‘Abba’: The Christ Child’s Word for God

‘Abba, Father’ is in the first sentence from the fresh lips of the twelve-year-old, even as ‘Abba, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit’ are the last words from the parched voice of the Crucified.…

Popular writers are referring to our generation as one that has “come of age.” What will today’s sophisticated highbrows do with Jesus’ word that the Father-Lord was pleased to reveal himself to the babes rather than to the learned intellectuals of his day? Indeed, the Gospels invite us to take a further step. They indicate that at an early age the child Jesus began to speak of God as Abba, “Father.” This thesis is an endeavor to carry somewhat further than he has yet done the conclusions of Joachim Jeremias on Jesus’ use of Abba, “Father.” From the first lectures of Professor Jeremias’s The Central Message of the New Testament, we derive four points.

First, Jesus was unique in speaking of and praying to God as “my Father,” the Father of the individual. The Gospels record a score of prayers of Jesus, all but one of which are addressed to God as “Father,” and they record the word “Father” on his lips 170 times. Incidentally, this indicates the God-centered nature of Jesus’ life. The Sermon on the Mount is the most theistic message ever proclaimed. It focuses the eye of the heavenly Father upon every aspect of life.

Secondly, Jesus used for God his Father the familiar Aramaic word that the little child used for his earthly parent, abba, “daddy.” According to the Talmud, when a child experiences the taste of wheat—that is, when he is weaned—he learns to say “abba,” “dada,” and “imma,” “mama” (Babylonian Talmud, cited by Jeremias in The Central Message of the New Testament p. 20). When Mark 14:36 is placed beside Matthew 26:39, 42, it is seen that Abba underlies the Greek rendering pater mou here and presumably elsewhere. That Jesus used the same word abba in his other prayers is shown by the different forms of address “father” takes in Greek. In addition to the correct vocative forms pater mou and pater, there is the nominative ho pater used as a vocative that is not correct Greek usage; and this oscillation sometimes occurs in the same saying (Matt. 11:25–27; Luke 10:21, 22). The only explanation is that abba underlies each form and that it was used in first-century Palestinian Aramaic both as a form of address and as “the father.” Again, the cry of the primitive Christian communities, “Abba, ho pater” (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), echoes Jesus’ own praying and indicates the word he used.

Thirdly, according to Matthew 11:25 ff. and Luke 10:21, 22, Jesus received this knowledge of God as his Abba in a unique revelation and proclaimed it on his own unique authority. Here Jesus speaks five times of God as Father and united the intimacy of Abba with the majesty of the Lord of Hosts in typically Hebrew phraseology: “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

Fourthly, Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, beginning “Abba, our Father, who art in heaven,” to be used by them as a sign that they were his disciples (Luke 11:1–4). “Abba when spoken by the disciples,” says Professor Jeremias, “is a sharing in the revelation, it is actualized eschatology.” And as the Spirit of his Son bears witness with our spirits so that we cry, Abba, “Father,” we are really praying in the Name of Christ. He has been pleased to bind us up in the covenant of grace and the bundle of life with himself.

Now we maintain that these conclusions and a further consideration of the gospel data support the thesis that this revelation came to Jesus, at least in part, at an early age.

On the face of it, abba is the child’s word. There is a first-century B.C. story from the Talmud to the effect that school children came to a noted rabbi in a time of drought and, grasping the hem of his coat, implored him, “Abba, Abba, Daddy, Daddy, give us rain.” The rabbi prayed, “Master of the world, grant the rain for the sake of those who are not yet able to distinguish between an abba who has the power to give rain and an abba who has not.” Here the children do and the rabbi does not address God in prayer as Abba (cited by Jeremias, op. cit., p. 19).

Matthew 18 and 19 record several cases in which Jesus holds up the faith and the attitudes of little children for emulation. Putting a little one in the midst of the disciples he averred, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3; cf. John 3:3, 5). Again there is the warning not to cast a stumbling block before one of the least of the little ones, for “their angels do always behold the face of my Abba which is in heaven” (Matt. 18:10). As he takes them into his arms to bless them, Jesus says, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). Later, after the elders had rejected Jesus, the little children in the Temple were still crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David” (Matt. 21:15 f.), which Jesus defended as God’s perfecting praise from children and infants. Moreover, the Aramaic term abba breaks through in the Markan Gethsemane account; it is in a moment of extreme tension that one is most likely to lapse into the language of his earliest childhood.

Two cases bear more specifically on our thesis. One is the account of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41 ff.). Here he corrected Mary’s reference to Joseph as his abba by describing God as his Abba. Thus Abba, “Father,” occurs among the first recorded words on his lips.

The other incident is the Jubilation Passage recorded in Luke 10:21, 22 and in Matthew 11:25–27. In these two verses in Luke, God is spoken of as Abba five times, the intimacy of the term being balanced by the description of the Father as Lord of heaven and earth and by the uniqueness of the Son as both recipient and giver of this revelation. That Luke and Matthew reproduce the same passage assures this unit a place in Q, and that it is a rejoicing in the Holy Spirit and a thanksgiving (Hodayoth) vindicates its Israelitish historicity (see James M. Robinson in Bernhard W. Anderson, ed., The Old Testament and Christian Faith, pp. 143, 144). The father-son comparison is familiar in Palestinian apocalyptic (Jeremias, op. cit., p. 25). Now the declaration that the heavenly Abba hides these things from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes, together with the unique function of the Son in receiving and giving the revelation of the Father, seem to carry an autobiographical overtone. It is as if the rejection of Jesus’ message by the learned and intelligent in the great cities and its reception by the little ones there brought to Jesus’ mind earlier experiences of his own. Could there not have been some sad and humiliating experience in childhood into which came the revelation that the LORD of Israel was Jesus’ own Abba—a revelation in which the joy of the Holy Spirit filled the Child’s soul with thankfulness? Could it also reflect a lad’s conviction that God was his Abba, even when that testimony was frowned upon by the sagacious and sophisticated rabbis in Jerusalem? At least that is the direction toward which these passages point.

