"Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me" (Isaiah 1:2).

Is God a bad parent? We often judge parents by the character and conduct of their children. If God were judged by the character of Israel, we might conclude that God is a bad parent. Most of Israel's history is marked by rebellion and disobedience. Yet God is always good, always holy, and perfect in character. How can One who is good, holy, and perfect be a bad parent?

I have been wrestling with this question. The best I can come up with is that being a "good parent," as we usually measure it, is not God's highest priority. I believe He could lead His people in such a way that they would never rebel, but that would not bring Him the highest glory, and His glory is a higher priority than what we would call good parenting.

Here is an analogy. Is a parent a good friend to her child? Looking at how a parent disciplines, requires respect, commands obedience, and limits indulgences, one might conclude that such a parent is not a good friend. Yet the parent is faithful, consistent, and loving. How can a parent who is faithful, consistent, and loving be a bad friend?

Perhaps you see my point. A parent is a parent first, not a friend, and at times these roles collide. A parent can be a good parent and not a very good "friend," and that is perfectly all right. What would not be all right is becoming a good friend while failing to be a good parent.

Likewise, God is God first. He is a good God, even if one might conclude that He is not a "good parent" as we tend to define parenting. He does not intervene at every point to prevent every mistake before it leads to severe consequences. He does not constantly encourage His children at every turn or defend them against every attack, justified or not. He will let His children suffer discipline rather than compromise His holy name. In that sense I cannot call God a "good parent" as we use the phrase, but He is a perfect, holy, and good God.

We are called "children of God," but our hope rests not on God's good parenting but on God's good promises. We are not saved because God makes us good by parenting us well. We are saved because He is good, and so He alone could provide a perfect sacrifice to cleanse us from our sins.

Friends, we are called to love God supremely — above spouse, above children, above our very lives. Before our family relationships and responsibilities, we are His by creation and by redemption (cf. Psalm 100:3; Acts 17:28; Luke 14:26; 1 Corinthians 6:19–20; 2 Corinthians 5:15). So, just as God's first responsibility and ultimate loyalty is to Himself as God, our first responsibility and ultimate loyalty is to God, our Creator and Redeemer. Let us not forget this and think, "God is my Father, so He will patiently bear with me," even while I am proud and rebellious. He may — not because He is a permissive parent, but because He is a good God who keeps His promises to those who are in Christ.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment is pressing a real point — that God's priority is His own glory and holiness, not our comfort — but it may be worth setting alongside how Scripture itself describes God's fatherhood. Hebrews 12:5–11 argues that God's discipline is precisely the proof of His fatherhood: "the Lord disciplines the one he loves," for our good, that we may share His holiness. Jesus taught that God gives good gifts to His children far beyond what earthly fathers do: if evil parents know how to give good gifts, "how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things" to those who ask! (Matthew 7:11). And Psalm 103:13 says, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion" to those who fear Him.

Read this way, the tension the comment feels may lie less in God's parenting than in our definition of a good parent. A parent who never disciplines, never allows consequences, and always shields a child from difficulty is not the biblical picture of good parenting at all. Isaiah 1 itself moves quickly from the rebellion of God's children to an astonishing invitation: "Come now, let us reason together... though your sins are like scarlet," they shall be white as snow (1:18). The chapter that opens with rebellious children also holds out a father's offer of cleansing.

"Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me" — offspring who deal corruptly and have forsaken the Lord; rebels and sinners will be broken together, and those who forsake the Lord will be consumed (a paraphrase of Isaiah 1:2, 4, 28).

God says the children He raised have rebelled against Him and forsaken Him, and He declares that He will destroy them for the transgressions and sins by which they forsook Him.

Now, I want to speak to those who preach the fatherhood of God, or teach God's fatherly love or even His fatherly discipline. Do you understand what you are saying? It is true that the Bible calls us to be like God, even to be perfect in love as He is and holy as He is holy; but have you fully and faithfully considered the implications?

Yes, the fatherhood of God implies forgiveness where there is sincere repentance. God does discipline His children so that they may become better. But isn't that only part of the picture? What about the discipline in which He destroys His children by famine, plague, and sword because of their sins and idolatry? Does He ever forgive where there is no repentance? Does He not instead reject and destroy forever those who continue to rebel against Him?

As we speak of the fatherhood of God, will we also teach that although God reared the people of Israel, only a small remnant were saved, while the rest often met terrible ends? If children reflect their father, does this mean God was a bad father because so many of His children rebelled? Do we encourage fathers today to put their children to death as God judged His children for their sins?

No one teaches these things about God, even though this aspect of God appears far more often in Scripture than the romanticized picture preachers often present. I believe we cherry-pick what we like about God's "fatherhood" and ignore the rest.

