WHAT IS OR was your relationship to your father like? Some people love and respect their fathers, and enjoy being in their company. Others despise them, leaving home as soon as possible and cutting ties. But most people are probably somewhere between. There are things we like and don’t like about our dads. There are times when we laugh together and reminisce about our favorite family stories. And there are times we fight, whether it takes the form of a screaming match or icy silence.

And some of us can’t say that we’ve really had a relationship to our father. We may not know who our father is. Or we may know, but he was physically absent as we grew up, having nothing to do with us. Or he was present physically, but absent emotionally, always preoccupied with other priorities, like work or even an addiction.

My father, who died several years ago, was present throughout my childhood. But as a man of his generation and culture, he saw his role in the family as being the breadwinner, which he did faithfully. Raising children was my mother’s responsibility. I have no memories of my father ever playing with me or reading to me, as I did with my own children. And he had no hand in our discipline, unless he lost his temper. Not surprisingly, then, we didn’t have much of a personal relationship later in life either. I didn’t dislike him — most people thought of him as a “nice guy.” But I can’t honestly say that I ever looked up to him either.

So again, what would you say about your relationship to your father?

I ask this because this is a sticking point for some people. While Jesus invites his followers to pray to their heavenly Father, not everyone will receive that invitation the same way; the word “father” carries too many negative associations.

What does Jesus mean when he instructs his followers to pray to God as their heavenly Father? As we saw in the previous post, we need to remember that he’s already referred to God this way more than once in the sermon, so in part, he’s inviting his hearers to pray to the God he’s already described, the one who wants us to grow up to be like him.

And though Matthew uses the generic Greek word for “father” here, Jesus himself probably used the Aramaic word Abba, as he would later in his anguished prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). In saying this, though, let me be clear about one thing: despite what you may have heard in a sermon somewhere, biblical scholars generally agree that Abba does not mean “Daddy.” It would be fairer to translate it as “Dad,” which could be used neutrally even by adults who want little to do with their fathers.

Still, as I suggested before, this is the Son of God inviting us to call his Father our Father. What kind of father-son relationship was that? Read the gospel of John, where the theme of fatherhood stands out in bold relief. In John 3:35, for example, John the Baptist tells his disciples:

The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

Later, when the Jewish leaders persecuted Jesus for working on the Sabbath and for calling God his Father, Jesus replied,

Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. (John 5:19-20a)

And of course, there is the bold statement for which his opponents wanted to stone him for blasphemy:

I and the Father are one. (John 10:30)

To pray “our Father,” therefore, is to come to God with the mindset of Jesus, to come in a spirit of intimacy to a Father who loves us.

At the same time, however, we pray not just to our Father, but to our Father “in heaven.” This is why it’s important not to read Jesus as inviting us to call God “Daddy,” the way a little child might. Children are inherently self-centered. It takes years for them not only to learn to see things from other people’s point of view, but to even realize that there is another point of view. Children who run to their daddy do so because of who their father is to them, not who their father is in himself.

But the God to whom we pray is “in heaven.” He is transcendent. He is sovereign. He is Lord.

There’s a tension inherent, therefore, in calling God our heavenly Father. On the one hand, we approach God as we would a loving rather than a distant or angry Father. Jesus doesn’t teach his followers to pray, “Our King which art in heaven,” but our “Father.” And yet, on the other hand, we cannot forget as we pray that our Father is indeed the Sovereign One.

We might say something similar about our understanding of grace. We cannot understand the depth, the miracle of divine mercy unless we also understand God’s justice. God isn’t merely a tolerant or bemused Father who sees us sin, chalks it up with a sigh to immaturity, then looks the other way. Sin is a violation of everything that the world and humanity were created to be, and a serious offense to a holy God. A price must be paid to reestablish justice — and in mercy, God pays it through the sacrifice of his beloved Son.

So whether we pray the Lord’s Prayer itself, or use other words inspired by the prayer, let’s make sure we have our minds and hearts aligned with the teaching of Jesus. We don’t pray to impress other people, and we don’t pray merely by rote. Rather, we begin by remembering that we are coming into the presence of a Father who loves us deeply, a Father who is so involved and aware that he already knows what we need before we ask for it. And at the same time, we remember that our Father is in heaven, transcendent and sovereign over all creation.

If we can hold both things together, we won’t take for granted what a gracious privilege it is to call God our Father.