The Goodness of God Our Father
We consistently pray to God the Father in Anglican worship. Every Collect of the Week addresses the Father or God; we pray the Lord’s Prayer weekly, sometimes daily, and the eucharistic prayers address the Father. What should we conclude? Apprehending, desiring, and enjoying God the Father is central to the Christian life. The first line of the Lord’s Prayer gives us a starting point and a healing balm for our souls.
When Jesus teaches us to pray, he addresses the Father: “Our Father in heaven.” These words contain multitudes because they come from Christ and communicate the truth about his Father and our Father. In this meditation, we consider three truths that illuminate and heal our hearts, enlivening our prayers and desire for God.
Sponsored
First, the Son and Spirit draw us into the life of the Father through adoption and regeneration. Second, the Father slowly reorders our false images of him so we apprehend his perfect goodness rightly. Finally, the Father’s sovereign rule “in heaven” confronts and heals our self-sufficiency so that we may be joyfully contented in God.
Regenerated by the Father in the Son and Spirit
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prays these words with us. We do not say, “my Father,” “your Father,” or “Father.” We say “our Father.” Instead, we pray these words with the universal church because Jesus prays with us and draws us into his relationship with his Heavenly Father.
Jesus prayed to the Father about this union in John 17:20-21:
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
John 17:20-21
In faith, when we say, “our Father,” Jesus draws us into the very life of God. We abide in Jesus in the Father. As Jesus said in John 15:10,
“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
John 15:10
Adoption Through the Trinity
How can this be so? We must attend to the mystery of our faith: the Trinity. God the Father is the eternal Father of the eternal Son. The Father and Son have always existed together in the communion of the Holy Spirit. This is our God: the Alpha and Omega, the One Lord. The Father loves us so much that he sent his only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit to adopt us and make us new so we can enjoy his love and joy. That is our end goal: to enjoy the joy of the Father.
In the mission of the Son, the love the Son has from the Father becomes the fire, drink, and bountiful inheritance he gives to sinners in need of mercy. Jesus saves, forgives, justifies, brings us to the Father, and makes us children of God through adoption and rebirth. Let’s unpack these two realities.
Paul says in Romans 8:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Romans 8:14-17
In adoption, God transfers us from the family of sin and ungodliness into his family through the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It’s a done deal. You were in that family; now you are in this one. We don’t earn God’s love and cleansing. Our loving Father adopted us in Jesus and the Spirit when we were still sinners. God declares us loved, brings us into his family, gives us new hearts, and makes us lovely.
John says we are born again into communion with God in John 1:12-13:
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the rightto become children of God,who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13
Partakers of the Divine Nature
Through Christ and the Holy Spirit, God makes us reborn, regenerated, and brand new. He makes us Children of God in Christ. All that Jesus has—his goodness, obedience, mercy, joy, and Spirit—he gives to us. For what end are we adopted and reborn? Peter gives a bold answer: so that we may be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). God the Father makes us holy, good, righteous, pure, lovely, and loving in his Son and through his Spirit.
United to Christ, adopted and reborn, Jesus brings us to the bosom of the Father and enfolds us in the Father’s infinitely good love. When we pray these words, we confess our trust in this reality and taste the goodness of our Father, which brings us to the next step: the words “our Father” purify our hearts to desire the Father.
The Beautiful Goodness of the Father
Jesus loves praying with us and leading us to the Father because he wants us to know and experience the Father. We need his prayer because sin and misery cloud our vision of the Father.
The wisdom of James provides light to our sin-sick imaginations.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17
Every good gift. Our existence, bodies, and minds; our families, lives, and vocations; laughter, beauty, creation, the smile of loved ones, good conversation, worship, and praise; the food we have, the things we love—every good gift comes from the Father. If all these things, and more, come from him, imagine how good he is. Our Father is infinitely and completely good!
