Fathers in God's Image
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Good morning, church, and Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there!
Now, many of you have probably figured out by now that I am not a very sentimental person. But today marks the 20th Father’s Day since I lost my father to a heart attack as he walked off the golf course, and he has been on my mind quite a bit in recent weeks and months.
As I was sorting through things at our old house recently, trying to cut down on the stuff that we would transport to our new house only to immediately put into storage, I came across a copy of the eulogy I gave at his funeral.
Most of it was kind of terrible, but I give myself a lot of grace for that, considering that I had written it in my grief the night before his funeral.
But one of the things that struck me as good about what I had written was the theme that I chose, which had to do with some of the important, but unusual, lessons my father taught me — the kinds of lessons that maybe he didn’t even realize he was teaching, but which have been, nonetheless, important to the man I have become.
For our purposes today, I want to skip over the content of the lessons themselves and simply make note of this vital point: Fathers matter for so many reasons, not the least of which is because of what they can teach their children.
My father taught me about integrity. He taught me about steadfastness, which he called “stick-to-it-ness.” He taught me about generosity. He taught me about the value of hard work and the value of a strong work ethic.
To whatever degree I have those traits in myself, much of the credit goes to my father, though I certainly do not mean to slight my mother’s huge influence by saying that.
Today, as I think about my own father, and as we honor fathers everywhere, I want us to take a look at some of the lessons about fatherhood that we can learn from God, our heavenly father, whom Paul described as “the Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.”
We will consider five roles of our Heavenly Father in this study and attempt to see what we can learn about Him and about the roles of earthly fathers in the process.
But first, I want to address the elephant in the room.
Some who are listening to or watching this message today never had the kind of experience that I did of a loving, present father. Some, sadly, have suffered abuse at the hands of their fathers or stepfathers. Some never had a relationship with their fathers at all. Some never had a father who filled the fatherly roles of source, provider and protector.
As I have said before in other contexts, this is not the way it was meant to be.
The reason we have abusive fathers and absent fathers and single mothers and orphans is sin.
When God created Adam and Eve in His image and told them to be fruitful and multiply, His desire for them was that they both represent Him in this world and that they teach their children to represent them in the world.
The fact that they — and we — were created in the image of God meant that they were supposed to image Him — to display His character in the world.
Instead, they rebelled against God, and the world now suffers under the curse of death because of their sin.
We who are descended from them have inherited both their sin nature and their propensity to sin, and so the world that was broken by Adam and Eve continues in its brokenness. Indeed, we add to the brokenness every day in our own sins, our own rebellion against the rightful and righteous King.
God is righteous and just, but He is also merciful and gracious, and in His boundless grace, He determined from eternity to provide a way for us to be reconciled to Him.
He determined that He would provide a way by which mankind could see His very nature through His unique and eternal Son, Jesus Christ, whom Paul described as “the image of the invisible God.”
Jesus came to demonstrate the very character and person of God. He told Philip, the one who asked that Jesus show His disciples the Father, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”
Adam and Eve had been charged with showing the world the Father who had created them, but they failed right out of the gate. Israel was charged with showing the Father who had created that nation, but it failed right out of the gate.
Jesus would come, born as a man, but retaining His God-ness, to do what nobody else had been able to do — to show the world the perfection of His Father.
He said what His Father said. He did what His Father did. He was the perfect imager of holiness, righteousness, love, justice, peace, mercy, and grace.
Of course, we all know how that turned out, as He was crucified by those who did not want to believe in a God of grace and mercy; by those who wanted to put their faith in their own righteousness, instead of His; by those who were unwilling to extend love to their neighbors, much less their enemies; by those who perverted justice by murdering the perfectly innocent God-man in the name of justice.
But Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t simply a murder; it was a sacrifice. Jesus, who said He had the power to lay down His life and take it up again — Jesus, who had the power to call 10,000 angels to save Him — gave Himself as a sacrifice to pay the price for the sins of mankind, for my sins and for yours, so that all could be saved who believe in Him and put their faith in that sacrifice as the only way their broken relationship with the Father could be restored.
As we shall see in a few minutes, this plan, established among the Trinity before the world was created, reveals something wonderful about God — He is a God who redeems and reconciles.
But the point I want to make right now is that if your experience with your earthly father was one of pain or suffering or abuse, or if you never had any experience with your earthly father, you can have a perfect relationship with your perfect heavenly Father through faith in Christ Jesus.
Our Father God is the model to which all fathers should aspire, so I hope this short study will help the fathers in our audience today, and I hope He will be the one to whom we all cry “Abba, Father!”
I mentioned that we’ll talk about five roles of God as our Heavenly Father. Let me state them here and now:
He is the Divine Source of All;
He is the Sovereign Ruler;
He is the Lord Chief Justice;
He is the Compassionate Reconciler;
And He is the One to Whom All Things Return.
