The Pugilist: The Father of Fathers

His is not a figurative fatherhood;He is not addressed as Father because we find some things in Him which remind us of the tenderness and love of our parents and so apply to Him, as in a figure, the name we have learned to love in them. On the contrary, His is the normal fatherhood; His is not derived by figure from theirs, but theirs is the poor and broken shadow of His. He is the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: the gloss, though a gloss, is a correct interpretation, and the closeness and intimacy and love of that relation is the norm from which every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named. What we know of fatherhood—dear as the name has become to us through our earthly relations—is but a faint shadow of what He, the true Father, first of Christ and then of us in Christ, is to His children. -B.B. Warfield, The Fullness of God