I Believe in God the Father (The Creed, Part 2)

[This devotion is part of our series on The Apostles’ Creed, you can find all the videos in there series on our Apostles’ Creed Page. The devotions will be added as they are posted.]

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I believe in God the Father Almighty. Just a few years ago, a Lutheran church down the road from our congregation made national news when on Sunday morning, they confessed their faith by using the words of the Sparkle Creed. This creed had phrases like “I believe in a nonbinary god,” or “I believe that Jesus had two fathers.”

When you look at creeds like the Sparkle Creed, you have to ask the question has God created humankind or does humankind create God? And what’s interesting is that question divides a lot of Christianity today. In fact, most major mainline denominations would say that people create God. That God is just a reflection of the values of your community. And those same people would look at the Bible that you and I know, and they would say that that Bible was written by heterosexual men who wanted to reflect a god that reflects their values. And so today they would say that it’s their duty to swing the pendulum the other direction, to claim that God is a mother god and that he is a non-binary god.

But like all conspiracy theories, this one falls short for lack of evidence. When you look at the Holy Scriptures, whether it’s the Old Testament or the New Testament, there’s no evidence that the text was tampered with. In fact, what we see is that there was such a sacred treatment of the text as it was passed down from generation to generation it was preserved so that you and I can be certain that the Bible you have today is God’s unaltered Word. And what God’s Word clearly says, whether you’re looking at Old Testament Hebrew or New Testament Greek, is that God always uses the masculine pronouns he, him. And that God, the first person of the Trinity, always identifies as your Father in heaven.

In a culture that is so sensitive about using the right pronouns, we should show God respect and use the pronouns he identifies in his Word. It’s true, when you look at our world today, though, there’s a lot of brokenness, a lot of hurt families, a lot of situations where maybe a father wasn’t there. And the answer to this isn’t running the opposite direction and turning your back on fatherhood, but rather the answer is embracing the real God, the real Father in heaven. The answer isn’t changing God to fit the narrative of my life, but looking to see how my life conforms to His Word. And what the Bible teaches us about my life, your life is that we’re all lost children who wandered away. The God the Father in heaven loved you so much, he sent his son to rescue you, to redeem you, to bring you back to him, to restore you and hold you fast in his arms. He is your Father in heaven. Amen.