December 19, 2025
- credford5
- 55 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Be honest. When you were a kid, how did you picture God? You probably don’t need to take long to conjure up the image. It might be a similar way that you view him today. Long white beard? Flowing robes? Sitting on a throne? A warm, soft light? Is he serious, smiling, tender, or scornful? Perhaps most informative and shaping of our view of God… how does he see you when you imagine him? Is he happy, affectionate, aloof, disappointed, angry? You see, our view of God profoundly shapes our relationship with and experience of God. How we see God is crucial!
We’ve been looking at Isaiah’s prophesy which is a direct foretelling of Jesus’s arrival. Here, he gives us four Messianic titles of the God who comes to dwell with us.
Isaiah 9:6-7.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Everlasting Father
There are a handful of references in the Old Testament of the Bible where God is called “Father.” However, the term is generally used to describe God’s relationship to Israel as a whole, not necessarily to individuals. The Old Testament focuses mainly on God’s relationship with his people being one of undying love and devotion but also one of extreme reverence and fear. Because of God’s holy nature, the Jews would never speak the name of God, Yahweh, nor would they write it! For the Jewish people it was a relationship which bore some amount of distance between the Creator and the creation.
Jesus gave us a different view of God. A new view which invited the creation to have a holy yet intimate relationship with the Creator.
If you think about it, Jesus (and for that matter, the Bible) could have honed in on a variety of different terms and descriptions for our relationship with God. God could have been a boss and we, his employees. We exist for a productive purpose; He gives us good things (wages) if we perform and admonishes us if we don’t (even firing us… hell?... if we don’t perform well). God could have been a king and we, his subjects. The king provides protection and care for his subjects so long as they are loyal. And while the Bible is littered with references of royal imagery of God as being King (which of course he is), this isn’t the image Jesus himself depended upon most.
Jesus’s favorite descriptor of God is as “Father.” Jesus taught his followers to pray to God as “our Father…” in Matthew 6. In Mark 14 Jesus calls out to God with the name abba – an intimate term used by Jewish children when speaking to their dad. In Romans 8 Paul encourages us to cry out to God with the same intimate language. The most powerful of Jesus’s illustrations of God’s relationship to us is his parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The Father joyfully goes out to his sons (both the rebellious younger son and the self-righteous older son) inviting them with love and compassion to come into his house. Jesus re-defined for us who God is and his relationship to us. We aren’t his subjects, his employees, or his slaves. We are his sons and daughters. We approach our Heavenly Dad’s throne with confidence and assurance and intimacy knowing that he wants us to come to him and that he delights in giving his kids good gifts!
Timothy Keller says this in his book, Hidden Christmas:
"Jesus Christ has come from that eternal, supernatural world that we sense is there, that our hearts know is there even though our heads say no. At Christmas he punched a hole between the ideal and the real, the eternal and the temporal, and came into our world…"
Though it’s incomprehensible for our human minds, Jesus is both Son and Everlasting Father. He brings the Father to us and us to the Father. When we look at Jesus, we see God. How do you view God? This is the same God who looks on us with love, compassion, joy, gladness, and forgiveness --- eternally. He has never and will never have any other feeling or view of you!
Looking forward to Christmas,
Nathan
Nathan Hinkle
Lead Pastor