Many confessions of faith attempt to describe God by listing his attributes.
For example, The Westminster Confession describes God thus:
"There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy…"
The Knox Confession is similar:
"We confess and acknowledge one only God, to whom only we must cleave, whom only we must serve, whom only we must worship, and in whom only we must put our trust: who is eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible; one in substance, and yet distinct in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…"
There is nothing wrong with these. I have used these paragraphs in worship. But they do demonstrate the challenge of creatures attempting to describe the Creator. We are finite. God is infinite. We are bound by the limits of our understanding and the limits of language. Both confessions use the word “incomprehensible” in their attempts to make God comprehensible.
We can only attempt to describe God because God has graciously revealed himself to us. The Westminster Confession has a footnote (which I removed for ease of reading) that links each attribute with a verse in Scripture. Nobody would disagree with the descriptors in these lists, but I almost feel like I have less sense of who God is after reading a string of five-dollar words.
I took a six-week course from Jonathan Rogers called “Writing Close to the Earth.” The point of the class was that writers should strive to provide readers with concrete, earthy, tangible descriptions and not abstract ones. Reading a list like “eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, and omnipotent” makes our minds start wandering off into the clouds and our eyes glaze over.
In contrast, when Jesus sticks his fingers into a deaf man’s ears at the end of Mark 7 and spits on his hand and grabs the man’s tongue so that he is able to hear and speak, that is something we can wrap our minds around. In an age before Q-tips and Crest with White Strips, it is kind of gross to imagine Jesus sticking his fingers into a man’s ears or grabbing his tongue, but it is not difficult to picture the scene. This is close to the earth. And as Jesus tells Philip, “whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Or Paul to the Colossians, “for in him (Jesus) the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (1:19).
For all of God’s immeasurability, immensity, and immutability, he is also the God who dirties his divine fingers by sticking them into a deaf man’s ears so he can enjoy, for the first time in his life, the trills and chattering of the Arabian Babblers in the olive trees off the east coast of Galilee.
God the Father
The Apostles’ Creed limits its list of characteristics of God to three - I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.
Father. Almighty. And Maker.
God as father is relational. Personal. Father is a family term.
Human families are complex. Earthly fathers are often terrible - in some cases beyond terrible. Lord, have mercy. I recognize the challenges posed by the word “father.” However, I believe the benefits of the word make it worth keeping.
Luke Timothy Johnson says, “Christians understand God’s fatherhood to be revealed most explicitly and clearly in the person of Jesus. We know God as father because Jesus calls him father, reveals himself as God’s son, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit enables us to share in that filial relationship through adoption.”
In Matthew 6 alone, Jesus refers to God as Father twelve times. Our Father in heaven rewards us for not doing “our piety before others in order to be seen by them” (vs. 1, 4, 6, 18). He knows the deep needs of our hearts before we ask (vs. 8) and the daily necessities we spend so much energy worrying about (vs. 32). When Jesus teaches us to pray, he teaches us to pray to the God who created the universe - the “eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, and omnipotent” God - by addressing him as “Our Father.”
My favorite description of God as Father comes in Matthew 7. Jesus says:
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Your parents may have been awful. Or wonderful. Or likely, somewhere in between. Maybe you deeply feel your own failings as a parent. But you can also imagine what it is like for a father to give good gifts to his son. Jesus invites us to think of God in that way. God is not going to give you a stone or a snake. He feeds the Arabian Babblers. And colors the purple mums on my neighbor’s front porch. Are you not of more value than they? (they, being the Babblers and the mums, not my neighbors)
We don’t always understand the gifts when they come. Loving fathers also correct and discipline and instruct. But the heart of the metaphor is intimacy. God is Fathering us. Maybe it is wrong to even think of it as a metaphor. God is your Father.
J.I. Packer was one of the deep thinkers of the Church in the previous generation. He was British and taught systematic theology and not known to be overly sentimental. But he suggests that the Fatherhood of God is the center of the Christian faith. He wrote:
You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old…is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.
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