What God’s Fatherhood Does Not Mean
Divine fatherhood is not identical to human fatherhood. By saying that God is our Father in heaven, Jesus indicates that if God can be likened to human fathers in some ways, he is also different from them in other ways. God the Father is different from human fathers in many ways:
1. God’s divine nature is exclusive to him. We have the same human nature as our human fathers, but we do not have the same nature as our divine Father. The heavenly Father shares his divine essence with none of his creatures.
2. God has no gender and no partner. He is beyond sexual differentiation that characterizes humankind and other creatures. If in the Bible he is persistently addressed as “Father” but not as “Mother,” it is because of analogical arguments.
3. God is perfect and self-sufficient whereas human fathers and mothers are dependent, and, this side of the fall, fallible and sinful. At the same time, his love for us is much greater than any parental love.
4. God is Spirit (John 4:24). He is not a material being. He is not located in one place; his presence is everywhere.
5. God is to be honored and worshiped whereas human parents are to be honored (Exodus 20:12) but not worshiped.
6. There are many human fathers but only one heavenly Father: “Do we not all have the same Father? Did not one God create us?” (Malachi 2:10).
7. Human fathers have a limited number of children. Insofar as he is the Creator, God is the Father of all human beings; insofar as God’s role as Father refers to his relationship with those he has redeemed, he is the Father of all such.
This last point calls for a further reflection. Because we have been made by God, we can all call God “Our Father”: we have all been made in his image. This means that we are all equally human in God’s sight, equally God’s image-bearers, regardless of our ethnic, social, or religious backgrounds. As human beings we are brothers and sisters. Especially in the New Testament writings, however, God is addressed as Father in function of his peculiar relationship with the people he redeems in Christ. They become “brothers” and “sisters” in a community of redeemed believers—even though they are drawn from every ethnicity, nation, and language (e.g., Revelation 5:9–10). In the fourth century, Augustine rightly commented, “Before this Father, the rich and the poor are brothers; before this Father, the master and the slave are brothers; before this Father, the army general and the simple soldier are brothers.”17
Thus God’s fatherhood is similar, not identical, to human fatherhood. In some respects, human fatherhood mirrors divine fatherhood; in others it does not. God’s immanence, in particular his likeness with human beings, must always be held together with his transcendence. We must not abuse his overwhelming love for us by being so self-obsessed that we fail to recognize the differences between God and ourselves, who bear his image. On the contrary, his love for us should deepen our love for him, our obedience to his word, and our worship of him. In instructing us to call God our Father, Jesus discloses how privileged we are as human beings. This privilege carries with it a moral responsibility:
If he [Jesus] commands us to call God “Father” in our prayer, he commands you to model your life upon the Father in heaven. He commands this even more explicitly when he says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).18
It is our privilege as human beings to be able to reflect God’s fatherly character to some degree, especially with our children. But in the final analysis God remains an incomparable Father. Here is the point where Christianity and Islam converge. Jesus has such a high view of God’s uniqueness—and his own—that he goes as far as to instruct his disciples not to let people call them “masters” or “teachers” and not to call anyone father, for they have one Father, God, and one Teacher, himself:
You are not to be called “Rabbi,” for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth “father,” for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called “teacher,” for you have one Teacher, the Messiah (Matthew 23:8–10).
Here Jesus is not literally asking his disciples to refrain from addressing human beings by their titles. His concern is much deeper. We should never forget that humans are all fallible and that God is the source of all authority and all knowledge. Therefore we should always take a critical look at human teaching and leadership. Above all, we should assign our ultimate loyalty and gratitude to God and to the One who revealed him to us as “our Father in heaven.”
Although he is our Creator and Lord, God has revealed himself to us as our loving Father.
