The Apostles’ Creed: God The FatherSample

The Father as King: Acts 4:25-26

In the ancient Near-East, it was common for people to refer to human kings as their fathers, and for kings to refer to their people as their children. This language is often reflected in Scripture, as well. For example, the Israelites referred to David as their father because he had been their king. Of course, some of the Israelites were direct descendants of David, so he was their forefather in a literal sense. But when the nation as a whole referred to David as their father, they meant that he was their king. Consider Mark 11:10, where the crowds cried out in this way:

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! (Mark 11:10).

Here, David’s fatherhood over Israel is explicitly connected to his kingship. Similarly, in Acts 4:25-26, the church praised God with these words:

You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.” (Acts 4:25-26).

Once again, David was called the father of Israel because he was the Lord’s Anointed One, the king who sat on the Lord’s throne and led Israel in battle against enemy nations. But why did the ancients refer to kings as their fathers?

Kings in the ancient world called themselves “fathers” because they were portraying themselves as paternalistic, that is, they were caring for their people, taking care of their needs, protecting them and those kinds of things. Now, in reality, most of that was just propaganda because kings in the ancient world, for the most part served themselves rather than serving their people. But at the same time, when God revealed himself to Israel, he used this common way of thinking about kings as fathers. And in the case of God being our father, our royal father, our imperial father, it’s not propaganda, it’s true. God takes care of us. He provides for us. He protects us like a father would. So he’s the father of his entire empire, the father of his kingdom. – Dr. Richard Pratt, Jr