God The Father – What Does it Really Mean?
If you should ask many Christians what the phrase “God the Father” means, they’ll probably tell you that it means that God the Father is the first person of the Trinity, followed by the second who is called God the Son (Jesus Christ) and the third, God the Holy Spirit, the three persons that make up the one God. Each of them is said to be a distinct, coequal and coeternal God. This concept of God formulated and developed by the second to fourth centuries church fathers is the idea most Christians have of the term “God the Father.” In a pseudepigraphon known as Athanasian Creed, the coequality and coeternity of the three persons or Gods is defined. There it is written, “And in this Trinity none is afore [before] or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.” (Lines 25-27).The three persons are thus said to be individually self-existed, coequal and coeternal. The Trinitarian concept of God the Father therefore carries the connotation of the Father being the first among three equal persons, each of whom is God (Line 15).
The Trinitarian idea of God has been found to be seriously flawed by the fact that it is grossly inconsistent with biblical facts. Trinity was invented and developed between the second and fifth centuries CE by theologians cum philosophers who wanted to redefine the nature of God. In their quest they progressively moved into God’s relationship with the Logos (Word, that is Jesus Christ). By 381 AD in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), they elevated God’s spirit to the status of “Lord and Giver of life,” thereby making God’s holy spirit a third person they named God the Holy Spirit.
The Athanasian Creed which became known in the fifth century later became the main document of the Trinitarian belief. One of its postulations is that the three persons of the Trinity are incomprehensible. In other words, the finite human mind cannot understand the Trinity and therefore whatever is said of it should be accepted by faith, a kind of “blind faith.” With this kind of “mantra” they swept the Christian world under control. No one asked how they were able to formulate creeds on something that the human mind cannot understand. The formulations of the various ecumenical councils were enforced with Roman Imperial decrees so that those who dared to raise any objection to the creeds in the light of the clear contents of the Bible were persecuted, with some martyred. While the church fathers of that time wanted to Christianize the largely pagan world of their time, they not only fell into the political traps of the Roman Emperors who used them to achieve their political gains, they also allowed syncretism as a tool to woo the pagans into Christianity. Thus, corruption found its way into the biblical teaching about God.
The Biblical Concept of God the Father
Is the Trinitarian definition of “God the Father” what the New Testament writers had in mind? It is definitely not. The Bible concept of “God the Father” is very different from what the Trinitarians have taught us right from our childhood days. This article seeks to bring out the correct biblical meaning of the term.
The term “God the Father” is used twelve times in the Christian New Testament. Its basic definition has been given to us in Eph. 3:14-15 which reads, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. (Eph. 3:14-15 NIV, bold emphases added throughout). The Contemporary English Version (CEV) renders the two verses this way: “I kneel in prayer to the Father. All beings in heaven and on earth receive their life from him” (Eph. 3:14-15 CEV).
That is it. God is called “the Father” because ALL beings in heaven (our Lord Jesus Christ and the angels) and all the beings on earth – humans, animals, reptiles, insects, trees, all living things, visible and invisible – receive their life from Him. And it is in this sense that all human beings, angels and Jesus Christ have been variously called the sons of God (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Luke 3:38; Mark 1:1; John 10:36), the offspring of God (Acts 17:24-29). Angels and humankind are offspring of God by creation.
Jesus Christ, out Lord and Saviour, also derived His life from God, not like creation who were called into existence out of nothing (Rom. 4:17b), but through His begettal by God Himself. Therefore the Sonship of Jesus Christ is quite different from those of all the other sons of God. He is the “Monogenes,” a Greek word meaning the “only begotten.” He is the only one who came out of God’s own being. He came directly out of God Himself and that is why He has the same God nature like the Father who begot Him (Phil. 2:6; Heb. 1:3; John 3:6). His Sonship is unique. He is a God-being. But He is not self-existed; He derived His life and Godhood from the Father (John 5:26). This is the reason the Father has dual relationship with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Father is His God (Matt. 27:46; Eph. 1:17; Col. 1:3; Rev. 3:12). The Father is also His Father (John 20:17; Rom. 15:6; 2 Cor. 1:3; 11:31; Eph. 3:14; 1 Pet. 1:3). Jesus Christ also has a dual relationship with God. He is the Son of God; He is also the holy Servant of God (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30; John13:16; 14:28; Phil.2:7).
Originally, Jesus Christ was a spirit-being like His God and Father. He was the Logos (Word), the one through whom God interacted directly with humans before He came into the world as a human being. See John 1:18. At God’s chosen time, He sent His only begotten Son, in the form of a human being (flesh) into the world to shed His blood so that our sins may be washed away and forgiven.
With a prophetic insight the Psalmist called the Monogenes God in Psa. 45:6. In verse 7 he said God is His God. The thing that made God His God, which He affirmed many times in the New Testament, is the fact that He derived His life from the One and only self-existed Being whose name is YHWH (Yahweh) who is commonly called God, the Father of all beings (Eph. 3:14-15; 4:6).
