What Do You Believe about God the Father? {Lord’s Day 9} BY William Boekestein for Core Christianity
(26) Q. What do you believe when you say, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”?
A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father for the sake of Christ his Son. I trust God so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends upon me in this vale of tears. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.
A 30-year-old musician was driving home from a recording rehearsal. Reflecting on his feelings of loneliness and despondency, he sang these lines to himself: “It’s hard to believe that there’s nobody out there. It’s hard to believe that I’m all alone.” The lyrics became part of a popular song. But the prospect of those lines is terrifying.
Without the biblical doctrine of “God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” we would all have to say, “There’s nobody out there! I’m all alone!” That’s a hard belief.
The Bible teaches us to believe differently. The first article of the Apostles’ Creed affirms that there is a God. We are living in the world that he has made and sustains. And we can know him as a loving Father!
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What Do I Believe about God the Father?
It is possible to become so accustomed to the phrase “God the Father” that we fail to realize how discordant its words are. God is majestic and transcendent. Fathers are familiar and close. So how can God be our Father?
The answer isn’t first about us. Our relation to God doesn’t define or domesticate him. The fatherhood of God isn’t merely a reflection of his function in redemption; fatherhood is his essence. The first person of the Trinity is the “eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” John Calvin asked this question: “Why do you call Him Father? It is with reference to Christ who is His eternal Word, begotten of Him before all time, and being sent into this world was demonstrated and declared to be his Son.” Not as an afterthought but as a consequence, Calvin adds: “But since God is the Father of Jesus Christ, it follows that He is our Father also.”[i] Being bound to Christ by faith puts us in the same special relation as Jesus to God the Father. Not only is there a great somebody out there. But he “is my God and Father for the sake of Christ his Son.”