Let’s take these one at a time.
Now, there is plenty of evidence in Scripture that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit worked together — as they do in everything — to bring creation to fruition.
But what’s also clear is that this all happened because it was the Father’s will.
John, writing in the Book of Revelation, relates the vision he had of the 24 elders falling down before Him who sits on the throne — that’s God the Father at this point in John’s vision — and casting their crowns before Him and saying:
“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
In his Gospel account, John wrote that Jesus, whom he referred to as the Word, was in the beginning with God and that through the Word — that’s Jesus — all things came into being.
And in the Book of Genesis, we see that the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters at the beginning of creation.
So all three were active in creation, but what we can understand from the passage in Revelation is that all things came into being because God willed that they would do so.
Paul puts it this way in his letter to the church in Ephesus:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
The writer of Hebrews puts it this way:
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
Our Father God is the source of everything that ever has been, everything that is, and everything that ever will be.
Indeed, as we saw earlier that Paul described Him as “the Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.”
For some, He is the prodigal son’s father before that son returned from his life of debauchery and destruction, waiting for them to turn from their sins and return to Him. For others, he is the same father after the son has returned, the father who forgave that son and gave him a robe and a ring and had the fatted calf killed for a grand celebration of the son’s return.
If the son of that parable had not returned, he would never have experienced his father’s grace, nor would he have enjoyed the blessings of his household.
But when we turn to Jesus in faith, then, like the returned prodigal son, we experience both our Father God’s grace and eternal blessings as those who are now adopted as sons and daughters into His household.
Now, there is much that is true of God the Father that can never be true of earthly fathers. He is self-sufficient; they are not. He is perfect; they are not. He knows everything; they do not. He is holy and pure; they are not. He is infallible; every man and woman here (father or not) makes plenty of mistakes.
But there are some parallels that I will point out as we go along, and here I want to point out the parallel of creativity.
As God the Father is infinitely creative, so fathers ought to encourage innovation and creativity within their children. If we are made in the image of a Creator God, then there is a real sense in which we should all be creative in some regard.
Now the second role of God the Father springs out of the first. He is the Sovereign God by virtue of having created everything. It’s all His to do with as He pleases.
The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah both described God as the potter and us as the clay.
In talking about the difficult concept of election, Paul used the same analogy to describe God in the Book of Romans:
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
As the Sovereign Ruler, our Father God "has dominion over all and establishes the purpose and ends for all dimensions of creation” (“The Father Who Draws Near,” J. Scott Horrell, 17).
Even King Nebuchadnezzar recognized God’s sovereignty, though God had to humiliate him in order for the lesson to take.
Walking along the rooftop of his palace in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar reflected on the beauty of that great city, and he said to himself, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”
And then God brought him down a few pegs, and Nebuchadnezzar spent seven years living as a beast in the fields, eating grass, being drenched with the dew and growing his hair and fingers until he looked like a beast.
But at the end of that period, something incredible happens. Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan king, prays one of the most striking prayers in Scripture, and we see the scene described in his own words:
“But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
So even Nebuchadnezzar recognized God’s sovereignty. But this sovereign ruler does two things that are unusual for sovereigns. He allows His subjects to choose whether or not to serve Him, and for those who do, He makes Himself a personal Ruler to the extent that, by His grace and in His love, He allows them to call Him Father.
As the Sovereign Ruler calls for honor and respect, so should earthly fathers. “A child’s disposition of respect and fear of God Himself is often directly related to honor and respect toward parents, even in a broken world” (J. Scott Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 48).
Solomon wrote that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In Scripture, the “fear of the Lord” is related to honor and respect, and the best way to teach your children to fear the Lord is to demonstrate that you honor and respect Him yourself and to require that they honor and respect you.
Now, there are many reasons to honor and respect our Father God — to fear Him — but one of the most obvious is because of His role as Lord Chief Justice.
He is “the Lawgiver who by nature and decree institutes what is right and wrong" (Horrell, :The Father Who Draws Near,” 19).
He is the “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come” of Revelation, chapter 4.
Our Father God is the very source of what is good. He is the very standard for what is right. He demands justice and righteousness from those who are made in His image — and for them.
“As God the Father is profoundly good, so fathers should be persons of goodness, integrity, and uprightness. Goodness is strength. A good dad is one who leads by personal example, even as he seeks purity in the lives of those for whom he is responsible” (Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 48).
There is something remarkable about this role of judge, though. The Father shares this role with His Son, Jesus Christ.
When the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time began persecuting Him for performing miracles on the Sabbath, Jesus raised the ante by calling God His Father, therefore making Himself equal with God.
