God Is Our Literal Father — Not a Metaphor, Not a Title
Protestant theology says God is “our Father” as a metaphor of relationship. The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches he is our Father in the most literal sense — we are his spirit children, and that changes everything.
What “Father” Means
Start with a question: when the writer of Hebrews contrasts our earthly fathers with God, what distinction does he draw? Not that God is a distant sovereign who adopted us — but that God is specifically the Father of our spirits. Our earthly parents are the fathers and mothers of our bodies. God is the Father of our spirits. The contrast only makes sense if the fatherhood is equally literal in both cases.
“Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?”
Paul goes further in Acts 17. Standing before the philosophers of Athens, quoting their own poets, he affirms a truth that cuts through every cultural layer: we are his offspring. He does not say we are his creations in the sense of manufactured objects. He uses the language of biological descent applied to the spiritual realm.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”
Offspring is not a metaphor. Offspring describes actual parenthood. Paul endorses this language not as poetic flourish but as theological truth: because we are his offspring, we must think differently about what God is.
D&C 130:22 — God Has a Body
Consider the logic: a literal father must have a literal form. A God without a body cannot be a literal father in any meaningful sense. A God with a perfected, glorified, resurrected body can be. This is precisely what the Restoration revealed.
“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.”
The claim that God is pure spirit — formless, bodiless, without parts or passions — is not a biblical conclusion. It is a Greek philosophical import, the Neoplatonic doctrine of divine simplicity, that was grafted onto Christian theology in the post-apostolic centuries. The Bible never once says God has no body. What the Restoration did was cut through that philosophical overlay and restore what the scriptures actually teach.
Moses 1:39 — His Work and Glory
What does a father do? He works for his children. He defines his purpose in terms of their flourishing. This is not a minor theme in the Restoration — it is the central declaration of what God is for.
“For behold, this is my work and my glory — to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”
A father’s work is his children. God’s work is us. This is not the distant unmoved mover of Aristotle, indifferent to human affairs. This is a Father who defines his entire purpose — his work, his glory — entirely in terms of his children’s immortality and eternal life. No other theology says this. The Restoration says it plainly.
Implications: Joint-Heirs, Not Servants
If God is our literal Father, then we are literally his children — not creatures, not pets, not pawns on a cosmic chessboard. Children have a different relationship to their father than servants have to their master. And the implications of that difference are spelled out by Paul in the most radical terms:
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”
Joint-heirs. Not servants. Not subjects. Not the temporarily adopted children of a king who could revoke the arrangement. Children who inherit — who share in the same glory that Christ inherits. This is the most radical doctrine in the Restoration, and it is the most biblical. The Restoration did not invent it. It restored what centuries of Neoplatonism had obscured.
Verdict
“Father” is not a metaphor. It is the most precise description of what God is. Hebrews says he is the Father of spirits. Paul says we are his offspring. Moses records that his work and glory is our eternal life. Romans says we are joint-heirs with Christ.
The Restoration restored the literal fatherhood of God — and with it, the literal sonship and daughtership of every human being. You are not an ant under a magnifying glass. You are not a subject before an alien sovereign. You are a child of the most powerful, most loving, most purposeful Being in existence — and he has defined his entire work and glory in terms of your eternal wellbeing.
That is not a metaphor. That is the most important fact about you.