Where is God

Makestraightpaths.com examines the teachings of the religious group variously known as “the Family,” “The Family International,” the “Children of God,” or the “Family of Love,” and evaluates these teachings from a Christian perspective. This page is one in a series on Family beliefs regarding God.

Where is God?

“I really don’t know how to talk to God;
He’s too big for me.
So I talk to Jesus instead
and He talks to God for me.”

So go the words of a catchy Family jingle written decades ago. The song is based on an early letter ("The Name of Jesus") written by the founder of the Family (Berg/Dad) in which he explained his beliefs regarding the relationships between God and Jesus, God and people, and Jesus and people. Much of what Family members today believe about God (as opposed to Jesus) is reflected in the general principles laid out in that letter.

This page discusses the Family teachings regarding God the Father, and compares them to biblical truths.

Family beliefs about God

1. The Trinity

In Family teachings, there is a marked difference in attitudes towards God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Although lipservice is given to traditional monotheism ("Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" Deut 6:4 NASU), in reality each member of the Trinity is understood separately, somehow spiritually connected, but each with different characteristics, functions and personalities. "God" is the Father, loving and kind, but also rather distant. Jesus is His Son, through whom salvation is brought to mankind, and to whom all prayer is to be directed. Controversially, the Holy Spirit is depicted as female, the "Mother" within the Holy Family.

2. God is Love / Love is God

The Bible says that "God is love" in 1 John 4:8. The Family certainly stresses the love of God, correctly believing that it was out of love that God sent Jesus to the earth to atone for the sins of the world. More dubious, however, was Berg/Dad's claim that the expression "God is love" is synonymous with "Love is God." This unfortunate error resulted in numerous misconceptions about the nature of God and the way His people should worship Him. For more on the difference between "God is love" and "Love is God", please click here.

3. God is the Father of Jesus

As mentioned above, Family theology so strongly stresses the individual nature of each member of the Trinity that there is little understanding of the fundamental biblical truth that there is only one God. Although the Bible certainly ascribes differing roles to each "person of the Godhead, for example describing God as the "Father" and Jesus as the "Son," it does so without compromising the essential unity of the Godhead. That is, the Bible says that the three "persons" of God (Father, Son and Spirit") are different in role not nature. There is one God, who has manifested Himself in many different ways. He manifested Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. He works through His Spirit, He teaches through the natural world He has created, He reveals Himself in the pages of the Bible, He speaks personally to His followers, leading and guiding them, but in everything and at all times He remains one God.

Family teaching usually neglects the oneness of God, focussing instead on the separate roles or persons of God. Family artists have produced numerous illustrations of the holy Family in Heaven: God is an old but respected and wise king, Jesus is the younger (but white-haired), strong, handsome man, and the Holy Spirit is an ageless and beautiful (often sexy) woman.

4. God is accessible only through Jesus

The Family believes that not only is salvation only available through Jesus Christ, but also prayer is only effective through the name of Jesus. In fact, Family members are told that their intimate relationship with Jesus sharply contrasts with that of "churchy Christians" to whom God is far more distant. Christians who pray to "Almighty God" are seen as lacking closeness to Jesus. Therefore, in general, every Family prayer begins with "Dear Jesus" and concludes with "... in Jesus' name, amen." Prayers that are not specifically addressed to Jesus are seen as lacking power, effectiveness or intimacy.

5. Analogies

Family members have been given numerous memorable illustrations to help them understand the nature of God, and the importance of Jesus. They are told to picture an iceberg, where God is represented by the bulk of the ice hidden under the water, and Jesus is the visible tip on the surface. Or, as God is just too big for human beings to comprehend, Jesus is a tangible image of God, like a portrait of a person or a photograph of a faraway place. We may not have been to the actual location or met the person in question, but we can see the photo and gain a measure of understanding.

To summarise, Family members see God the Father as all powerful and all loving, but also rather distant and impersonal. Everything to do with a Christian's spiritual life (salvation, prayer, service, guidance, protection, supply and so on) are facilitated through Jesus, not God the Father.

It is probably true to say, therefore, that the little jingle quoted at the top of the page is a simplified but accurate representation of Family members’ attitudes towards God the Father: “I really don’t know how to talk to God; He’s too big for me. So I talk to Jesus instead and He talks to God for me.”

The remainder of this page is devoted to the biblical concepts of God the Father, the Trinity, salvation and prayer, with special reference to the relationships between humankind, God the Father and Jesus the Son.

God the Father

God as revealed through the Scriptures is the one infinite and eternal Being. He is purely spiritual, the supreme personal Intelligence, the Creator and Preserver of all things, the perfect Moral Ruler of the universe; He is the only proper object of worship; He is tri-personal - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit constituting one Godhead.