Friends, this is not preaching the whole counsel of Scripture. Alongside the parable of the prodigal son, with its father waiting for his son to return, should we not also acknowledge the Law's command that a child who curses his parents was to be put to death, and that a stubborn and rebellious son was to be brought by his parents to the elders and stoned (cf. Leviticus 20:9; Deuteronomy 21:18–21)? Why would you preach the one without the other? There is good reason not to teach parents to do such things today, but that reason does not come from some heart-tugging notion of God's fatherhood — unless you are willing to argue that God was a different father in the Old Testament than in the New.

Some say, "Now that I'm a father, I finally understand the love of the heavenly Father." No, I don't think so. You may better appreciate your parents, especially what they had to put up with in raising you, but I don't think having children gives you special understanding of God's fatherhood. If you think the attachment you feel to your children is God's attachment to His children, I believe you are mistaken. While God loves and forgives greatly, He also judges and condemns — not only strangers, but even those He calls His own children. In some ways I think our understanding of God gets skewed when we become fathers, because we project our experience of fatherhood onto God rather than listening to what God has said about our responsibilities as fathers.

Friends, while there is much in the Old Testament that we should not apply directly because we are no longer under the Old Covenant regulations, there are commands reiterated in the New Testament, as well as universal parenting principles like those in Proverbs, that we ought to consider and apply. Often these have to do with teaching our children God's Word, telling them of God's works, and exercising consistent discipline so they learn to trust and obey God.

In the New Testament there is relatively little about how parents should raise their children, but there are principles about the older mentoring the younger, and commands for parents and grandparents to teach their children the Scriptures. The one command that is clearly highlighted and repeated to fathers (and "fathers" often included mothers) is the command to instruct their children in the way of the Lord: fathers are not to provoke their children to anger, but to bring them up "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4); and fathers are not to provoke their children, "lest they become discouraged" (Colossians 3:21).

It is interesting that Paul does not repeat the command to "bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" in the Colossians parallel, but he does explain why fathers should not provoke their children. "Exasperate," "embitter," "provoke to anger," and "make resentful" are various translations of a word used only twice in the New Testament. Whatever its exact meaning, Colossians shows that the goal is to keep children from becoming discouraged. In a sense, the command to bring them up in the Lord's instruction stands on the opposite side from what discourages them.

Perhaps the positive command to train children in the Lord's instruction is left out of Colossians because it is carried over from Colossians 3:16, which applies to every believer. Also, since these letters (the Prison Epistles: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon) were likely carried together and read among the churches, the believers in Colossae probably also read the letter to the Ephesians and vice versa. Taken together, the two letters gave both groups a fuller understanding of the instruction to parents.

Friends, I would counsel two things. First, take messages on the "fatherhood of God" with a grain of salt, particularly when they give only a truncated picture of God's nature, cherry-pick verses, or take passages out of context to support the latest popular psychology about parenting.

Second, take clear commands of Scripture, like Ephesians 6:4, seriously, and begin applying them to your parenting.

Do not try to build applications from less direct passages, like the parable of the prodigal son, just because they paint a pretty picture of a father's love. I believe the emphasis of that parable is not the father's love but rejoicing over a sinner's repentance. The three parables in Luke 15 are parallel: the lost sheep (15:1–7), the lost coin (15:8–10), and the lost son (15:11–32). The first two are explained as heaven rejoicing over repentance, and it follows that the parable of the lost son carries the same meaning. Jesus' parables generally teach one central truth, and trying to draw a main application from a side detail in a parable is poor interpretation. It can lead to the dangerous practice of reading one's own views into Scripture. Therefore focus on what is clear, and resist the temptation to draw major truths from what is less clear.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment rightly insists that God's fatherhood in Scripture includes judgment, and Isaiah 1 is a powerful witness to that. It is worth noticing how the same book holds the other side. God says through Isaiah that even if a nursing mother could forget her child, "yet I will not forget you" (49:15), and promises, "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you" (66:13). Hosea 11 portrays God teaching Ephraim to walk, taking them in His arms, and then, in the midst of announcing judgment, crying out, "How can I give you up, O Ephraim?" — His heart recoils, and His compassion grows warm and tender (11:1–4, 8). The prophets hold judgment and tender fatherly love together within the same breath.

On whether human fatherhood gives insight into God's, Christians differ, and it is worth noting that Jesus Himself reasons from human fathers to the Father: if evil human fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, "how much more will your Father who is in heaven" give good things to those who ask (Matthew 7:11). Hebrews 12:9–10 does the same with discipline. The comparison runs by contrast as much as likeness — "how much more" — but Scripture does invite it. Many interpreters would affirm the comment's caution against projecting our experience onto God, while also seeing earthly fatherhood as a genuine, if limited, window onto His.