Furthermore, Jesus draws his most effective illustrations for the encouragement of prayer from little children in family situations that seem to have come from his own childhood home. When brother James asked for bread, Mary did not give him a stone, nor when brother Simon asked for a fish did Joseph give him a serpent. If earthly parents being evil know how to give good gifts to their bairns, how much more shall the heavenly Abba give good things to those who ask in prayer (Matt. 7:7–11)? Or consider the man whose unexpected guests knocked at midnight (Luke 11:5–9). May we not hear the gruff voice of Joseph the Carpenter first refusing: “My children are now with me in bed; I cannot upset the household in this cold darkness and give you food.” But to hush the visitor’s shameless begging, even sleepy Joseph gets up and gives him as many loaves as he needs. And the widow who cries to the magistrate for justice until he finally gives it to hush her (Luke 18:1–5) could well have been a neighbor in Nazareth—or somewhat later, even Mary after the death of Joseph.

As we think of the younger brothers—James, Joses, Juda, and Simon—and sisters (Mark 6:3), we can imagine Jesus as the baby-sitter, even before he became the apprentice and later the successor to Joseph the Carpenter. And one wonders whether at least one of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer may not have been present in embryonic form in the Nazareth home as Jesus led the children to pray, “Abba, give us our daily bread.”

Now, of course there are various occasions on which this revelation may have come to Jesus. It is our duty, however, to consider what God has been pleased to give us in his Word and to offer solutions that cling as closely to that Word as possible. In this Word there is a revelation concerning Jesus’ Abba given to Mary and recorded in Luke 1 and 2 and one given to Joseph and recorded in Matthew 1. Moreover, scholars are now recognizing that the paternity of Joseph was challenged in Jesus’ lifetime by his critics (see E. Stauffer, Jesus and His Story, pp. 15–18, 213). According to Mark 6:3, Jesus was described as “the carpenter, the son of Mary.” The accusation of being “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34), probably carries the same evil connotation as does the charge in John 8:48 of being a Samaritan and having a demon. In the same context, there seems to be an insinuation in John 8:41. But if Joseph’s paternity were questioned, may not the questioning have sifted down to the children and some playmate have objected when Jesus spoke of Joseph as his abba, as did the younger children in the Carpenter’s home? Then did a weeping child receive from Mary in the nursery the story which we have in Luke, and from Joseph the account we have in Matthew? And with these revealing words did the Abba confront and comfort this Child with his Holy Spirit from heaven (Luke 11:13), banishing his sadness with joy over his heavenly origin and his earthly mission? As he was later to witness with the spirits of Jesus’ disciples (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), so the Holy Spirit bore witness with Jesus’ heart that God was his own Abba (see my article, “A Re-Study of the Virgin Birth of Christ,” in The Evangelical Quarterly, December, 1965). Accordingly, Jesus said “Abba” no longer to Joseph but to God (Luke 2:48, 49; Matt. 23:9).

In the temple episode recorded in Luke 2:41–52, both the fact that it is Mary rather than Joseph who admonishes Jesus even though he is “a son of the law,” and the interplay in which her “your father” (meaning Joseph) is revised by Jesus to “my Father” (meaning God), indicate that the mystery of his birth had been revealed to Jesus and was shared by him with Mary and Joseph. At her first appearance in the Fourth Gospel (John 2), Mary’s acts and words indicate that she knows the secret of her Son and accordingly calls on Jesus’ power to work miracles, signs of his glory and vindications of her honor. And indeed, the signs he did convinced at least one ruler of the Jews that Jesus was a teacher come from God (John 3).

Jesus’ best-known parable is the story of the gracious father who loved both his sons. Here the Prodigal represents the lost sheep of the house of Israel, who apart from Christ would have to flee from God. Jesus justifies his conduct in receiving sinners and celebrating with them the eschatological meal by proclaiming the joy of heaven over everyone who repents. That is, Jesus dares to act in God’s stead, revealing the Father as the God of the poor and needy, of the despairing and those who have no merit (Luke 15). Thus, also over the Synoptic Jesus one may write his Johannine word, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” For in the ministry of Jesus Christ, God has graciously given the only Son of his bosom to stand as the representative even of the Prodigal and so to do and to bear for sinful man that the whole relationship between the Holy One of Israel and his guilty creature is altered. The Lord, who apart from Christ is the Judge, has become Abba, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all who are in him.

“Abba, Father” is in the first sentence from the fresh lips of the twelve-year-old, even as “Abba, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” are the last words from the parched voice of the Crucified. The Risen One ascends to make his Abba to be our Abba, his God to be our God (John 20:17). Thus, according to our reading of the New Testament, from the conception by the Spirit and the birth to the virgin, from Jesus’ childhood home and his teachings about children and about prayer, from his baptism and his transfiguration, from Gethsemane and Calvary, as well as from the revelation of the Risen Lord to Mary Magdalene and later to Paul, comes the Christian Name for God, which is: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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