
I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.
The Father himself loves you.
John 20:17:16:27.
Between the two terms God and Father, as they are used in the New Testament to speak of God, there is an important difference. When the word God is used, it is a question of His sovereignty. When He is called Father, as Jesus frequently addressed Him, it is the revelation of His relationship to Him, or that which He was about to establish between God and ourselves by His work of grace.
Here are a few examples: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. … And he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:35:36). “The Father is seeking such to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23.24). “No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
The Lord Jesus always spoke of God as His Father. This explains clearly the relationship between the Father and the Son: “I am not alone because the Father is with me” (John 16:32).
It is only at the cross, when our Lord took our place in the judgment of our sins that He cried out in the anguish of His soul: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Now, thanks to the work of atonement accomplished by Jesus, Christians can know God as their Father. They speak to Him as a Father who loves them and listens to them. They worship Him as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).