The Fatherhood of God (1)

What we may expect from God being a father:
(1) We may expect whatever a child may expect from a father. God takes not upon him empty names. He says he will be a father, not only called a father. Fathers on earth are but poor fathers, yet they are reflections of the fatherly affection that is in God. God will let us see by these reflections of compassion what real compassion he bears to us. As a father pities his child, so God will pity us (Mal. 3:17). Will a father cast off his child? No, he will cleanse the child. So, God will take away our abominations, and purge us when we defile ourselves. We may expect from him indulgence; and it is an indulgence of indulgence. Can we pity and pardon a child? And will not God pardon and pity us? Why should we conceive worse of him than of ourselves? Think not that God will cast us off. God pardons us, and heals our infirmities, and pities us as a father pities his own child (Psa. 103:13). It is a name under which no man must despair. What! Despair of mercy when we have a father to go to? The poor prodigal, when he had spent his inheritance, his good name, had lost all, yet he had a father, and 'I will go to him' (Luke 15:18). Likewise, when we are at our last, and have spent all, we have a father. Therefore, go to him. What says God's people? 'Though our righteousness be as a filthy rag, and we be defiled, yet you are our Father; we are the clay, you are the potter' (Isa. 64:6, 8). As the father of the prodigal, God runs to us, and is ready to meet us, when we begin to repent of sin and are sensible of our faults. He is more ready to pardon than we to ask pardon. May you remember these things against the evil day and hour of temptation. He takes not on himself the relation of a father for naught but will fill it up to the uttermost.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Heavenly Conference, pp. 82-84
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