What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

God the Father

The Father

God, the Father. How do I describe all, or even some, of the characteristics of Father that are found in God? Especially in just one blog? I finally realized I can’t. I can’t even begin to touch on some of the most important aspect of His Fatherhood. So I decided to break the topic up into sub-topics. Next week I am going to explore three aspect of the Father: His pardon, His protection and His provision. Today, I’m going to explore the Father nature of God in general. What do we mean when we call God, “Father”?

Words are a funny thing. In the Creed, we refer to God as Father. In our culture, that is a very formal word. It describes a very formal relationship. I don’t have that kind of relationship with my earthly father. He’s my dad. Sometimes, when times are tough, he’s my daddy. He loves me. When I was little, I would crawl into his lap and with the total trust of a child, I would fall asleep in his arms. I can do that with my daddy. Somehow I can’t picture myself doing that with my father. I think that’s because I don’t just know my dad loves me. I know he likes me, too. He likes the person I am, and the person I am becoming.

We have a hard seeing God like that. We desperately want to know God the Father loves us. So we run around like crazy trying to make him love us. If we could just save the world for God, he would like us. But we aren’t called to save the world. We’re called to impact our little corner of it. What we are really yearning for with all of our frenetic activity is to know God isn’t just our Father; he’s our Daddy, too. We want that close, intimate relationship with him. We want to crawl up on his lap and have him wrap his arms around us and hold us until we fall asleep like our daddy did when we were little. We want to know, really know, that he not only loves us, but that he likes us, too.

God knows we have that need. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NABRE) He doesn’t just love us. He likes us. You don’t send your son to die for someone you don’t like. God doesn’t feel love like we do. God is love. And being love, he doesn’t separate loving someone and liking someone. He can’t.

There is nothing you can ever do that will make God love you less or like you less. There is also nothing you can ever do that will make God love you more or like you more. His love is complete, now and always.

In our culture, Father is a very formal word describing a very formal relationship. Maybe we need to stop thinking of God just as Father. Maybe, God the Father would like us to crawl in his lap from time to time and let him love us as Daddy.