Our Father

Just two words. Really just one word, since Jesus likely prayed it in Aramaic: אבון or Abun. "Ab" is Father and "un" is our, but a single word. And in that word is an entire religious revolution. Or for your and my purposes, a spiritual revolution.

There were occasions when the Hebrew Bible referred to God as our Father, but Jesus revealed God's fatherhood to be his primary relationship to Jesus, and by extension, to us. With "The Father", "My Father," "Your Father in heaven", and now in the prayer he taught his disciples, "Our Father", Jesus gives us God as Father before and above any other relationship to Him. This was unprecedented.

The God of the Hebrews is called many things, he has many names, but Jesus chose one. God is Father. And, when we look closer, Jesus' life, faith, and teaching all flowed from this one relationship. "the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing." Examine his every interpretation of Hebrew scriptures to the people of his day: it is interpreted through the lens of God's Fatherhood toward us.

First of all it is a sacred and exclusive relationship: there's only one Son and only one Father. But then, he gives us that relationship when he teaches his disciples to pray "Our Father." It's a gift like none other in history. The intimacy, the love, the mutual service and honor between The Father and The Son...are yours: your intimacy, your love, your relationship with the Father of mutual service and honor along with Jesus.

So if Jesus does what he sees the Father doing, you can do what you see Jesus doing, because His Father is yours.

- Nathanael Szobody

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