The Father for the Christians and Jews

 

Another point that stood out to me while reading the New Testament is the way Jesus spoke about God. Throughout his teachings, he consistently directed people to worship and pray to the Father.

For example, in Matthew 6:9, when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he taught them:

"Our Father in heaven..."

He did not instruct them to pray to himself, but rather to direct their prayers to the Father.

Likewise, in Matthew 23:9, Jesus said:

"Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven."

This again emphasizes that there is one heavenly Father who is above all.

The same idea appears in 1 Corinthians 8:6, where Paul writes:

"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we live."

These passages led me to conclude that the New Testament consistently identifies the Father as the one true God. Jesus directs worship to the Father, teaches his followers to pray to the Father, and Paul explicitly says, "There is one God, the Father."

From my understanding, calling God "Father" is not meant to imply a biological relationship. Rather, it describes His care, authority, mercy, and His role as the Creator and Sustainer of all creation. Just as a loving father cares for his family, God cares for His creation—but in a perfect and infinitely greater way.

As I reflected on these passages, I found myself asking an important question: If Jesus repeatedly taught people to worship the Father, pray to the Father, and recognize the Father as the one God, why do many Christians today direct their worship to Jesus himself? This question became one of the central issues in my study of Christian theology and ultimately motivated me to examine more deeply how later Christian doctrines developed in relation to the teachings of Jesus.