3. Jesus Christ
The Prophet Muhammad preached the Qur’an to polytheist Arabs, hence the emphasis of his message on God’s oneness (tawhid), which is at the heart of Islamic faith. By contrast, Jesus carried out his mission among the Jewish people who, since the time of Moses, believed that God is one: “Hear, O Israel: ‘The LORD our God, the LORD is one’” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Therefore his message was focused not so much on God’s oneness as on who God is: “our Father in heaven.” During his mission he made an even more extraordinary claim that upset many people, especially the Jewish establishment: he is God’s one and only Son (John 1:14, 18). He enjoys a unique relationship with his Father. His mission was precisely to make it possible for us to model our relationship with our heavenly Father on his (though his own uniqueness is never called in question):
All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Matthew 11:27).
Sometimes Jesus calls God “Father” without even using the word “God.” He invokes God most frequently and most naturally as “the Father,” “my Father,” and “your Father.” He never associates himself with his disciples in addressing God as “our (common) Father.” Jesus paid with his life the claim he made about who he is. The Jewish tribunal condemned him to death as a blasphemer (Mark 14:61–64). After he was raised from the dead he declared to his followers: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is, among other things, the way God vindicated him and endorsed his claim to be unique among the prophets.
What Is So Unique About Jesus?
Let us now consider briefly other aspects of Jesus’ uniqueness as they appear in the Gospels. Because of his humble character (Matthew 11:29), Jesus did not openly and directly speak, let alone boast, about his divinity. He never said, “I am God,” not least because such a formulation might mislead people to think that he was undermining God’s oneness. Nevertheless, he did say such things as “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Again, he claims more than pre-existence but takes on the name of God: “I tell you the truth,” Jesus declares, “. . . before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). Jesus can speak about the uniqueness of his own “sonship” (e.g., John 10:34–36), including the astonishing claim that he, as the Son, while functionally subordinate to his Father, nevertheless does all that the Father does, while the Father is determined that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father (John 5:16–30). Certainly the first witnesses can either address him as God (note Thomas’s “My Lord and my God!” [John 20:28]) or speak of him as God (John 1:1). Moreover, the Gospels are full of other indicators of his divine nature:
Jesus’ Birth
Unlike all human beings, Jesus had no biological father. The Qur’an acknowledges the virginal conception of Jesus, which is why Jesus is often referred to as “the son of Mary.” However, the Qur’an sees in this miracle simply a sign pointing to God’s unlimited power (21:91). The creation of Jesus is explicitly compared in the Qur’an to that of Adam (3:59). Adam too was created directly by God, but this does not make him God’s son.
According to the Bible, Adam is also in a sense “the son of God” (Luke 3:37) because of the way he was created. Yet we must make a distinction between Adam and Jesus. Because Adam was the first human being, his coming into existence had to be the result of God’s direct creative act, but this was not so with Jesus. Adam, of course, has no claimed pre-existence;19 Jesus does. Adam was never worshiped as God; Jesus was. What is equally significant about Jesus’ birth are the names that God himself gave him after he was conceived in Mary’s womb. He was to be named Jesus “because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) and Immanuel, “which means ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23). These two names sum up Jesus’ identity and mission. The angel Gabriel told Mary that her son would also be called “the Son of the Most High” and that “his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:32–33): indeed, sometimes “son of God” as applied to Jesus shows him to be the unique messianic king in David’s line (note how 2 Samuel 7:14 and Psalm 2 are applied to Jesus in the New Testament, especially in Hebrews: see further below).
Jesus’ Titles
Both the Qur’an and the Bible give Jesus three titles that are exclusive to him: God’s Word (3:39, 45; 4:171), the Messiah (3:45), and God’s Spirit (4:171). The Qur’an does not explain the meaning of these titles. Muslim scholars have suggested various interpretations, all of which fall short of their biblical meanings.20
God’s Word
Jesus is God’s eternal Word, revealed in the form of a human being. He is the revelation of God in a human person in a sense that is similar to God’s Word being revealed in a book:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:1–3, 14a).
Christians use the word “incarnation” to refer to God’s becoming a human being through his Son in the person of Jesus Christ, without giving up his divine nature. The Bible points to Jesus Christ as God’s ultimate and perfect revelation.
