In the teaching of Christ our Master,—the Fatherhood of God is the central truth of all. It gathers into itself all other attributes and gives to all a special quality. It is our special Christian heritage. The heart that believes God to be "Our Father" has room for the conviction that "God is Love". We shall perhaps gain fullest insight into the greatness of this truth if we concentrate our thoughts on certain facts which stand out with special clearness in Holy Scripture.
First of all it is His presentation of the Fatherhood of God which gives to our Saviour's teaching its wonderful tenderness and power. Not power alone, nor tenderness alone, but both. He tells us that our Heavenly Father knows our every need; that He Who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field will not be unmindful of the children of men; that our Father's heart is full of that eager, forgiving, redeeming love which wins our heart in the parable of the Prodigal Son. On the other hand, He would have us ever mindful that our Father, when we approach in faith and penitence, is One Whose Name is to be hallowed, Who is the Lord of heaven and earth to Whom all things are possible, Who governs all things and knows all things, even the inmost thoughts of men.
Again, the Fatherhood of God is unchanging and universal. It must be so for He is the Eternal Father, and "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." Nevertheless, man's power to respond to God's Fatherhood is not everywhere the same. We shall understand this best if we study the Bible teaching on sonship and brotherhood in the light of the revelation which God has given of His Fatherhood. There are in the Bible different kinds of sonship, or sonships on different levels. The fact that we are created and created in the image of our Maker constitutes sonship. He is our Father Who gives us life. "Have we not all one Father, hath not God created us?" There is, therefore, a sonship which is natural and universal, but it is not in itself complete. Its value consists in the fact that it is the ground of a higher relationship. It is the capacity for sonship, which, however hidden or dormant, we believe to be in every man.
Nevertheless so long as men are ignorant of God and indifferent to Him, they are not in any full sense His sons. We find, therefore, in the Bible another kind of sonship. God is our Father because He gives us more abundant life, a life of redemption from ignorance and sin. This is illustrated in the Old Testament by the choice of Israel and the great covenant promises involved in it, "I will be their God and they shall be My people," "I will be his Father and he shall be My son." In the New Testament we find the same principle in the choice by Christ of His Apostles and disciples for special privilege of knowledge and grace. This choice is perpetuated by Christ in His Church. Our Christian sonship is a special sonship. It is ours by Baptism wherein we are made members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of Heaven. Two practical considerations follow. First, if there are different levels of sonship there are different degrees of brotherhood. The message of the premiers is right. The hope of a brotherhood of humanity does repose on the deeper spiritual truth of the Fatherhood of God. This brotherhood, however, is not a relationship which comes to us simply by nature; it is a relationship which in social, individual, national and international life must be morally won.
Again, those who have Christian knowledge and grace have not received this privilege for themselves alone. They are God's sons who have special gifts in trust on behalf of all mankind who have them not. The call to Missionary work is based on this responsibility, and will remain so until "the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."
Finally, there is the unique sonship of Christ Himself. His sonship is perfect and complete. It is also the channel through which our sonship, whether of creation or redemption, comes to us. "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." It is this Eternal sonship which constitutes the special significance to our confession of faith in God the Father in the Apostles' Creed. Christ is One Who comes to us from the Eternal life of God. That life which though inseparable from man and from the world is yet forever holy and distinct. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity helps us here. It arose out of simple loyalty to New Testament teaching. From the first it has been a living practical faith. Christians learnt to recite their belief in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost; they were baptised in the threefold Name and sang the Doxology before they thought out the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity and before they were called upon to defend it. We find in this great truth the most profound realization of Personality in God. We see in it a vision of eternal fellowship in life and in love, towards which we strive on earth. In the light of it we begin to understand that man, not only as an individual, but also as a social being, is made in the image of God.