Posted at Reformation Scotland:
When Jesus taught us to pray to “our Father who is in heaven,” the relationship with God this implies gives us a huge advantage in prayer. Certainly we should always begin prayer with awe-filled thoughts of God. As He is “in heaven,” we should keep in mind His greatness and majesty. Yet at the same time, as He is “our Father,” we should fill our thoughts with His goodness and mercy. Thomas Manton (clerk to the Westminster Assembly) mentioned some of these points when he started discussing the Lord’s Prayer. In the following updated extract, Manton explains in more detail how God is a Father to His children in Christ, and what this means for us when we pray.In what sense is God a Father?
The first person of the Godhead is called God the Father. He is Father either with relation to Christ, or to us.
With respect to us, the first person is not only the Father of Christ, but also our Father. “I go to my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17). Those who want to pray rightly must address themselves to God, as a Father, in Jesus Christ.
Our business is mainly with the first person, with whom Christ intercedes for us. “We have an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the Righteous” (1 John 2:1). Before whom does He appear? Before the Father. And it is the Father to whom we direct our prayers (though not excluding the other persons). “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:14). Though it is not unlawful to pray to Christ, or to the Holy Spirit, usually Christian worship is terminated on God the Father, as being chief in the mystery of redemption. So it is said, “Through him, by one Spirit, we have access to the Father” (Eph. 2:18). We come to Him through Christ, as the meritorious cause (He has procured permission for us), and by the Spirit, as the efficient cause (He gives us a heart to come), and we come to the Father, as the ultimate object of Christian worship.
A Father by creation
There is another distinction to make. God is a Father to mankind, either, in a more general consideration, by creation, or in a more special regard, by adoption.
There is some advantage in prayer, to look on God as our Father by virtue of creation — to consider that we can come to Him as the work of His hands, and beseech Him that He will not allow us to perish (Isa. 64:8). There is a general mercy that God has for all His creatures, and therefore, as He gave us rational souls, and fashioned us in the womb, we may come to Him, and say, “Lord, thou hast made us, do us good, do not forsake us.” It gives us confidence in the power of God. He who made us out of nothing is able to keep, preserve, and supply us, when all things fail, and in the midst of all dangers. Believers are able to make use of this common relationship (see 1 Pet. 4:19; also Psa. 124:8).
A Father by adoption
More especially, there is a particular sort of people to whom God is a Father in Christ, that is, to believers (John 1:12). In their natural state and condition they were children of wrath, and slaves to sin and Satan, yet when they are willing to welcome and receive Christ into their hearts, they are allowed to call God “Father.”
They are permitted to have child-like communion with Him, and run to Him in all difficulties, and lay open their needs to Him. When we are ill at ease, and in any difficulty, this is the privilege of our adoption, that we have a God to go to — we may go to our Father, and plead with Him.
Adoption is an act of free grace, by which we who were aliens and strangers, servants to sin and Satan, are, in and by Christ, made sons and daughters of God, and reckoned and treated accordingly, to all intents and purposes. This is a great and special privilege, given to God’s own children, by virtue of their relationship with Christ.