If the only begotten has someone as His God, how could He be called God?
Two things account for the Godhood of the only begotten Son of God. First, He came out of God, making Him to have the same nature as God Himself. But being of the same nature as God does not confer on Him coequality and coeternity with the Father. Neither did John nor the Jews insinuate such things in John 5:18 and John 10:33. What these verses mean is that He claimed to be a God being by claiming to be the Son of God. They understood His claim to be like that of a pussy saying that its father is a tiger. That would be understood that it is indirectly claiming to be a tiger. This is the sense in which the Jews understood Christ’s claim to being the Son of God. All creation came out of non-existence or nothing. Jesus Christ came out of the self-existent God. That is one factor that makes Him a God-being or God like the Father.
The second thing that qualifies Jesus as a Deity or God is the fact that God created all things through Him (John 1:1-3; Heb. 1:2; Col. 1:15-19). God is the Architect who designed all of creation, but He directed His only begotten Son to do the actual creating as seen in Genesis, chapters 1 and 2. The Son was able to create all things because the Father had given or granted the Son to have life in Himself (John 5:26). The Father is the one who made the Son to be a source or fountain of life just like Himself. It pleased the Father to let the fullness of the Father dwell in the Son (Col. 1:19). And having been the one through whom God effected creation, the Son can rightly be called God like the Father (Psa. 45:6-7; Isa. 9:6; John 1:1). All of creation can honour Him the same way the Father is honoured (John 5:21-23). And there is no sin when He is worshipped like the Father (Heb. 1:6; Rev. 4:10, 11; 5:13, 14).
Notwithstanding the fact that the only begotten Son of God had the same God nature of the Father, He was given life by the Father. He is therefore not self-existed and never coequal with the Father who gave birth to Him (1 Cor. 11:3), a fact He Himself expressly made known when He said, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). God who gave life to our Lord and Saviour is His God (Psa. 45:7; Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 20:17; 2 Cor. 11:31; Eph. 1:3, 17; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rev. 3:12). All these verses of the Bible say that the Father is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In all the places where God is called the Father, the appellation is used to signify the fact that He is the one who gave life to all beings in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. And as we have seen from many Bible passages, Jesus Christ also got His own life from the Father. The Almighty Father who is the only self-existed Being is called God the Father because all beings, apart from Himself, got their existence from Him and He is the one who cares for them.
The biblical use of the title “God the Father” is not in the Trinitarian sense of three Gods, the first one called God the Father, another having the title of God the Son while the third is called God the Holy Spirit.
The Bible has not taught us that the divine and invisible breath of the Almighty God which He uses to do all His divine work is another person or God. The Bible has proved beyond any iota of doubt that there are only two persons in the Godhead – YHWH (Yahweh) and His only begotten Son Yehoshua or Yeshua, for short, which is anglicized as Jesus. There is no third person in the Godhead. The Holy Spirit is the breath and power of God (Luke 1:35; 24:49). It is not a literal being like YHWH and Jesus Christ. This is why there is no single record found in the Bible where anyone either thanked or worshipped the Holy Spirit. The invisible breath of God is anthropomorphically called the “hand” or “finger” of God because it is what God uses to do all His works. See Luke 11:20 (cf. Matt. 12:28); 1 King 18:46; 2 King 3:15; Ezra 7:6, 28; Ezek. 1:3; 3:14; 13:22. And there is abundant proof in the Bible that the two God beings are the Father of all beings and His only begotten Son who later became a human being (flesh) born of a virgin called Miryam.
The Family Identity
What did Paul mean by what he wrote in Eph.3:14-15? Specifically, what does “the whole family in heaven and earth” mean? Here Apostle Paul used the principle of family identity to teach how all beings in heaven and on the earth are part of God’s family (singular). Every family or clan on earth derive their identity from the father of the family or clan. The Jews, for example, derive their identity from Abraham (Matt. 3:9; Luke 1:73). This tradition is strengthened by the fact that Adam was the only human being created by God; the woman was later formed from the man (Gen. 2:21-23). She was therefore not a separate creation from the man but a part of the man. She was an appendage of the man, per se. This may inform why families are named after fathers and not mothers. This may also inform us as to why God is also traditionally called “Father” and not “Mother” even though there is the belief that God, being Spirit, does not possess biological gender. In other words, He is neither male nor female.
