given to certain theophoric names that exemplify the metaphor of fatherhood in the OT such as: Abiel = God is my father (1 Sam 9:1); Eliab = My God is father (1 Sam 16:6); Joab = Yahweh is father (2 Sam 8:16); Abijah = Yahweh is my father (2 Chron 29:1); Abimelech = My father is king (Judg 9:1) — Wright says that: “[t]he common occurrence of these names shows that the idea of God, or Yahweh, as father was well known and accepted." [Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament, by Christopher J. H. Wright, p. 24].

However, the Jewish concept of God as Father had to do with Him being their Creator, and in that sense, He was Father to all mankind.  Malachi wrote, "Have we not all one Father?  Hath not one God created us?" (2:10).  And it is this sense, that Jesus repeatedly spoke of God as "Father."  Of course, Christians know that God is the Father of Jesus, but as He is God's only begotten Son, He was not referring to the Jews as having the same relationship that He had with God. 

So the question that dominates our thoughts is, What do we, as Christians, mean when we call God our Father?  The answer is found in John 1:11-13:

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.  But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name:  which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

Born again believers, those who are the children of God Almighty, are those persons who have received the Lord Jesus, and His free gift of salvation (Jn. 1:12; Rom. 10:8-17; Eph. 2:8-9; etc.)!

If Jesus is your Lord, you have every right to call God "Father!"