Why God Revealed Himself As Father And Not Mother

In the previous two posts I wrestled with what our Lord Jesus meant by telling us to pray to our Father who is in heaven or in the heavens. That still leaves us with the question of why we pray to our Father and not to our Father/Mother who is in heaven. A couple years ago, while visiting a small Lutheran congregation here in Texas (not Missouri Synod), I heard the pastor lead the congregation in just such a prayer to our Father / Mother ! Needless to say, I abruptly stopped praying with him at that moment.

In a search of the Internet for help in explaining why some of us Lutherans (certainly not all), Roman Catholics, many Evangelicals and the Orthodox churches all agree that God is our Father and not our Mother, I came across a very good article  by Mark Brumley, editor of Ignatius Press's Modern Apologetics Library and the Managing Editor of The Catholic Faith Magazine. I encourage you to read it carefully and prayerfully: WHY GOD IS FATHER AND NOT MOTHER

In the article he corrects

• false claims behind the idea that in calling God Father Jesus was in fact "historically conditioned."
• that we can only speak of God in metaphors, understood as convenient, imaginative ways to describe our experience of God, rather than God Himself. 
• that Christ's teaching and practice compel us to accept inclusive or gender-neutral language for God, even though Christ Himself never explicitly called for it. 

 He goes on to tell us

• why the Bible uses masculine language to begin with
• what the difference is between metaphor and analogy
• what the difference is between fatherhood and motherhood
• why this difference is crucial for the Fatherhood of God
• what is the distinction between God's transcendence and His immanence
• how the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God is the Father

His final section deals with why we rejoice to call God our Father, as Jesus taught us. I quote from his article at length. His use of the Biblical word grace is questionable. As a Lutheran I would have to rewrite it, but his point about the Father willing that all be saved is important. Read the entire article yourself and draw your own conclusions.

 Fatherhood of God by Divine Adoption and Regeneration in Christ

We come now to God and humanity. Is God the Father of all mankind? In a sense He is, because He created us and, as we have seen, to create is like fathering a child. Yet God also made rocks, trees and the Crab Nebula. How is He Father of man but not also Father of them? Granted, humans are spiritual, as well as material, beings, which means they are rational beings—capable of knowing and choosing. In this, they more closely resemble God than the rest of visible creation. Nevertheless, human beings, as such, do not share God’s own life, as children share the life of their fathers. Thus, we are not by nature "children of God" in that sense, but mere creatures. And, as a result of sin, we are fallen creatures at that.

Yet Jesus tells His followers to address God as Father (Mt 6:9-13). He says the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Lk 11:13) and that the Spirit of their Father will speak through them in times of persecution (Mt 10:20). He tells His disciples to be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful (Lk 6:36). He speaks of being "born from above" through baptism and the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:5). On Easter Sunday, He directs Mary Magdalen to tell the other disciples, "I am going to my Father and your Father . . ." (Jn 20:17).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, God is also depicted as Father to Christians. Through Jesus Christ we are more than mere creatures to God; by faith in Him we become the children of God (1 Jn 5:1), sharing in Jesus’ own Divine Sonship, albeit in a created way (Rom 8:29). God is our Father because He is Jesus’ Father (Jn 1:12). What God is for Jesus by nature, He is for us by grace, Divine Adoption (Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:4-7; Eph 1:5-6), and regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5-7).

Behind this language of Divine Adoption and regeneration is the idea that God is our Father because He is the "source" or "origin" of our new life in Christ. He has saved us through Christ and sanctified us in the Spirit. This is clearly more than a metaphor; the analogy with earthly fatherhood is obvious. God is not merely like a father for Christ’s followers; He is really their Father. In fact, God’s Fatherhood is the paradigm of fatherhood. This is why Paul writes in Eph 3:14-15, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named . . ." (RNAB). It is not that God the Father is earthly fatherhood writ large; rather, earthly fatherhood is the faint copy of Divine Fatherhood. This is why Jesus says, "Call no man on earth father. For you have but one Father in heaven" (Mt 23:9). In other words, no earthly father should be seen as possessing the fullness of patriarchal authority; that belongs to God the Father. All earthly fatherhood is derivative from Him.

Thus, God is not Father of those who have not received the grace of justification and redemption in the same way as those who have. Yet they remain potentially His children, since the Father wills the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and makes sufficient grace necessary for salvation available to all. God desires that all men become children of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, hence the universal mission of the Church (Mt 28:19-20; Mk 16:15; Acts 1:8). We can speak, then, in general terms of God as the Father of all men, inasmuch as He created all men to be His children by grace and makes available to them the means of salvation.