WHEN JESUS CALLED GOD ABBA OR DADDY
Jesus called God Abba or Daddy. Only a God of
absolute love - by implication a loving God is Abba-Father - and who is greater
than anything can deserve all our worship or adoration.
Christianity uses Father for God in two different ways. God is being and this
being can be called Father] God is Trinity: three persons in one being and one
of the persons is called the Father.
Christianity says that if Jesus is God then he is to be worshipped as Father
even though he is not God the Father.
Does "God’s Word", the Bible, teach us to worship Jesus like that? If we look at
how it says God raised Jesus to an eternity of glory and majesty and exalted him
as Lord and Christ forever to his right hand we will find the answer. We will
look at the writings of Paul - his epistle to the Romans in particular.
What is the worship of the Father? The Old Testament Scriptures do not emphasise
God being Father and never even mention it! The New Testament emphasises the
notion that God is indeed Father as in daddy. Abba - the word Jesus used
means daddy.
For one that said you need the scriptures, Jesus was not living up to that here.
Anyway, should Jesus Christ be worshipped as God as he is
throughout Christendom? We will look at this issue. But for now we will note
that it is odd that God never declared himself Father in the Old Testament. That
would have been outstanding preparation for the coming of Jesus. The thought
that God is Father was only made up as an afterthought for people liked it.
God is said to be adored as Father or he is the maker of all things and is our
Father in the sense that he has made us. Christians believe that he is Father
and Parent in the sense that he has also adopted us as his heirs and children.
That is rubbish. A father does not make us out of nothing. And if we are adopted
God is not really our Father.
God is Lord and is love according to Christendom. If true, then he deserves or
should get all our love. If Jesus is Lord, if he is love then he is God and so
he is entitled to be worshipped as God the Father is worshipped. If God made all
things and if Jesus made all things then they deserve equal devotion because
they are greater than all things.
Prayers are always addressed to the Father through Jesus. The Church today tends
to focus on praying to the Father first and foremost, then Jesus. The Holy
Spirit is often forgotten. How does this fit the doctrine of the Trinity which
is that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal in glory and majesty? One
answer is that to honour one person of the Trinity is to honour them all for the
three persons are one being - one God.
The best understanding is that these things about God being daddy and three persons is a human invention. Praying through Jesus as the early Church did reflects a tradition that Jesus was God's messenger but not God himself. God being a mediator to God makes no sense.