We now come to the Fatherhood of God. The Old Testament Jews were taught to pray, “Our FATHER which art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9), in distinction from the Gentile “gods.” In Matthew 6, when Jesus Christ taught the Old Testament Jew under the law to pray, “Our Father which art in heaven,” He, of course, taught it as the corporate prayer of a nation who had been called out by God as God’s “son.” You will notice that no individual in the Old Testament is ever called “the Son of God” or “a Son of God,” unless they are a created angel, without blood. There is no such thing in the Old Testament as a son of God in the New Testament sense. In the New Testament sense, a son of God is a sinner who has received Jesus Christ. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the SONS OF GOD, even to them that believe on his name”
(John 1:12). Notice carefully that in the Old Testament no individual is ever called “a son of God.” The nation of Israel CORPORATELY is called “sons” AND “daughters” (Isa. 43:6) in the Old Testament, and the nation, corporately, as a unit, is “My son, even my firstborn” (Exod. 4:22). But at no time in the Old Testament are INDIVIDUAL ISRAELITES, such as David or Moses, ever referred to as “sons of God.” The “sons of God” in the Old Testament, from Job 1 through Job 38, and Genesis 6, are plainly angelic beings who have neither flesh nor blood, nor could they be born again. Therefore, one should get the distinction immediately between the disciples of Matthew 6:9 (who pray to God as a corporate Father—“Our FATHER which art in heaven”) and the individual Christian, of whom it is said, “ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, FATHER” (Rom. 8:15). The Christian never prays “OUR Father” in individual prayer, but “my Father,” “Holy Father,” and “Father.”
Israelites did not have an individual, personal consciousness of sonship to God as “my Father.” Israel, as it stood in the Old Testament, had God as their CORPORATE Father; as a nation chosen of God to be God’s firstborn son.
“Our Father” has never been “the Lord’s Prayer,” never will be “the Lord’s Prayer,” and is certainly not the prayer of any Christian who is reading this book. “Our Father” is the prayer Jesus Christ recommended to circumcised Jewish disciples under the law who kept the sabbath, abstained from pork, and worshipped in the temple.
“Our Father which art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9) has never been “the Lord’s Prayer.” If it was “the Lord’s Prayer,” the Lord would not have been praying “OUR Father,” because that would have classified Him with sinners. The rea l “Lord’s Prayer” is in John 17, where Christ never calls God the Father “OUR” Father, but “Holy Father.” “Our Father” in Matthew 6:9 is the prayer of a Jewish disciple under the law who is a member of a nation that has God as its Father, corporately. The prayer, then, as it stands, is a prayer given to Old Testament saints under the law and Jewish saints under the law. These Jews are Sabbath-observing, pork-abstaining, temple-worshipping Jews.
The Jew had God for his Father in a poetic and national sense. The Fatherhood of God, in the national sense, is used in Psalm 68:5, where it says, “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.” However, this is true of Israel only in the doctrinal sense of a NATION under God, not individuals. Exodus 4:22 says, “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” So no individual in the Old Testament knew about the Fatherhood of God from an individual consciousness or individual relationship, but rather, as a national relationship. This is why we find the plural —“OUR Father which art in heaven.”
Notice in Matthew 6 (if you study the passage carefully), that the Father of Israel (Israel being God’s child) is set in contrast to the Gentiles. As a matter of fact, the careful reader of Matthew 5 and 6 will see that throughout these chapters there is one thing clear: God is not the Father of any Gentile. Now, I realize that may sound like “racial discrimination” to some of you religious bigots, but that is what the Scripture says. And when the Scriptures speak, we are not particularly interested in your convictions anyway. The Bible said in Matthew 6:32, “(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” Notice that Christ constantly contrasts the Jew as a child of God CORPORATELY (and NATIONALLY) under the Father (the Father of a nation), as opposed to the Gentiles, who had no Father as a group of nations. Israel did not have personal consciousness of sonship, as far as its individuals were concerned. The ones that do have this individual, personal “sonship,” with God as his personal, individual Father, is, of course, the born again child of God in this age who is in Jesus Christ.
Modernism reasons, “God is my Father, and a man’s Father wouldn’t harm him, so I will just do what I want, and He will be merciful to me in the end.” This, of course, is presumptuous, false reasoning. The modern “god” of American liberalism will put up with anything. Therefore, the modern “god” of America, as he stands, is a moral and spiritual pervert. Christ never hinted for a moment that God was anybody’s Father, but rather said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:44). A god who can put up with anything is a spiritual pervert, and the man who invented him is just as perverted as he. A god who loves righteousness, truth, honesty, and loving kindness the same way he loves fornication, bestiality, and adultery is, as we have said before (and will say again), a moral pervert and is nothing but the creation of a man who is perverted.