But then he raised the stakes again by telling them God had given Him the authority of judgment. John records this in the fifth chapter of his Gospel.
“For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.
But then, from the cross, Jesus says something that complicates things.
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
And then, the Book of Revelation describes the ultimate end of those who worship the beast during the Tribulation: They will “drink of the wine of the wrath of God.”
Putting all this together, I think it best to say that the Father God, who is the supreme judge of all, designates His Son, Jesus as the rightful instrument of His wrath against sinners, standing behind the Son with all His authority and judgment.
Jesus talked often about how much the Father loves Him, and John the Baptist confirmed it to his followers when he said:
“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.
This comes right out of the second Psalm, where the psalmist describes God installing His Son as King upon the holy mountain of Zion.
‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
Godly fathers here on earth should reflect this kind of self-giving love, both for their children and for their wives. A godly father will seek to listen to, understand, provide for, and care for his wife and each of his children, just as God has made them.
Sometimes, in the case of children, that care must include discipline. A godly father who loves his children will provide consistent discipline — firm, but not harsh — so that they will learn self-control, a proper response to authority and a trust for God’s discipline in their lives.
And “as God the Father is self-giving toward the Son and toward creation, so fathers should be characterized by generosity and self-sacrifice toward spouses, family, and those around him” (Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 49).
God’s self-giving nature reveals itself in its full glory at the cross where His Son gave His life for the sins of mankind.
The cross demonstrates God’s role as Compassionate Reconciler. This is the Father who loved the world so much that He gave His only Son that all who believe in Him could have eternal life.
The Apostle John wrote: God is love. And God’s love is nowhere more clear than in his work to reconcile sinners to himself. This word “reconcile” means “to make peace, to exchange hostility for friendship” (Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 22), and Jesus Christ’s work on the cross is the vehicle by which we who were enemies of God can now call Him friend, indeed even Father.
All three Persons of the Trinity are involved in salvation, but Scripture is clear that it originates with the Father, who made a way for forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with Him from the foundation of time.
Writing about the Corinthian believers’ new life in Christ in his second letter to that church, Paul put it this way:
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
As Paul suggests in this passage, every Christian should be about the ministry of reconciliation. Godly fathers have a special duty here that’s not always easy as children become teens and teens become adults.
Fathers, if you have been saved by the grace of God, let that grace flow into all your relationships, but especially with your wayward children. Love them with a love that only God’s grace can empower. Pour out God’s grace on them, because it is His grace — not the Law — that can save them.
Now, finally, we come to the final role of our Father God that we will consider today: He is the One to whom all things return.
The Apostle Paul tells us that at the end of time as we know it, God will put all things in subjection to His Son. But then we get a picture of the remarkable self-giving love that exists among the three Persons of the Trinity.
After God has put all of His enemies under the feet of Jesus, and after death is abolished:
then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
Now this isn’t the end in the sense that everything ceases to be at this point. This is the end of history. This is the end of time. From here, we see the creation of new heavens and a new earth and the beginning of the eternal reign of the Father and Son from the New Jerusalem.
But the point is that all things originate with God the Father, and all things will return to Him in the end.
“The Father receives back from the Son what He initiated through the Son at the beginning of creation” (Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 23-24).
All three Persons of the Trinity are equal, but there seems to be a special way in which they operate through time. There is a certain order to what they do.
“God’s movement is from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit unto his creatures who are called and enabled by grace to ascend in the Spirit and through the Son unto the Father” (Peter Toon, Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity (Wheaton, IL: Bridgepoint, 1996), 236.).
And as God’s trinitarian order reveals the Father leading or initiating action, godly fathers “should lead in a similar way by [promoting] order and loving cooperation in the family. While mutual submission between husband and wife is also commanded, the male’s role in marriage is not passive, but active.” (Horrell, “The Father Who Draws Near,” 48.)
Fatherhood has taken a beating in our culture, and perhaps some of that abuse is deserved as we see so many fathers abdicating their duties to their children and to their children’s mothers.
Our media portrays fathers as lazy, disinterested, dumb, selfish and finally, irrelevant.
But fathers are intensely relevant, and they’re called to be so much more than what the media portrays. They are made in the image of God the Father, and so they are called to reflect His image and His characteristics.
Certainly there are many of God’s characteristics that fathers could never reflect, and I mentioned some of those earlier this morning.
But I want to challenge you today: If you are a father, seek to be a father in the image of God the Father. You have a hard task, an assignment from God Himself, but that assignment is only an interim one:
Reflect God’s character, and point your children to their true and eternal Father, the Divine Source of All, the Sovereign Ruler, the Lord Chief Justice, the Compassionate Reconciler, and Him to Whom All Things Return.
Let’s pray.