Last night, I spoke at a young adults group.

At one point I said, “The first title God ever had was Father.”

I meant it.

But even as I said it, I felt how limited that sentence was.

“First” is a time word. It makes us think in terms of beginnings. Before and after. As if there was a moment when God was not Father, and then later He became Father.

But God has no beginning.

There was never a time when God was not.

There was never a time when the Father was not Father, the Son was not Son, or the Spirit was not Spirit.

This is where our words start to fall apart.

How do you speak about the eternal with language trapped inside time?

How do you describe the infinite with sentences that have beginnings and endings?

Still, we try.

Because this matters.

God is love.

But love is not something God started doing after He created us. Love is not God’s response to loneliness. Love did not begin when there was finally someone else around to love.

Before there was a world, before there were people, before there was sin to forgive or pain to heal, God was already love.

Because God was already relationship.

Father. Son. Spirit.

The Father loving the Son.
The Son receiving and returning that love.
The Spirit sharing in the eternal communion of love.

That means relationship is not a metaphor God borrowed from us.

It is something we learned from Him.

We often assume we call God Father because we understand human fatherhood.

But what if we have that backwards?

What if fatherhood did not begin on earth and then get projected onto heaven?

What if fatherhood began in God, and every good expression of it on earth is only an echo?

God is not like a father because we understand fatherhood.

Fatherhood exists because God is Father.

Connection exists because God is communion.

Relationship exists because God has never been alone.

That is why we are made for love.

That is why isolation hurts.

That is why belonging feels like oxygen.

We were created by relationship, from relationship, for relationship.

And this is what Jesus came to reveal.

Not merely that God is powerful.

Not merely that God is holy.

Not merely that God can create, command, judge, provide, forgive, and rescue.

All of that is true.

But Jesus came revealing God as Father.

And not Father as a distant religious idea.

Abba.

Near.

Known.

Loved.

Jesus did not call God Father as a comforting metaphor.

He called God Father because He is the Son.

And then He brought us into His own relationship.

He taught us to pray, “Our Father.”

He gave us the Spirit, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Not as outsiders pretending to be children.

But as sons and daughters brought into the life of the Son.

So maybe Father was not God’s first title.

Maybe that still sounds too small.

Maybe this is better:

Father is God’s eternal name in relationship.

Before God was Creator to creation, He was Father to the Son.

Before He was Redeemer to sinners, He was Son to the Father.

Before He was Comforter to the needy, He was Spirit to the Father.

And now, in Jesus, by the Spirit, we are reminded that He is, and has always been - Father to us.

Not because we earned our way in.

Not because we performed well enough.

But because the Son came to reveal the truth of Our Father with us.

That is the wonder.

The gospel is not God becoming loving.

The gospel is God opening our eyes to the love that has always been.

And somehow, by grace, we are welcomed in.

[The doctrine of the Trinity is as central to Orthodox theology as it is mysterious and mind-boggling. Grace for where I may be wrong. Holy Spirit lead us into all truth. ]

See you next Friday.