God is the Creator of all, but only the Father of those who are in the “family.” In 2 Corinthians 6:17–18 we read, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Notice that the Lord does not say one thing there about receiving anyone as a son or daughter until they come out from the world system and receive Him. There is no reception of the sinner into the family of God until the sinner separates himself from the world by the act of receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. Notice the expression, “touch not the unclean thing.” In the Bible, you have clean things and unclean things, dirty things and pure things. There is no such thing in the Bible as this great integrated, amalgamated, synthesized, relative, ecumenical socialism in which there is no difference between good and evil.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 6:17–18, “and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Nowhere does God ever imply that He would accept any “son” or “daughter” who is not a separated person, who will not leave the system he is in and will not trust God’s only begotten Son as his Saviour in order to become a child of God. Christ was undefiled, higher than the heavens. He came down to die for sinners, and a man has to trust this Saviour in order to be accepted by God.
As a Father, God gives life to his children, so there is no real sonship without the new birth. The Bible says in 1 John 5:12, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” As a Father, God bestows love on his children: those who are in the family of God. Hence, we read in John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”; but outside the family, “and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” So “outsiders” are called in Ephesians 2:3, “by nature the children of wrath.” In Romans 9:22, they are called “vessels of wrath fitted to destruction”; in Ephesians 2:1, “dead in trespasses and sins”; and in Matthew 23:15, a “child of hell.”
It says, “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6); “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3); “verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity” (Ps. 39:5); and “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” (Eccl. 7:20). That’s the difference between the Holy Scriptures and the other oriental “scriptures.” The “scriptures” of other religions are always “mealy mouthed.”
The truth is, my friend, with a dead nature and a defiled conscience—a conscience seared with a hot iron—your conscience is not going to take you anywhere. And the truth is, with your self-righteous egotism that you have developed and cultivated over the years (by saying that everything is relative and setting yourself up as the final authority), you have made yourself a god in your own eyes, and you are just as good as in hell with the door shut and the key thrown away. That is the horrible truth of the matter. The reason people go “shopping” for religions around the world, study comparative religions, and compare religions to pick out the one which will least offend them is because Bible Christianity always has been, still is, and always will be the most offensive, negative, destructive, critical abuse with which man has ever had to deal. The same God who said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), said also, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matt. 23:33). When David said, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1), that same Shepherd said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.... for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not” (John 8:44–45). “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8:47). That same God who said that charity covers all sins, “charity envieth not,” charity is kind, charity “is not puffed up” (1 Cor. 13), said also, “all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8). Now, isn’t that something? That same God with which some of you fish around and mess around in the Sermon on the Mount, Psalm 23, and 1 Corinthians 13 spoke the words found in Matthew 23 and John 9, at which you haven’t even looked. The same God who said to be kind and to “love one another: for love is of God” (1 John 4:7), the One who said that we should love one another and love our neighbor, that same God said also, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).
God is a Father who hears and answers prayers of the born again believer, sifting their requests as a true Father would. It is as a Father that God adopts into His family the born again child of God as one of His sons, but there is not a case found anywhere in the Bible, from cover to cover, where God Almighty ever treated as a son a Biblerejecting, Christ-defying, self-righteous, religious egotist. Of those people, He said, “how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” So the Fatherhood of God in the Bible is one thing, and the “Fatherhood of God’’ taught out in the world by religious politicians is, as we say down south, “somethin’ else.” They are no kin. There is nothing similar in the God presented in the word of God and the “god” presented by modern religious liberals.
We have studied, very briefly, the Fatherhood of God and have listed the fourteen names of God as He has revealed Himself within the word of God. You will find, too, that if you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour and trust a sinless, perfect, righteous man instead of a sinner like yourself, God will give you His imputed righteousness (see Rom. 4 and 8), adopt you into His family (see Eph. 1:4–10), and own and confess you as His child. Then you can truly say, not “OUR Father which art in heaven,” but “MY Father.” “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him” (Psa. 103:13), and by receiving Christ, you receive “the Spirit of adoption,” whereby you cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).
Source: Theological Studies Vol I - Fatherhood of God by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman
Hope this may be a blessing to the readers.
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GOD's Simple Plan of Salvation
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(1) Admitting that you are a sinner
(2) Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior and Lord
(3) Repenting (meaning you are willing to turn away from your sins) of your sins then confessing your sins to God
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