Making Much of God as Father

J.I. Packer, in his masterpiece Knowing God, noted the importance of the place of the doctrine of adoption in the Christian experience. He writes:

You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.1

1. J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, reprinted 1993), pp. 201-202