Part 2: Jesus Called God His “Abba,” Father

Here is a mystery in the story of Jesus that the historian meets again and again. On the one hand, Jesus invited the people of Israel to come to know God as a loving Father. God was their Creator, Redeemer, Bridegroom, Husband, Shepherd, and above all their King. But now Jesus taught them to address God in prayer in a new way that only rarely occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, as their own Father: “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Part 2: Jesus Called God His “Abba,” Father

By Robert Stackpole, STD

In this weekly web series, Dr. Robert Stackpole, emeritus director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, leads us step-by-step through the life of the Founder of Christianity, from Bethlehem to Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, we pause to consider in-depth the historical debate over the gospel stories of the virginal conception and nativity of Jesus, his message of the Kingdom, his embrace of persecution and death on the Cross, and his glorious bodily resurrection from the dead. Finally, we plunge into the great mystery of the Incarnation, and show how it actually shines through the whole gospel story from beginning to end.

After Herod’s death, with the danger past, Mary and Joseph returned with Jesus to their homeland. The evangelist St. Luke tells us: “And Jesus increased wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2:52).

This is almost all that historians know from a period of almost 20 years of his life. Yet we can exercise our historical imagination a little here. For all the evidence from His later life and teachings suggests a thoroughly peasant background. Jesus speaks of a woman baking bread, of a sower who went out to plant seed, of a man who built his house upon the rock, and of a shepherd looking for his lost sheep. His parables are alive with the wonder of the everyday and the commonplace.

One anonymous Christian author composed the following prayer, which is an imaginative, but not implausible attempt to see Jesus in those hidden years:

Jesus, my Lord and Brother, in your youth you spent many years hidden in God. With silence and devotion you lived in the small town of Nazareth doing simple work as a carpenter, helping your mother Mary around the house, listening to the word of God in the synagogue, and wandering from time to time on the hillsides by the Sea of Galilee, to be alone with the God of Israel, to adore him, and to meditate on his Word. How many times you must have taken a deep breath, and with thanksgiving prayed, “Speak, Father, your Son is listening” — and all around you and within you was silence: the silence that enabled you to see all creation and all of humanity as beloved in the eyes of God.

Baptism
When Jesus first appeared on the public scene, He was about 30 years old. He came to the Jordan River to be baptized by the prophet John, a wild character who wore camel’s hair clothing, and lived in the desert on locusts and wild honey. John was clearly cut from the same cloth as some of the Old Testament prophets; he called the Israelites to give up their sinful ways, repent, and gain a fresh start by being baptized in the river Jordan.

Instead of humbly confessing His sins, however, Jesus had a unique experience at His baptism. He felt the nearness of God his Father, and a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit like the gentle descent of a dove. And he heard a voice saying to him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased” (Lk 3:21-22).

In short, the Holy Spirit made clear and explicit what Jesus had already experienced in the depths of his heart all His life (see Lk 2:49): that God alone was His true Father, and He was God’s only Son. As a result, for His entire life and ministry, He would never refer to God as “our Father” in a way that included himself, but always either as “Abba, dear Father,” or as “My Father,” and “your Father.” 

The Son of God
Then Jesus went out into the desert to fast and pray, and to wrestle with what had been revealed to Him. In the midst of struggle against demonic temptations, He must have begun to see, with ever greater clarity, what His Father was calling him to do.

Thus, the gospels imply that Jesus truly saw Himself as “the Son of God.” But what can that mean?

On the one hand, this phrase in the Psalms refers to the kings of Israel (e.g. Ps 2:6-9), and in the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole, it might apply also to the Messiah, the true Son of David anointed by the Spirit, who would one day reign as king over all of the People of God. But according to the gospels Jesus rarely spoke of Himself, or even alluded to Himself in those terms, as if to do so could only lead to a profound misunderstanding of His identity and mission. 

Here is a mystery in the story of Jesus that the historian meets again and again. On the one hand, Jesus invited the people of Israel to come to know God as a loving Father. For them God had always been Adonai, the Lord (a title used in place of God’s ineffable name Yahweh from Ex 3:14); God was their Creator, Redeemer, Bridegroom, Husband, Shepherd, and above all their King.

A new kind of Father
But now Jesus taught them to address God in prayer in a new way that only rarely occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, as their own Father: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Fountain of life and source of all radiance, God the Father is the one who clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds of the air, Jesus said. He is the holy and infinite Father who calls all people into one covenant family, so that they might live and pray together as children of one God (Mt 6:9, 12:46-50). Jesus taught that God is a wise and compassionate Father who “knows what you need before you ask.”

If an earthly father knows how to give good things to His children, Jesus said, “How much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Mt 7:11). He knows the inmost hearts of His sons and daughters, and judges them according to whether or not they do his righteous will, yet He seeks out His wayward children with an offer of forgiveness, just like the father of the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable. When his son was coming home, but still a long way off, that father “had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (The phrase translated as “had compassion” here is the Greek phrase splagna eleos, which literally means “had mercy arising from his guts”!).

This is the kind of Father — God that Jesus invited all who heard him to come to know, and personally experience.

And yet, as Jesus said, they could only do so through Him, because their heavenly Father was His own Father in a unique and unsurpassable way: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:27; Lk 10:22; cf. Mt 24:36; Mk 12:6 and 13:32).

Here lies a secret about His identity that in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) [1]  Jesus never publicly or explicitly reveals, although it permeates His words and deeds. In Matthew and Luke, however (and later in John), we are tipped off by the gospel writers right from the start about the nature of that secret. …

Next: Part 3: Born in Bethlehem, Son of David.
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Note
[1] “Syn-optic” literally means “to see together.” Matthew, Mark and Luke are called by scholars “the synoptic gospels” because they generally see and tell the life story of Jesus in the same way.
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