On the prodigal son, interpreters also differ. Many agree with the comment that the parable's primary point, like those of the sheep and coin, is joy over repentance. Many others note that the third parable is distinctive — the father runs to the son, and the story ends with his appeal to the elder brother — and read the father's character as central to its meaning, which is why it is sometimes called the parable of the waiting father. Both readings take the text seriously.

Isaiah 2

v1–4, the future with Jesus and the peace that'll envelop the world.

Transition: 5, O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. (Be with God)

V6–21, the current sin and its coming terror for these sins

Transition: 22, Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? (Don't regard men)

Chapter 3

V1–9, things will be bad, your great men will be no more, none will be found.

V10, the righteous will be fine.

V11-ch 4:1, to the wicked, God will take his seat and judge, removing the nation's glory.

Chapter 4:2–6, those righteous who remain will be the glory of God, a place cleaned and blessed.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The outline notices that Isaiah does more than alternate randomly between threats and promises. Isaiah 2:2–4 presents the nations receiving the Lord's instruction; verse 5 then summons Jacob to live by that light. The promise becomes an invitation addressed to the prophet's own community. The following exposure of idolatry and pride shows why that invitation is necessary. A people called to direct others toward God have themselves filled the land with rival objects of trust.

Isaiah 2:22 closes the chapter by confronting reliance on mortal humanity. The reference to breath in human nostrils emphasizes creaturely fragility. It need not mean that human relationships, counsel, or public offices have no value. Rather, no person can carry the ultimate confidence that belongs to the Lord. The lofty images throughout the chapter—high trees, mountains, towers, and ships—gather the objects through which societies display strength. Divine judgment exposes their inability to provide absolute security.

Chapter 3 develops that exposure in social terms. The removal of leaders and supports produces disorder; positions people once coveted become burdens they refuse. The prophetic critique also reaches the conduct of those with power, especially their treatment of the poor (3:14–15). The collapse is not simply an unexplained reversal of fortune. It reveals a community whose leadership has consumed those it should protect. A reading focused only on spectacular future events could miss that immediate moral indictment.

The brief contrast in 3:10–11 assures readers that God distinguishes righteousness from wickedness. Saying that the righteous will be well should not be expanded into a claim that they experience no pain during national disaster. Biblical narratives repeatedly show faithful people sharing the material suffering of their communities. The assurance concerns the justice of God's regard and the meaningful difference between righteous and wicked conduct, even when public circumstances are confused.

Isaiah 4:2–6 then describes cleansing and divine protection. The cloud, smoke, and flaming fire recall the Lord's presence with Israel in the wilderness, while shelter imagery communicates refuge from heat and storm. The surviving community is made holy; its future glory is inseparable from purification. This is more than recovering the prestige that judgment removed. It is life reordered around God's presence.

The outline thus supplies a useful reading practice: identify the transitions and ask what each promise or warning calls the hearer to do. Here the response is to walk in the light, relinquish absolute trust in human grandeur, practice justice, and seek the holiness of the promised refuge. The prophetic sequence forms present character as well as future expectation.

Friends, there is much in the prophets, not only about the events contemporary to them but also to events even future to our day. For example, Isaiah speaks of the New Jerusalem:

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all— the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. People from many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For the Lord’s teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. The Lord will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore (Isaiah 2:2–4).

Compare this with what John writes in the Book of Revelation roughly eight centuries later:

I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory. Its gates will never be closed at the end of day because there is no night there. And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city. Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 21:22–27).

Both these passages speak of the exaltation of the Temple of God in the New Jerusalem in the last time. It speaks of a time when nations will stream into the glorious city in righteousness and to worship, and where the Lord will mediate all disputes, giving perfect justice to everyone.

In Isaiah this predictive prophecy of the future is a stark contrast to the present injustices, idolatry and corruption. So, how can sinful Judah ensure their participation in that future glory? Simply, by repentance (Isaiah 1:27). What does this mean? It means an acknowledgment of sin, a trusting in God to cleanse, and a returning to the LORD in obedience:

Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool. If you will only obey me, you will have plenty to eat. But if you turn away and refuse to listen, you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies. I, the Lord, have spoken! (Isaiah 1:18–20).

While this is an Old Testament charge, Isaiah writes of the "ways" and "paths" of the LORD in a way that seems to reach beyond the ordinances of the Mosaic Law with its conditional blessings and cursings. Even the language of God wiping out their sins ("as white as snow") is foreign to the Mosaic Covenant. This sounds more like the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34):

The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

At the same time, Isaiah reinforces the conditional commands of the Mosaic Law in his call to obey God. If they obey, they "will have plenty to eat." If they disobey, they "will be devoured by the sword." So in Isaiah's day, there were two laws at work, the Promise of the New Covenant and the existing Old Covenant.