The Messiah
The Messiah, or the Christ, is the king God promised to raise up as one of David’s descendants (2 Samuel 7). This king would enjoy a father-son relationship with God and would make all the peoples of the earth his subjects (Psalm 2). King David called him his Lord (Psalm 110:1). The prophet Micah identified Bethlehem as the place of his birth, describing his origins as ancient and eternal (Micah 5:2). Isaiah announced that the Messiah would preside over an eternal kingdom of peace and justice (Isaiah 9:7).
Jesus knew himself to be the long-awaited Messiah. However, he was not the kind of Messiah his people were expecting, that is, a political king. He was the Messiah foretold by the prophets, the saving King who would conquer the world through his death and resurrection (Matthew 16:13–28). Following his resurrection, Jesus ascended to heaven, where God enthroned him as Lord of the world. He now reigns over everything in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18–20), even though that reign is still contested. One day he will return in glory, and his lordship will then be recognized by everyone (1 Corinthians 15:20–28).
God’s Spirit
The Bible speaks of Adam as “a pattern of the one to come,” namely, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:14). There is both a parallel and a contrast between Adam and Christ. Adam was the first human being to disobey God whereas Christ remained sinless. Unlike Adam who was given life when God created him from clay (Genesis 2:7; cf. Qur’an 15:26–29), the resurrected Christ gives new life to those who believe in him: “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Jesus is “the last Adam” in so far as his mission consisted in saving humanity from sin and creating a new and redeemed humanity.
Jesus’ Mission
The message Jesus preached is known in the Qur’an as the injil. Because this word derives from Greek, its meaning is not known to Muslims. The Arabic equivalent would be bushra or “good news.” The good news of the gospel is that God has become in the person of Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, “the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Our salvation depends on his unexpected and costly love, not on our merits and good works.
From an Islamic perspective, miracles are meant to authenticate the mission of God’s prophets. The Qur’an ascribes several miracles to Jesus, including healing the blind and the leper, raising the dead, creating birds from clay, and miraculously feeding his people (5:110–15).21 According to the Gospels, however, Jesus’ miracles had another dimension: they were signs that pointed to and disclosed who Jesus was. Before Jesus healed the blind man he said, “I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). Before he raised Lazarus from the dead he said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). After he fed the crowd he said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). What is unique about Jesus is not the miracles he worked as much as the claims he made in connection with these miracles. No prophet has ever made such claims about himself. Some Muslims have been particularly impressed with Jesus’ ability to create and to raise people from the dead. Is not God the only Creator and the only One who gives life and death (2:258; 30:50)? The Qur’anic text specifies that it was “by God’s leave” that Jesus worked miracles, but the question remains, “What entitled Jesus to make such claims?”
According to the Qur’an, God strengthened Jesus with (literally) “the Holy Spirit” (ruh al-qudus) during his mission (2:87, 253; 5:110). Muslim scholars understand the Holy Spirit to refer to the angel Gabriel (though the usual word for angel in Arabic is malak rather than ruh) for fear of undermining God’s oneness. The Arabic Bible uses exactly the same expression for the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit during his mission (John 3:34). He spoke about the Holy Spirit as the one who would succeed him when he himself had left the disciples to return to his Father—another person, like himself, to help them (John 14–16). He would send him to the disciples to remain with them forever. He refers to him as “the Spirit of truth” whose mission is to guide his disciples into all the truth (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples ten days after Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 2).
Jesus’ Sinless Life
The Bible provides many passages that affirm Jesus’ utter sinlessness (e.g., 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 7:27; 1 John 3:5). The Qur’an affirms the same truth. It tells us that when Gabriel appeared to Mary he told her that she would be the mother of “a holy son” (19:19). The Islamic Prophetic Tradition confirms Jesus’ uniqueness in this respect: “There is none among the offspring of Adam but Satan touches it. A child, therefore, cries loudly at the time of birth because of the touch of Satan, except Mary and her child.”22 If all human beings are hit by evil at their birth except Jesus, what does this exception say about him? The New Testament not only highlights that Jesus was absolutely sinless; it also specifies that it is precisely his moral perfection that made him fit to offer his life as a sacrifice for sin:
I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1–2; cf. Hebrews 7:26–28).