Theology: The Doctrine of God

How Do We Know That the Father Is God - And That God Is the Father?

By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
Growing numbers of self-described Evangelicals talk blasphemously about "getting in touch with God's feminine side."

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Today, growing numbers of self-described evangelicals talk about "getting in touch with God's feminine side." Such blasphemous foolishness ignores the plain teaching of Scripture that each of the three persons of the Godhead is masculine, and that the first person of the Trinity is God the Father - not "God the Mother."

The Father in the Old Testament

Scripture speaks of God the Father as early as Psalm 89, a Messianic Psalm, where Christ the Seed of David speaks of God as "my Father, my God" in verse 26. In Malachi 2:6, God is spoken of as being the "one father" of all men by right of creatorship. But it is in relationship to God the Son and to believers in Christ that the first person of the Trinity is God the Father.

The Father in the Gospels

John 1:18 speaks of God the Son as being "in the bosom of the Father" who has declared Him to be the Son. In the Gospels, Jesus speaks frequently of God the Father. Jesus declared that the Father is to be worshipped by both Jew and Gentile (John 4:21-23). In various passages in the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of God as "My Father" (e.g., 8:54, 10:17, 14:2, 15:8, 16:10, 20:17). The Jews sought to kill Jesus because He "said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God" (5:18).

Often when addressing the disciples and other believers, Jesus refers to God the Father in such terms as "your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:45-48), "your heavenly Father" (Matthew 6:9, 6:14), and "your Father who sees in secret" (Matthew 6:4-6). When He teaches the disciples to pray, He tells them to address God as "our Father" (Matthew 6:9).

The Father in Acts and the Epistles

The Apostle Paul by inspiration speaks repeatedly of "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7, 15:6; 1 Corinthians 1:3; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; etc.). He declares that God the Father has raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead (Galatians 1:1). In the Trinitarian statements of Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, and 1 John 5:7, God is spoken of as the Father. In many places Scripture speaks of God the Father as distinct from the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:20, 6:23; Philippians 1:2; Colossians 3:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-3; 2 Thessalonians 2:16), and also distinct from the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:22, John 14:16 and 26, John 15:26, Acts 2:33, Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, and 1 John 5:7). Believers are spoken of as being sanctified by God the Father (Jude 1).

The Father in Revelation

At the opening of the book of Revelation, the Apostle John declares that Jesus Christ has made believers "kings and priests to His God and Father" (1:6). Jesus Christ himself speaks of the power He has been given over the nations "received from My Father" (2:27). The 144,000 saints of the Lamb in Revelation 14 have "His Father's name written on their foreheads."

Muslims' Objection to the Doctrine of God the Father

One of the principal reasons that Muslims reject Christianity is that they cannot accept the idea that God could be a father and have a son. The problem is that their concept of fatherhood is a naturalistic one - in order to produce a son, they say, God would have to engage in a sexual relationship with a wife. They consider this idea the worst sort of blasphemy.

But the Biblical concept of the Fatherhood of God is relational, not naturalistic. God the Father did not produce a son; God has always been the Father and God has always been the Son. Because Jesus was already the Son from eternity, being born of the virgin Mary did not constitute God the Father as the Father of Jesus Christ any more than it made Mary the wife of God. The purpose of the virgin birth of Christ was to facilitate the entrance of the eternal Son of God into the world in human form to make representative, substitutionary atonement for sinners on the cross.

The coming of the first Adam into the world did not require a physical relationship between a man and a woman (Genesis 2:7 & 18), nor did the coming of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45).

God the Father is the Father from eternity. Jesus is the Son of God from eternity. Micah's prophecy of His birth in Bethlehem says that Jesus' "goings forth are from of old, from everlasting" - literally, "from the days of eternity." Jesus, referring to Himself as the Son of God the Father, said to the Pharisees, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58).

Jesus' own teaching in the Gospels speaks exclusively of the eternal relationship between the Son and the Father, never of sonship that had a beginning point, and never of sonship based on naturalistic conception and birth. The relationship between God the Son and God the Father is a relationship of subordination: "For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of...the Father who sent me" (John 6:38-39). And on the night before He went to the cross, Jesus prayed, "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was" (John 17:5).

A "Feminine Side of God"?

Since the 1970s, the feminist movement has had a growing influence on churches. Early on, many liberal church leaders embraced radical feminism's quest for un-Biblical relationships between men and women, and between women and women. Religious elements of the feminist movement within liberal churches promoted the concept of "God as Mother," and the worship of "God" as the goddess Sophia, borrowing heavily from paganism both ancient and modern.

Over time, church feminism also led to the production of so-called "gender neutral" or "inclusive language" versions of the Bible, such as Today's New International Version, the New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, the New Living Translation, the New Century Version, and the Contemporary English Version. Even worse have been Bible perversions such as Judith Christ of Nazareth: The Gospels of the Bible Corrected to Reflect That Jesus Was a Woman (published by the Law and Business Institute in 2003).

More recently, the feminizing of God has also infected the evangelical church. We've run across a number of sermons and articles, sometimes by women preachers but more often by men, promoting two heresies. One is a false characterization of God's law as "God's masculine side" and God's grace as "God's feminine side." The other is the teaching that Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit expresses - or is - "the feminine side of God."[1]

John Piper's Desiring God website published an article in 2017 that supposedly denied the femininity of God, but in an egregious example of postmodern confusion the author falsely claimed that 26 passages in the Old and New Testaments actually portray God as feminine.[2]

Dr. Tony Campolo, who is embraced by many evangelicals as a thought leader despite his wide-ranging heresies, enthusiastically promotes the feminizing of God. His 1994 book Carpe Diem: Seize the Day includes a chapter titled "Embracing the Feminine Side of God," in which he asserts that "the male side of God's character was expressed by Jesus' strong declarations of truth and pronouncements on morality..." But, he adds,

There is a feminine side of God. I always knew this...It is this feminine side of God I find in Jesus that makes me want to sing duets with Him...Not only do I love the feminine in Jesus, but the more I know Jesus, the more I realize that Jesus loves the feminine in me. Until I accept the feminine in my humanness, there will be a part of me that cannot receive the Lord's love....There is that feminine side of me that must be recovered and strengthened if I am to be like Christ...And until I feel the feminine in Jesus, there is a part of Him which I cannot identify.[3]

Ever since the Garden of Eden, Satan has sought to distort the image of God and to destroy God-ordained male-female and husband-wife relationships. But the words of the Bible have meaning, and we ignore its clear meaning at our peril. The God of the Bible, revealed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is unquestionably masculine and in no way feminine. True Christians must not join those who lightly cast aside the nature of God and the proper place of male authority as revealed in His Word - who say, as the Serpent said to Eve, "Did God really say that?"

References:

1. See, for example, "The Feminine Side of God" by Janice G. Johnson at http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=71994. See also "Our Mother Who Art in Heaven: A Brief Overview and Critique of Evangelical Feminists and the Use of Feminine God-Language" at http://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-8-No-2/Our-Mother-Who-Art-in-Heaven. (Note: TeachingtheWord does not officially endorse the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood or all of the individuals associated with it, but we believe this article is valuable. If you have questions about this, please contact us.)

2. Tony Reinke, "Our Mother Who Art In Heaven?" as viewed at https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/our-mother-who-art-in-heaven on September 1, 2021.

3. Tony Campolo, Carpe Diem: Seize the Day (Thomas Nelson, 1994), pages 82-85.

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