(The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, 1988)

Throughout the Bible, God is referred to by many names, including the Hebrew Elohim, El Shaddai, Yahweh, as well as other, more descriptive names and titles: the Rock, the Mighty One, the King, Lord, and so on. God is shown to be the creator of everything that exists, both seen and unseen. He is the supreme object of worship, and has always been so personal that he vehemently objects to sharing glory with any other so-called god. He is the source of all love, justice, righteousness and morality. Likewise, He is the antithesis to all hate, injustice, evil and sin. Although the Bible confirms the existence of Satan, Satan is not an alternate competing god, but rather is a spiritual entity who is evil precisely because he has rejected God. Satan does evil, not because he has the power and authority to formulate his own set of rules, but because he operates without God. Just as "darkness" can only be defined by the absence of light, so "evil" can only be defined by the absence of God.

God is referred to as the divine Father throughout the Bible.

Isa 63:16 You, O Lord, are our Father, Our Redeemer from of old is Your name. NASU

Jesus Christ referred to God primarily as the Father; this was the term that came most naturally to Him.

Jesus meant that the essential nature of God, and His relation to men, is best expressed by the attitude and relation of a father to his children; but God is Father in an infinitely higher and more perfect degree than any man. He is "good" and "perfect," the heavenly Father, in contrast with men, who, even as fathers, are evil (Matt 5:48; 7:11). What in them is an ideal imperfectly and intermittently realized, is in Him completely fulfilled. Christ thought not of the physical relation of origin and derivation, but of the personal relation of love and care which a father bestows upon his children.

Jesus Christ knows the Father as no one else does, and is related to Him in a unique manner. The idea is central in His teaching, because the fact is fundamental in His experience. On His first personal appearance in history He declares that He must be about His Father's business (Luke 2:49), and at the last He commends His spirit into His Father's hands. Throughout His life, His filial consciousness is perfect and unbroken. "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). As He knows the Father, so the Father knows and acknowledges Him. At the opening of His ministry, and again at its climax in the transfiguration, the Father bears witness to His perfect sonship (Mark 1:11; 9:7). It was a relation of mutual love and confidence, unalloyed and infinite. "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand" (John 3:35; 5:20). The Father sent the Son into the world, and intrusted Him with his message and power (Matt 11:27).

Through Christ, His disciples and hearers, too, may know God as their Father. He speaks of "your Father," "your heavenly Father." To them as individuals, it means a personal relation; He is "thy Father" (Matt 6:4,18). Their whole conduct should be determined by the consciousness of the Father's intimate presence (6:1,4). To do His will is the ideal of life (7:21; 12:50). More explicitly, it is to act as He does, to love and forgive as He loves and forgives (5:45); and, finally, to be perfect as He is perfect (5:48). Thus do men become sons of their Father who is in heaven. Their peace and safety lay in their knowledge of His constant and all-sufficient care (6:26,32). The ultimate goal of men's relation to Christ is that through Him they should come to a relation with the Father like His relation both to the Father and to them, wherein Father, Son, and believers form a social unity (John 14:21; 17:23; compare verse 21).

While God's fatherhood is thus realized and revealed, originally and fully in Christ, derivatively and partially in believers, it also has significance for all men. Every man is born a child of God and heir of His kingdom (Luke 18:16). During childhood, all men are objects of His fatherly love and care (Matt 18:10), and it is not His will that one of them should perish (18:14). Even if they become His enemies, He still bestows His beneficence upon the evil and the unjust (Matt 5:44-45; Luke 6:35). The prodigal son may become unworthy to be called a son, but the father always remains a father. Men may become so far unfaithful that in them the fatherhood is no longer manifest and that their inner spirits own not God, but the devil, as their father (John 8:42-44). So their filial relation to God may be broken, but His nature and attitude are not changed. He is the Father absolutely, and as Father is He perfect (Matt 5:48).

(International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, 'God')

The Trinity

The word "trinity" is not in the Bible; it is a descriptive term rather than one of the names of God. Nonetheless, "Trinity" accurately represents the Christian teachings regarding God. In the same way, the words "omnipotence," "omnipresence" and "omniscience" do not appear in the Bible, but they accurately describe aspects of the nature of God.

The Christian doctrine is: (1) That there is only one God, one divine nature and being. (2) This one divine Being is tripersonal, involving the distinctions of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (3) These three are joint partakers of the same nature and majesty of God.

(The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, 'Trinity')

The first point cannot be stressed enough: There is only one God.

Christianity has reason to guard itself, as it has generally sought to do, against tritheistic conceptions. Both the unity and the tripersonal nature of God are to be maintained.

It is admitted by all who thoughtfully deal with this subject that the Scripture revelation here leads us into the presence of a deep mystery and that all human attempts at expression are of necessity imperfect. The word person, it may be, is inadequate and is doubtless used often in a way that is misleading. "That God is alike one Person, and in the same sense three Persons, is what Christianity has never professed" (Van Oosterzee). Said Augustine, "Three persons, if they are to be so called, for the unspeakable exaltedness of the object cannot be set forth by this term."

(The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, 'Trinity')

Second, the one God manifests Himself in three distinct forms.

It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made.

(International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, 'Trinity')

Third, there are definite role distinctions within the Trinity.

John 14:28 "The Father is greater than I" NASU

However, these distinctions appear in function, not substance.