Every perfect gift. This reminds us of what Jesus says about the Father in Luke 11:13:
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Luke 11:13
The Father gives every good gift, and he gives the perfect gift, his own Son and Spirit, so we can know and love God now and always. In this secure relationship in the Son and Spirit, we receive the Father’s good discipline, which relieves the misery of our sin.
God’s Good Discipline
Unlike parents, even the best parents, God’s discipline is never rageful and is always for our good. Our holy Father makes us holy, lovely, and loving by giving us his goodness. He does not just tell us to be good; he gives us his goodness and makes us good. Every good and perfect gift comes from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the fountain of life, the benevolent, kind, tender, loving, just, and good Father.
But does he change? Does his goodness waver? No. Did you catch what James said? There is no variation or shadow due to change. God the Father is completely and totally good. Words cannot capture his goodness! That is why theologians, pastors, and songwriters keep writing, proclaiming, and praising. There is no end to our Father’s love, mercy, and goodness.
In James, our Father gives a taste of his infinite love and goodness. We will never reach the end of his goodness; that’s why we have all eternity to enjoy our Father. But if you are like me, even as I learn to desire the Father, my heart still struggles to enjoy him. Where the Father is helps us see why.
The Father’s Heavenly Rule Heals Our Pride
Jesus leads us to our Father, unites us with him, and, in the second line, confronts and heals one of the most persistent temptations in the Christian life: self-sufficiency. To receive this healing, we must first understand what “in heaven” means.
Scripture uses “heaven” in three ways: Heaven is God’s infinite, complete, and good life; it is the realm where God reigns with the angels and saints; and it is simply the sky. The first meaning is what is in view here.
“Our Father in Heaven” says that the unchanging Father who gives every good and perfect gift is king. He knows, sees, and rules all in wisdom and goodness. “In heaven” does not mean our Father is distant or “way up there.” It means the opposite. Because our Father is infinite, sovereign, and good, he is truly here and everywhere. When we pray “our Father in heaven,” we should hear, “our Father is perfectly present in his power, goodness, and glory, completely sufficient in everything.” God the Father is the perfectly good Father who gives what he is. He is good, so he is making us good.
Praying “our Father in heaven,” we speak good news! And this good news comes with the healing cut of God’s word. If God is in heaven, it means I am on earth. I am not in control. I am not self-sufficient.
The Answer to Self-Sufficiency
Self-sufficiency, from rejecting God’s clear teaching to acting as if we know best, declares that we are in heaven. It acts as if we are God, living not with the grain of reality but the grain of sin and death. It can even come from good desires: we want good things done, people saved, churches built, kingdom work accomplished. We want it now, on our timetable, in our power. Paul calls this the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19). It might bear short-term fruit, but that fruit will end up rotten.
Our Loving Father makes us holy, so he trains us to say “no” to our self-sufficiency when we pray “in heaven.” Jesus patiently prays this prayer with us to heal our pride, reveal reality, and offer something better: we are not in control, but our good Father is.
“Our Father in Heaven” teaches us that God does not need us to be in control or self-sufficient. He wants us to enjoy him and rest in his eternal Sabbath rest. The infinite fountain of life and goodness is in heaven, governing and guiding all things. We can surrender, rest, and trust in him, not so we can do more, but because God made and remade us to enjoy him.
God is our Father in heaven. That is good news that tunes our hearts to enjoy God. The more we pray these words with hearts filled with faith, the more we experience the joy of our Father in worship and in all of life.
Neverending Joy in Our Father
Jesus prays with us to lead us to the joy of the Father. Our Father in heaven is joy itself. There is nothing better. When we experience his joy, we experience life itself. Every time we pray these words, God invites us to drink from the fountain of life, taste the infinite draught of his love, and share in the radiant splendor of his divine care. So next time we pray to “our Father,” let us abandon our self-sufficiency and joyfully live in and proclaim the goodness of our God and Father.
Image: Photo by whitemay from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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