5. The Father: A Familiar Word, a Transformed Relationship
The announcement of God's Kingdom raises another question.
What kind of God is this whose reign Jesus announces?
Jesus' answer frequently comes through one of the most familiar words in human language:
Father.
The word itself was not new.
The Hebrew Scriptures could speak of God as Father, particularly in relation to Israel, and Jewish traditions also used paternal language for God. Consequently, it would be historically inaccurate to suggest that Jesus invented the idea of God as Father. The important question is not whether the word was new, but how Jesus used it and what kind of relationship with God he communicated through it.
This distinction is central to the argument of this study.
The word was familiar.
The relationship Jesus communicated through the word was transformative.
From King to Father
The previous section began with the affirmation:
God is already King.
But a kingdom can be imagined primarily in terms of authority.
A king rules.
A subject obeys.
There is distance between sovereign and subject.
Jesus does not abandon the language of God's kingship. Instead, he brings another dimension into view.
The King is also Father.
This changes the way God's reign is understood.
The Kingdom is not simply the territory over which God exercises authority.
It is the household of a Father.
This does not eliminate God's authority. Rather, it places God's authority within the context of relationship.
The person who turns toward God's Kingdom is not merely submitting to an impersonal power.
The person is turning toward God.
“Our Father”
This becomes particularly visible in Jesus' teaching on prayer.
“Father.”
And, in the familiar Matthean form:
“Our Father in heaven.”
The wording of the Lord's Prayer differs between Matthew and Luke, reminding us that we should not assume that the Gospel forms preserve a single verbatim English-style transcript of Jesus' prayer. Yet the address to God as Father is central to the tradition.
The significance is not merely grammatical.
It is relational.
And the word our is important.
God is not simply my Father.
God is our Father.
Prayer therefore immediately places the individual within a community.
I approach God as a child, but I do not approach God as an isolated child.
There are other children.
The Father whom I address is also their Father.
This becomes ethically significant.
If God is Father, then those who belong to God's household cannot regard one another merely as strangers, competitors, enemies, or categories.
The language of Fatherhood creates a relational horizon in which human beings are called to see one another differently.
Fatherhood and the character of God
Jesus' teaching repeatedly connects God's Fatherhood with God's character.
God gives good things.
God cares for creation.
God causes the sun to rise on both the evil and the good.
God sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.
Therefore, those who claim to live as God's children are called to reflect the character of their Father.
This is crucial.
Fatherhood is not merely a comforting title.
It becomes an ethical calling.
If God is generous, God's children must learn generosity.
If God shows mercy, God's children must learn mercy.
If God does not restrict goodness only to those who deserve it, God's children must learn to move beyond reciprocity.
This leads directly into Jesus' teaching about love.
But before reaching love, there is an important transformation in the meaning of repentance.
Repentance becomes relational
In the previous section, repentance was described as turning and returning.
The language of Fatherhood now gives that movement a deeper meaning.
A person does not simply turn away from wrongdoing.
A person turns toward God.
This changes the fundamental question.
Instead of asking only:
“What must I do to avoid punishment?”
the person begins to ask:
“Why am I living away from the One who loves me?”
The first question is primarily legal.
The second is relational.
Both moral responsibility and divine judgment remain important. But Jesus' Father-language allows repentance to be understood not simply as escape from punishment but as restoration of relationship.
This is why the story of the returning son becomes so significant.
The Father in the story of the lost son
The younger son leaves home.
He chooses independence.
He takes what belongs to him and goes away.
Eventually his freedom becomes misery.
He loses his resources, his security, and his dignity.
Then he turns.
He returns.
But the most important discovery is not simply that he has made a mistake.
It is that his father has not ceased to be his father.
The son has changed his relationship to the father.
The father's love, however, has not been cancelled by the son's failure.
This does not mean that the son's actions were acceptable.
The story does not deny wrongdoing.
It reveals something about the Father's response to the returning person.
The father sees him while he is still far away.
The father runs.
The father embraces.
The father restores.
The father celebrates.
The son expects to negotiate his place in the household.
The father restores him to relationship.
The son approaches as someone who believes he has forfeited his identity.
The father receives him as a son.
Here the meaning of repentance becomes clearer.
Repentance is coming home.
The elder brother
But Jesus' story contains another surprise.
The elder brother never leaves.
Yet he too is distant.
He cannot rejoice when his brother returns.
He remains physically close to the father while becoming emotionally distant from him.
This is a profound challenge to conventional religious thinking.
Being physically inside the household does not necessarily mean understanding the heart of the Father.
The younger brother's problem is obvious:
He left home.
The elder brother's problem is subtler:
He remained home but did not share the Father's heart.
Jesus therefore challenges two kinds of alienation.
One is the alienation of rebellion.
The other is the alienation of resentment.
One person needs to return from a distant country.
The other needs to return from a distant heart.
This is important for understanding the Way of Jesus.
The goal is not merely to move from “outside” to “inside.”
The goal is to become like the Father.
From belonging to becoming
This distinction will become increasingly important throughout the manuscript.
Jesus does not merely invite people to claim a religious identity.
He calls them to become a certain kind of person.
If God is Father, then God's children are called to reflect the Father's character.
The question is therefore not simply:
“Do I belong to God's household?”
It is:
“What kind of child am I becoming?”
This movement—from identity to character—will become central to Jesus' teaching about righteousness.
Father and Kingdom
The Kingdom and the Father therefore belong together.
The Kingdom tells us who reigns.
Father tells us what kind of relationship God's reign creates.
God is King.
God is Father.
And those who enter the reality of God's reign are invited into a relationship characterized by trust, dependence, obedience, love, mercy, and belonging.
The Kingdom is therefore not merely a political metaphor.
It is relational.
It is the household of a Father.
This also helps explain why Jesus' teaching about God's Kingdom is so deeply connected with ordinary human relationships.
The way we treat other people becomes an expression of what we believe about God.
If God is Father, then the character of the Father must become visible in the lives of God's children.
The familiar word, the transformed vision
Once again, Jesus begins with something familiar.
Father.
His hearers already possessed religious traditions in which God could be spoken of as Father. The distinctive question is what happens when Jesus places this familiar language at the centre of his vision of God's reign and human life. Scholarship continues to debate the precise historical significance of Jesus' use of Abba and whether it should be regarded as uniquely intimate in the way older scholarship sometimes claimed.
We therefore need not depend upon the claim that Jesus introduced an unprecedented word.
The deeper point is more substantial.
Jesus brings together two realities:
God's reign and God's relationship.
The One who reigns is Father.
And the people who live under that reign are invited to become children who reflect the Father's character.
This gives us the next movement in the argument:
Kingdom → Repentance → Father → Love
If the Father is characterized by generosity, mercy, and love, then those who live under the Father's reign must learn to live in the same way.
The question now becomes:
What does life look like when the character of the Father becomes the character of his children?
Jesus' answer is radical:
Love.
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