John 10:30 "I and the Father are one." NASU

Salvation

The word "salvation" is both general and specific. It refers, in general, to the entire process of atonement, forgiveness, justification, regeneration, sanctification and resurrection to eternal life. The word "salvation" is also a specific biblical term meaning "deliverance," not only from sin, but also from physical peril.

Salvation from sin comes exclusively through Jesus Christ.

Matt 1:21 "She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." NASU

Acts 4:12 "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." NASU

Hebrews 5:9 And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him NET

Family theology is generally very clear about the central and exclusive role of Jesus Christ in personal salvation. However, one aspect of salvation that is often neglected is the reconciliation of believers with God.

Reconciliation involves a change in the relationship between God and man or man and man. It assumes there has been a breakdown in the relationship, but now there has been a change from a state of enmity and fragmentation to one of harmony and fellowship.

(Bakers Evangelical Dictionary, 'Reconciliation')

The Bible says that Jesus' death reconciles believers to God.

Rom 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. NASU

Reconciliation is an initiative of God the Father.

2 Cor 5:18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, NASU

When Jesus declared that He was the way, the truth and the life, He was talking about the way to God, the truth about God, and the life from God.

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. NASU

In John 14:6, Jesus said that He was the way to God the Father. In other words, those who have been granted salvation through Jesus Christ have come to God the Father. Those, therefore, who have not come to God the Father, cannot be coming through Jesus Christ His Son.

Paul and Peter both said the same thing; that the purpose of Jesus' atoning death was to bring mankind to the Father.

Eph 2:18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. NASU

2 Cor 6:18 "And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty. NASU

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; NASU

Jesus' blood purchased souls for God.

Rev 5:9 And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. NIV

John said that when one believes in Jesus the Christ, then one also has God the Father.

1 John 1:3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. NASU

1 John 2:23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. NASU

Anyone - even little children - may come to know and love God the Father.

1 John 2:13 I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father. NASU

Here is the point: Jesus' death reconciled us to God the Father. If Family members have no relationship with God the Father, then they have no relationship with God at all. If a Family member sees Jesus as somehow separate from God the Father, and thus enjoys a relationship with "Jesus" but not with God the Father, then it is possible that he or she has been deluded into following "another Jesus" (2 Cor 11:4). If there is no relationship with God the Father, then there is no relationship with Jesus His Son.

If so, his or her salvation is not genuine.

Prayer

The Family is adamant that all prayer is to be addressed directly to Jesus. Indeed, Jesus called people to come to Him.

Matt 11:28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. NASU

He promised that He would personally answer prayer addressed to Himself.

John 14:14 "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. NASU

However, Jesus also told His followers to pray directly to God the Father, and that God the Father would answer prayer.

Matt 6:9 "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. NASU

Matt 6:6 "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. NASU

John 16:23 "In that day you will not question Me about anything. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. NASU

Matt 7:11"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! NASU

Matt 18:19 "Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. NASU

The New Testament abounds in exhortations to prayer, often expressed directly to God the Father. In fact, salvation gives one the right to address God the Father directly.

Rom 8:15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" NASU

Gal 4:6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" NASU

Paul prayed to the Father, expecting that the Father would answer his prayer.

Eph 3:14-17
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
NASU

In some places, the New Testament directs believers to pray to God the Father, in Jesus' name.

Eph 5:20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; NASU

Col 3:17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. NASU

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. NASU

God the Father actually wants us to worship Him.

John 4:23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. NASU

Witnessing

Jesus told His followers to make disciples of all nations. He gave specific instructions that new believers were to be baptised, a command that the Family believes is fulfilled when they pray with someone to receive the Holy Spirit. However, the Early Church firmly believed that Jesus told them to baptise converts with water. Further, Jesus did not say, "Baptise in the Holy Spirit," but rather He referred to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Matt 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, NASU

Jesus wants His followers to do good works so that others may see and worship God the Father.

Matt 5:16 "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. NASU

It is God the Father who rewards these good works.

Matt 6:1,4 "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. 4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. NASU

Conclusion

Family theology revolves almost exclusively around Jesus. Salvation is seen as establishing a relationship with Jesus, all prayer is directed to Jesus, all praise is addressed to Jesus. However, the Bible repeatedly and consistently proclaims that 'salvation' occurs when a person - through the work of Jesus on the cross - establishes a relationship with God the Father. If there is no relationship with God the Father, then one is not saved. Salvation is not asking Jesus to come into your heart (a phrase that appears nowhere in the Bible), but is the acceptance of Christ's unspeakable gift of atonement and forgiveness, as well as the gifts of repentance and regeneration. This re-establishes the broken relationship with God the Father.

Therefore, any Family member who has no relationship with God the Father is not saved.

Regarding prayer, there are some scriptures telling believers to pray in Jesus' name, and there are a few implying that prayers may be addressed to Jesus, but by far the vast majority of texts exhort believers to address God the Father directly.

Family members who never address God the Father directly probably do so because they have no relationship with Him.

True believers have come to God the Father, they pray to God the Father, they worship God the Father, they praise God the Father.

Jesus has brought them to God the Father.