Is God our King or our Father?
There are times in our lives where we can sense that a message or a sentence was meant for us. As if God Himself put a sovereign spotlight on it. I’ve had a few experiences like that when I’ve read the Bible, listened to a sermon, or read a book where something was so timely, so pertinent to what I was dealing with, that it just struck me. What a gift these moments are, may we be thankful to God for them! He longs to instruct us, guide us, and grow us! This is a good reminder for us to stay in the Word.
God as Father
I’ve been reading Being God’s Friend by Spurgeon over the last week and in the quote posted below, the divine spotlight landed. For the past year of my life, I’ve been diving deeply into what it means to know God as a father. I’ve studied, read books, and meditated for hours on the kindness, the compassion, the tenderness, and the love of God our father. I’ve explored the adoptive imagery so often used for Christians, which is such a beautiful treasure. That God in His love has adopted the unlovable and rebellious! But was I excluding other necessary truths about God in this discovery about God’s heart?
Unbalanced views of God
Most of our wrong thoughts of God are not untrue thoughts of God, they are simply true thoughts of God taken to the extreme. It is not wrong to think of God as all that we have listed above. He is all of that and more, but we do begin to be unbalanced when that is all we think of God. Just as the generation before us might have seen God as more of a master, Lord, and Ruler. Those are not wrong thoughts, but they are if it is all you think of God.
As I’ve been taking this deep dive into the father heart of God, it has healed many wounds in my own soul. I’ve seen the side of God in the scriptures that have made me fall in love with Him more than I ever had. And yet, in reading the quote listed below, I was reminded of the truth, God is both Father and King. We must live in the tension of both of those to relate to Him properly.
Finding the balance
There is a holy familiarity with God that cannot be enjoyed too much; but there is also a flippant familiarity with God that cannot be abhorred too much. The Lord is King. His will is not to be questioned. His every word is law… Because we have faith in God as Lord of all, we gladly pay Him our homage, and we desire in all things to say, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10).
- Charles Spurgeon, Being God’s Friend
What does Spurgeon mean when He says, that there is a holy familiarity with God that we cannot enjoy too much? He means that we are to properly revere Him as King while also knowing Him as friend. It’s this mixture of the holy and the familiarity. For a peasant to say he is familiar with the King is blasphemous. And yet, as God’s children, we have that right as his children. We can know God as a friend, as a Father. But we must never treat that familiarity as flippant. God is still King. Ruler. Lord. Master. Sovereign. Creator. Author. Alpha and Omega. And we are rebellious sinners.
As beautiful as it is that we have the opportunity to be familiar with God, we must never allow that familiarity to become flippant. We must let the gift of familiarity be counter-balanced by the reminder that God is Holy. What God says goes. We bow to Him, not the other way around. This was modeled in Jesus’ prayer when He said: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”. Has our focus on the more tender side of God made us forget that God is also King? Are we too flippant with God? Have we forgotten what it means to call Him Lord?
God as King
The Prophet Isaiah tells us of His encounter with the King, and it is helpful in re-balancing our image of God: “Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me!”
Woe is me was the prophets response in seeing God. Notice that this understanding of His unworthiness did not drive him away from God, but it did produce respect and reverence. This reminds us of a simple, yet humbling truth: we deserve nothing from God but wrath.
The fact that God is a Father to us does not cancel out that He is also King. In God, we have a beautiful mixture of both. In focusing so deeply on the father’s heart of God, I felt as if I had moved a little too far on the spectrum. I had lost some of the weight of God’s holiness. I had become a little more lax in my thoughts on obedience and faith. That when God says “do not eat of that tree” I am to say, “Yes sir”.
The Sweet Paradox
Only in God can we find the mixture of things that seems so difficult for us to comprehend on earth. We have a hard time grasping that God could be both of these. Tender and tough. King and Father. But it is true, He is always the perfect mixture of both. He is both able to kneel on the ground to play with children and able to command obedience. Able to pour out His love, and have fatherly displeasure over our sin.
I believe this seeming paradox actually makes God sweeter to us, more beautiful. What kind of King allows his people to call on Him at any moment? What King says: “One day you will dine with me forever”? What King would come down and live the life of a servant and die for His people? King Jesus. Shouldn’t this produce in us a heart of obedience?
The Christian life is about wrestling with the balance of these two truths. We shouldn’t see God as only King, or we become legalistic and think he is cold in His affections towards us. But we also shouldn’t see God as only Father, having no regard for our sin and disobedience. God loves us where we are, but He also loves us too much to keep us there. God demands obedience.
Do you properly relate to God as both Father and King? To answer that question, look to where you run when you fail. If away from God, you aren’t seeing Him as Father. Conversely, examine your zeal for obedience to see if you see Him as King. We know we are finding that balance when we do not allow the Holiness of God to condemn us, but it encourages us to treasure God in obedience. The Kingship of God should never lead you away from God. Because remember, this King is also our tender father.
Treasuring God with you,
Josh.
