In | God Our Father

You don’t have to wait until the New Testament to hear that God is your Father. This is prominent in the Gospel of John, but long before the birth of Jesus it is first mentioned in Deuteronomy 32:6, where Moses reprimands the people, “Is this the way you repay the LORD, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?” (NIV)

Other references to God’s fatherhood of Israel appear in Deuteronomy without explicitly calling Him father. Read the following three passages, noting the connection in each: Deuteronomy 1:31; 8:5; 14:1. Why might Moses have been reluctant to explicitly use the term father to refer to God, even while depicting His relationship with Israel as that of a father and His children?

In the ancient Near East, gods were thought to have engaged in sexual reproduction, and references to the fatherhood of gods was common. In spite of this similarity, Moses found a way to communicate the relationship Jesus would expand on in the New Testament, and which is still our relationship with God today.