Today, the Old Covenant has been completely replaced by the New Covenant, so that there is no carrot of blessings for obedience and spectre of punishment for disobedience. We have only the great and wonderful promise of God fulfilled in Christ, such that our sins are wiped out and His righteousness has been imputed to us. With this, there is not so much a command to obey, as those had who were once slaves to sin, as much as the expectation of obedience from those now who are the adopted sons of God.

Friends, if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, you are born again into the family of God. You need not fear the curses associated with the Mosaic Law, nor should you try to make claims from any acts of obedience to the Mosaic Law. God has made your sins as white as snow. He has written His Law upon your hearts. No one needs to teach you to know the LORD because you do know Him. Your life experience is simply to work out what God has already and continues to work in you (Philippians 2:12–13).

AI-Expanded Reflection

Isaiah 2:2–4 sets the present condition of Jerusalem beside a future ordered by the Lord's instruction. The nations come to learn, disputes are judged, and instruments of destruction become tools that sustain life. The transformation is not merely a change in weaponry. Peace becomes possible because peoples receive a common moral authority and cease training for war. Isaiah's immediate invitation in 2:5 then makes the vision ethically urgent: Jacob should begin walking in the Lord's light.

Revelation 21:22–27 develops a related vision of nations, divine glory, and a city cleansed of evil. Yet the comparison also involves a significant transformation. Isaiah speaks of the mountain of the Lord's house, whereas Revelation explicitly says the city has no temple building because God and the Lamb are its temple. A Christian reading can see the movement toward unmediated divine presence without flattening the imagery into two descriptions identical in every detail. Interpretations of the timing and stages of prophetic fulfillment also differ among Christians.

Isaiah 1 brings future hope into contact with present injustice. The call to cleansing follows commands to cease evil, seek justice, correct oppression, and defend vulnerable people (1:16–17). The vivid change from scarlet to white is therefore no permission to substitute religious language for repentance. Forgiveness and moral transformation belong together. The invitation comes from the God whose people have offended him, which makes it an expression of mercy as well as a summons to accountability.

The original contrast between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant needs two qualifications. Forgiveness is not foreign to the Mosaic Scriptures: Leviticus repeatedly speaks of sins being forgiven, and Exodus 34:6–7 proclaims God's forgiving character. Jeremiah 31 promises a decisive covenant renewal with inward instruction and sins no longer remembered; it does not introduce a previously merciless God to the concept of pardon. The new covenant's superiority should be explained through its fulfillment in Christ rather than through denying earlier grace.

Second, adoption does not remove divine commands or fatherly discipline. Romans 8:1 announces freedom from condemnation in Christ, while Hebrews 12:5–11 describes discipline as an expression of belonging to God's family. The New Testament contains direct imperatives, warnings, and teaching precisely for believers. Their obedience is not a purchase price for adoption, but neither is it merely an optional expectation without moral urgency.

Philippians 2:12–13 brings these truths together: believers actively work out the salvation in which God is already at work. Assurance and responsibility can therefore reinforce one another. Those welcomed by grace learn to practice now the justice, truthfulness, and peace appropriate to the city they await. Future hope becomes a reason to repair present wrongs, not a reason to postpone obedience until every prophetic question has been settled.

Isaiah 1:13 — stop bringing meaningless gifts; the incense of your offerings disgusts me (a paraphrase). I like comments like this. I like them because they show that faith comes first — if the heart isn't with God, the works themselves become disgusting to Him.

Isaiah 1:17 — learn to do good, seek justice (a paraphrase). Sanctification is something I have a hard time accepting, to the point that when I do the things I don't want to do, I feel let down — wanting to do right but not managing it, and sometimes even quietly blaming God for not "fixing" me — or like a hypocrite, as if I'm not truly a believer at all. But it bothers me, and I resolve to try harder and smarter. This call to "learn to do good, seek justice" calls us to actually move from where we currently are toward what's more pleasing to God — try harder, try smarter.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The struggle this comment describes — wanting to do right, failing anyway, and feeling like a hypocrite for it — has a well-known biblical namesake in Paul's own confession: he doesn't do the good he wants to do, but instead does the very evil he doesn't want to do, calling himself, in that moment, a wretched man in need of rescue (a paraphrase of Romans 7:15–24). Paul doesn't conclude from this struggle that he isn't a real believer — he concludes it by thanking God for deliverance through Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25), treating the ongoing tension itself as the normal condition of a genuine believer still being sanctified, not evidence that the sanctifying hasn't started. "Try harder, try smarter" is a reasonable response to this comment's own honest struggle, but Paul's example suggests the discouragement itself isn't a sign of failure — it may be a sign the fight is real.