Everlasting Father

By Zach Chronley 

Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father…”

Our Fathers

No other relationship more heavily affects our view of God as a Father than our earthly dads. We tend to bring our own experience with our fathers and apply it to God. If our fathers acted as disciplinarians, then we view God as one that swiftly deals correction. Despite what we’ve read about the love of God, he ends up in our minds looking more like Zeus, ready to blast us with a bolt of lightning if we disappoint him. If our fathers were absent, then we view God as distant and unreliable. If our fathers were kind but undependable, we find ourselves less likely to want to rely on God. Even if we have a healthy and loving relationship with our earthly fathers, at some point, we have all been let down by the men that raised us. 

Isaiah prophesied that Jesus, the Son, would be given the name Everlasting Father. As Paul wrote about Jesus in Philippians 2:9, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” He and the Father are one, and God gave Jesus the name of Everlasting Father by Isaiah because we have been adopted into the family of God through him. But for many of us, the concept of fatherhood is emotionally charged. 

We spend a lot of our lives trying to either impress our fathers or show them up, prove that we’re worthy of being a member of the family, or prove that we’re more than they thought we could be. Is this the kind of father we have in God: irritable, unpredictable, and someone we need to please? Far from it. The Bible gives us a detailed profile of God’s nature and character as our father: Jesus (John 14:9).

Jesus is the exact imprint of the Father (Heb 1:3, Col 1:15). When we see Jesus, we know the character of our heavenly Father. When we see Jesus caring for the outcasts, the sick, and the hated of their day, we witness the heart that the Father has for us. Jesus himself tells the story of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep behind to seek after the one sheep that has gone astray. That is our Everlasting Father. We see Jesus weeping with the hurting, blessing the poor, and feeding the hungry. Jesus gives us access to the Father’s love and shows us the Father’s love in action. 

Reimagining Fatherhood

Similarly, as parents, we image God to our children in lasting ways for good or ill, which is doubly true for fathers. As a new father myself, I can feel this weight of responsibility. Even more than what we say, how we live our lives teaches our children so much about what we value. How we care for and react to our children in success and failure profoundly influence developing minds. To demonstrate to our children what a loving father looks like is a tremendous blessing for them and us. 

This doesn’t mean we never discipline our children, far from it. God does discipline us; in fact, his correction is proof that we are his (Prov 3:12). After all, we don’t discipline our neighbors’ kids. God does not punish us to make us fear him but corrects us to put us on the path towards abundant life (1 John 4:18). As earthly parents, this is all much easier said than done. Inevitably, we are too imperfect to live up to such a holy God, so we must all be ready to admit our failures to our children. We are not perfect and should not pretend to be.

Despite how we may feel about carrying the weight of imaging God to our children, we are actually just pointers, not the point. The most important role we have is to show our children Jesus, not focus on ourselves. We also model being a child of God to our children, just as Jesus showed us faithful obedience (Phil 2:8-9). The real example is Christ. Jesus shows us our true Father.

The Eternally Consistent Father

God, our Father, holds headship and responsibility for his family. God took the initiative in sending his Son to rescue us. We can obey him because we submit to his headship. He has shown himself worthy of our respect. And we know that he holds the responsibility for the outcome when we honor him. Our eternal salvation is in his hands, and no one can take us from him (John 10:28). 

As a Father, his character is eternally consistent. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). His perfect love for us is never-ending. Nothing we could ever do could ever cut us off from his love. God is a Father that provides for his family. We can go to him with all our requests, trusting him with our necessities. While many of us will bury our earthly fathers, because of Jesus, God is our Everlasting Father;  he will be our Father forever. The promise of being adopted into God’s family is that we will never be without a loving Father present with us. 

For some of us, this may be a difficult concept. We may have never known our earthly father or, worse, known him to be evil or vindictive. Despite how our temporal relationship may have negatively colored our understanding of what it means to have a heavenly Father, part of Jesus coming to earth was to restore the relationship with us who were lost. God has shown his character through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and he is still working to heal your broken trust.

If you struggle because you feel you have failed as a father, God can restore relationships even if it were true. God’s mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas 2:13). Trust that your Everlasting Father is watching them even if you can’t restore your relationship to what it once was. If you can make amends, do so quickly! God can redeem years of damage (Joel 2:25-32).

Jesus has been given the Father’s name to signify this relationship formed through the work of his life, death, and resurrection. Without his atoning sacrifice, we would still be eternally separated from God, truly fatherless. Jesus paved the way towards our adoption by defeating death and being the firstborn among many. Through him, we have access to be called the sons of God. Through him, we have an Everlasting Father.

1 John 1:3—

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”