The great name which characterizes the revelation of God in Christ is "Father." When near, or in, the Garden of Gethsemane the Lord Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and uttered the wonderful prayer recorded in John 17. He said, ”’Father… I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world" (v. 6). We do well then reverently to inquire:What does the name of Father mean?

To begin with, it clearly means relationship. The knowledge of God as Almighty or as Jehovah did not involve this, which doubtless accounts for the way in which unconverted people use such a term as "Almighty God" in speaking of Him and instinctively avoid "Father." In their case the relationship does not exist.

Further, it means relationship of the closest kind. The correlative terms to Father are "children" and "sons," and both of these are used in the New Testament of Christians. The closeness of the relationship is further emphasized by the fact that it is real and vital and not something merely assumed. We are children of God inasmuch as we are born of God (John 1:12,13; 1 John 3:9,10).

But the crowning point in the revelation of God as Father lies in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as incarnate is the Son. He was ever "the Son" as the Second Person of the Trinity, but we refer to the place He took in manhood here (see Luke 1:35; Gal. 4:4). Hence in His advent there was the full setting forth of all that God is as Father in connection with all that He Himself is as Son; and the light in which we know God is as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 1:3).

Much depends upon this, and we urge the reader to ponder it prayerfully until he makes it his own. Our tendency is to connect God’s Fatherhood merely with ourselves, with the result that we lower it until it becomes to our minds just a matter of the fatherly care that gives us food and raiment and the mercies of this life. All these things are indeed ours from our Father’s hand, but the Father’s thoughts and the Father’s love soar infinitely beyond them.

Connect God’s Fatherhood with Christ the Son_who is the worthy object of His love, and in whom a perfect response is given_and at once you have the key that opens the subject in its fulness. That is the standard! There you see the revelation in its perfection! We are indeed sons of God with "the Spirit of His Son" in our hearts "crying Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6); but sonship is only ours as the fruit of God’s Son being revealed and redemption accomplished (Gal. 4:4,5). Only thus was that wonderful message made possible:"I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God" (John 20:17).

(From Foundations.)