| 7. God the Father | ||||
God who is near is called Father, and men are His children. Here again it is significant that Jesus does not intend to teach any new conception of God and does not announce the fact of man s sonship to God as a new and unheard-of truth. The view of God as Father was in fact current in Judaism, and God was addressed as Father both by the praying congregation and by individuals. Judaism as well as Jesus affirms that a man may consider himself a son of God when he obeys God s commands. In the proverbial collection of Ben Sirach it is said: | ||||
"Be a father to orphans | ||||
And Jesus says: | ||||
"Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, | ||||
The highest that can be said of man, the final word, is that he is a "son of God." The designation appears as an eschatological title in Judaism and in words of the Lord. When the 17th Psalm of Solomon describes the rule of the Messiah in the last age in the holy land, we read: | ||||
"He knows them, that they are all sons of their God." | ||||
And in the Book of Jubilees God promises Israel concerning the time of deliverance: | ||||
"They shall do my commandments, and I will be their | ||||
So Jesus word promises: | ||||
"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called sons of God." | ||||
and in the saying recorded by Luke concerning those risen from the dead, | ||||
"They are like the angels, and they are sons of God, | ||||
This mode of expression shows plainly that there is no question of a new conception of God and men presented by Jesus; it also shows plainly Jesus characteristic idea of God. This becomes clear if we consider that the designation of God as Father is common to many religions and religious world views. The early Stoa had already called God Father, and with the later Stoics this appellation is the typical expression of their piety and of their conception of humanity. And it does indeed serve to express the view that man as a part of the whole divine cosmos is in his nature akin to God and is His son. This is expressly stated as "dogma" (e.g., by Epictetus), and from that are deduced the duties of men which follow from this evaluation, and the security which results if man can trust himself to the providence of his Father. Man s sonship to God is thus a universal truth which holds for man as such, which is essential to the idea of man. Sonship to God is man s by nature, and is a truth which holds ideally, which is outside his concrete existence in the here and now. | ||||
The opposite is meant by the thought of sonship to God in Judaism and by Jesus. As applied to the nation, it appears often in Jewish literature, although it is not so used by Jesus. The Jews are not by nature children of God because they are human beings, but have become children by God s free choice and by the deeds which He has done for them. When the term is applied to the individual, man is not by nature a son of God, but he can be a son in obedience to God, through God s delivering act. Thus sonship to God is nothing self-evident, natural, which belongs to man as man, of which man needs only to become conscious in order to reap the benefits; rather, sonship to God is a miracle. Man is here seen absolutely differently not as what he is ideally, outside his concrete life, but precisely as what he is in his concrete life, once for all, here and now. | ||||
But the possibility of such sonship to God of course exists for all men, and one cannot point to particular men who have the special quality of being sons of God. The Father in heaven cares for all men (Matt. 6: 26, 32), and all men are to turn to Him with their petitions. (Matt. 7 :7-11 ) Here too it holds true that the distant God is at the same time near, and yet for the natural man He is remote; sonship to God is not something which man can claim, on which he can depend. Even in the strange land the prodigal son is his Father s son, and the Father, though distant, is his Father. But in the strange land, the fact that he is a son is a judgment against him, and when he realizes his position, a grief. His sonship gives him no claim; it gives only the hope of the Father s forgiving love, and only forgiveness makes the son once more a son. | ||||
"This my son was dead and is again alive, he was lost, and is again found," says the Father. (Luke 15 :24) | ||||