In Eph. 3:14-15, Paul made it known that God’s whole family consisting of all living brings who got their existence from Him are in heaven and on earth. God the Father is the source of all lives. All living beings in heaven and on the earth got their existence from Him. This explains why Paul said that every family in heaven and earth is named after Him. So, those in heaven and those on earth belong to the one family of God with regards to deriving their lives or existence from Him. The one source is God. Even though creation was effected through the Son, God is the one who gave Him the divine ability to effect creation. According to Christ Himself, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has GIVEN the Son life to have in himself” (John 5:26 CJB, caps emphasis added). The New Living Translation (NLT) renders the verse this way: “The Father has life in himself, and he has granted that same life-giving power to his Son” (John 5:26 NLT). The power to give life to others was given to the Son by the Father. The Father gave life to the Son by bringing Him out of Himself. He then gave life to all other beings through the Son. The summary of it all is that God is the one who gave life to all beings in heaven and earth, visible and invisible. That is the reason He is called God the Father.
The Trinitarian concept of three Gods who are known as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is biblically unfounded. It is a doctrine of Tritheism. It is an absurdity to say that there are three self-existed, coequal and coeternal Gods and that the three of them make up the one God of the Holy Bible. That absurdity is not found in the entire Holy Bible. Only the deceived will continue to believe in that biblically and historically flawed theory of men.
As said earlier on, the Father and the Son are the two God beings. Is this not a teaching of Ditheism? No. The two principal factors that make Jesus Christ God, as stated in this article, cannot be faulted. It should be noted that the Father and His only begotten Son are not the only ones called God in the Bible. Human beings have been called gods (Psa. 82:6; John 10: 34-35). Satan the Devil is called the gods of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). Carved or moulded images (idols) are also called gods (Exod. 15:11; 18:11; 1 Cor. 8:5; 2 Thes. 2:4). Images are made with human hands (Deut. 4:28; Isa. 40:19; Jer. 10: 3-5; Isa 44: 9-20; 46: 6-7). Idols are lifeless things; they can neither kill nor heal. They can do no evil or good. So, they are no gods at all. Humans and the Devil, are part of God’s creation. They are therefore lesser gods.
As a direct offspring of God, the only begotten Son has the same nature as God. He is therefore a God being. This fact notwithstanding, God the Father is His God and Father. He is not a self-existed being like the Father. Therefore, He is not a coequal God with the Father. His Father, who is His God and Father, is the God of all gods, the Father of all beings, the giver of life to all living things. From the mouth of the Son came the words that the Father is the only God (John 5:44). At another time, He called the Father the only true God (John 17:3). The Father alone is the one God of the Bible. The Son is not coequal with Him. Again, from the mouth of the Son came the words, The Father is greater than I (John 14:28). On many occasions, He called the Father “my God”. We see therefore that the Bible at no time teach the existence of two or three coequal and coeternal Gods’s. Nowhere in the Bible is the teaching found of three self-existed, coequal and coeternal Gods making up the one God. The one God is one single spirit-Being whose name is YHWH (Yahweh). All beings, including the only begotten Son, derived their lives or existence from Him. This is why He is identified as God the Father.
Conclusion
Whenever the Bible uses the term “God the Father,” it is strictly in the sense that He is the giver of life to all beings that ever existed, including our Lord Jesus Christ. It is never in the Trinitarian distortion which says God is the first God in a so-called Trinity, with the other two self-existed, coequal and coeternal Gods named as “God the Son” and “God the Holy Spirit.”
The Trinitarian teaching has been and still remains an unfortunate distortion brought into Christian doctrine by the religious speculators of the second to fifth centuries CE. The religious gamblers, without Scriptural insight, created a God known as “God the Holy Spirit” and gave it to the Christian world. Unfortunately, only a very low percentage of Christians, since the invention of the Trinitarian dogma, have been able to spot the many unbiblical contents of the Trinity, despite the fact that they are palpably obvious.
The true Christian faith is built on the belief in one God who is the Father of all beings (Deut. 6:4; Mal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:6; 1 Tim. 2:5). Our Lord Jesus Christ derived His own life from the Father. The Son did not self-exist. He is called the “Son of God,” NOT “God the Son.” The third Trinitarian God known as “God the Holy Spirit” is a God created by men in Constantinople in 381 CE. No verse of the Bible supports the creedal idea of God’s holy spirit being “Lord and giver of life.” The men who invented the Trinitarian doctrine contradicted many Bible passages because they had very poor insight into the Scriptures. It is obvious that they misunderstood the true meaning of the word “spirit” in Job 33:4 and 2 Cor. 3:6. Whereas the “spirit” in Job 33:4 refers to the life-giving breath of God (cf. Gen. 2:7; Job 27:3),“the Spirit” in 2 Cor. 3:6 refers to Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45). Our Lord Jesus Christ told Nicodemus that “flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6), He made an allusion to God and Himself, both being spirits.
The Bible nowhere teaches that the Spirit of God is a literal person, let alone God. The Trinitarian theory are very serious distortions that have been introduced into Christian doctrines and are causing serious confusion in the minds of too many Christians. And with Satanic wisdom, they told Christians not to logically examine the creeds but to accept them by “blind” faith. That is why many people still believe in the biggest distortion of the doctrine of Christ despite its many falsehoods that are very glaring.
