We Believe: The Father, The Almighty
The Nicene Creed is, or should be, a familiar friend to us. The Creed is our regular and constant companion as the normative creed professed during Holy Communion. We begin by professing that we “believe in one God,” as do many other religions and spiritualities. In the words of St. James, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19). However, the deceived religions of the world and the spiritualities of post-modern Westerners’ fancies “ignorantly worship” as “the unknown God,” the One whom Christians declare to others because he has revealed himself to us. (Acts 17:23, KJV).
This is not presumptuous; it is grace. God graciously reveals himself and does so by revealing himself in the first person of the Divine and Holy Trinity, the Father. The introduction we receive to the Father does not focus on his otherness. Instead, the Creed notably begins not with the almightiness of God, which we will discuss momentarily, but starts with the familiar image of the Father. In this evil age, many sermons would assert how God is not like the sinful, failed, or absent fathers of this world. Sadly, we live in a time when fatherhood often signifies an absent man or, worse, an abusive dad. Remove the sinful perversion of fatherhood that you may have encountered and lay it at Christ’s cross. Journey with me and meet your real Father.
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Children of God
Perhaps, you have grown up hearing “We are all God’s children.” A noble intent but an incorrect twisting of the truth. For unless the Son of God clothes us and we cling to Him alone, the best we can muster are the words of Malachi, “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (Malachi 2:10, KJV).
Ah, but hope is not lost, dear sinner. Without skipping too far ahead into who Christ is, we may call God “Father” because Jesus’ life, passion, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and our faith in Christ adopt us as sons of the Father. “[B]ut go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17). We know God the Father because God the Son has removed the barrier of sin, death, and Satan separating us, and the Holy Ghost now renders us temples of God. Or as the ACNA’s catechism, To Be a Christian, tells us,
Through faith, repentance, and Baptism we are spiritually united to Jesus and become children of God the Father.
To Be A Christian, pg. 21
This is good news, my friends! Because Christ Jesus tells us, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” (John 10:29, KJV). Therefore, we may boldly go to the throne of grace to petition “Our Father, who art in heaven” because “to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6, KJV).
The Father’s Character
Who is the Father? What is his character? During the daily office, we hear in the traditional and longer absolution the words of 2 Peter 3:9 paraphrased, which promises, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” The Father is gracious; he is patient; he is kind toward our helplessness. The Father is love, “for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” (John 16:27).
A Perfect Father
Unlike God, the dads of the earth (no matter how hard the best ones try) are imperfect sinners. However, our Father is the perfect One and the Holy One, the Almighty. “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). He is the perfect gift giver, for he has broken our chains and set us free forever. No matter who your biological dad may be, you have no father like the Father Almighty, who loves you beyond all measure of comparison and so willingly sent his only begotten Son not to condemn us but to save us (John 3:16). Now those are some comfortable words (pun intended).
While we rejoice and praise the Father for his divine fatherly love for us, repentant sinners, we also need to remember that the Creed reveals to us that he is Almighty. The term ‘Almighty’ is used less frequently as Western Christians attempt to confine the Father to a space of our own making within the household of our hearts. It is tempting and a deceit of the evil one to believe we can fully understand the Father and place him in a box of our own creation within our soul. He is the Father, but he is also Almighty.
God Almighty
God is Almighty; all of heaven, earth, and every square inch (to invoke Abraham Kuyper) of our heart, soul, and mind belong to him. After all, the Summary of the Law reminds us, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (2019 BCP, p. 106). We belong to the Almighty, for he rules over all. Let us not forget, in Holy Communion, right before we hear the Summary of the Law, we pray to “Almighty God.”
And what do we learn in the Collect for Purity? That “to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” (2019 BCP, p. 106). Though we have covered ourselves ever since Adam’s sin in the garden, we remain exposed in the nakedness of our heart’s desires. This is why Cranmer’s reform of the liturgy so beautifully reminds us of our sin, the need for grace, and the means through faith. (See J.I. Packer, The Gospel in the Prayer Book, at p. 4, available at: https://www.ivpress.com/Media/Default/Content-Articles/Packer-Gospel-in-the-Prayer-Book.pdf).
Not a Tame God
God is indeed our Father, and the One whom we can approach “boldly” (Hebrews 4:16). Yet in the spirit of Aslan, although he is God our Father, he is not a tame God. He is Almighty and pure holiness, set apart. As God tells us, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:37). We should ponder what Job heard from the whirlwind of God’s answer, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4).
When we become too proud and forget that God is the One who is in control, we should turn to Job and remember, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” (Job 40:2). Chapters 38 through 41 are worth meditating on when considering God’s Almighty power, sovereignty, and gracious love for us. Christians in the post-modern age easily adopt a clockmaker attitude toward the Father, which the closing chapters of Job cure us of. Otherwise, we risk locking the Father in a box and only taking him out to see his love, without realizing he is sovereign over all and that we should have a reverent fear of him.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9
A Call to Humility
We need to be reminded with humility that mankind is not at the top of the pyramid. God calls us to be stewards of the earth—caretakers; however, the garden belongs to the Almighty, who planted it and raised us up to be his image bearers and his divinely appointed servants of the earth. We serve a master, and not just any master, but the Almighty. We should not presume to know what is best; rather, we should be searching the Scriptures, for the Father knows best. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being,” as St. Paul told the Athenians. (Acts 17:28, KJV).
Paul continues to reveal the Almighty God to Athens and us, explaining that the Father “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26, KJV). While the Almighty overlooked sinful man’s ignorance of him, now he commands “all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.” (Acts 17:30-31, KJV). The Almighty will exercise his godly rule and reign “on earth as it is in heaven.” (The Lord’s Prayer).
The Assurance of God Almighty
The miracle of the cosmos’ existence, the galaxies twirling, and the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly are all perfectly executed by the Almighty’s will. Nothing is left out of his sight. “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14, KJV). “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27, KJV).
Nothing is too hard for the Almighty, for “What is impossible with man is possible for God.” (Luke 18:27). Therefore, take comfort in the assurance that the all-powerful and all-sufficient Existing One, whose Name is I AM, promises, “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:18).
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Additional Resources
To Be A Christian catechism, Questions 38-41, “The Father Almighty”, available for free at (https://anglicanchurch.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/To-Be-a-Christian.pdf) (p. 35-36).
Image: Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Digital Editing by Jacob Davis.
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