Matthew 6:8 and Luke 12:30 and God looks after even the animal creation (Job 38:39-41). Again, “God... is preserver of all men” (1 Timothy 4:10). Then we know that the Father is “through all” (Ephesians 4:6). As Paul says to the Athenians: “In him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28). God is in this way omnipresent. All these things are peculiar to God the Father. All this would lead us to worship the Father (John 4:23/24)

However, what is also peculiar to the Father is purpose. Paul speaks of this in a number of places, but enlarges on it in Ephesians 1:3-14. The Father is the source of all (1 Corinthians 8:6). He originates all things. To apply these things to Christ throws the teaching of the apostle into confusion. One of the things that 1 Corinthians 8 does is to clarify who we should address as God and who we should address as Lord. Because there are places where Jehovah is spoken of as Lord we might otherwise become confused as to how we should address the Father and Jesus Christ. Certain things have been placed in the Father’s own authority (Acts 1:7). This is borne out by what Christ says in Matthew 20:20-23 and Mark 10:37-40 as to places in the kingdom. Again Christ says in Matthew 24:36 as to a certain time that this is known only to his Father. A similar statement appears in Mark 13:32. If we are to give these passages their proper force we cannot claim them for Christ as well as the Father in any sense.

In seeking light from Scripture on the foregoing doctrine we should remember there is always the danger of reading Scripture with blinkers (blinders) on like a horse, that is, reading it in such a way that we keep within certain defined limits and if a Scripture appears to take us outside those limits we restrict Scripture rather than abandon the limits. This will be done if we keep our thinking within what the ancient creeds say as to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Some in trying to retain the creeds (or at least the doctrine contained in them) say that where Scripture evidently says something different we are to regard that as something that is just part of the arrangements that Divine persons have come to and not the underlying reality. Thus, if it is said the Father is greater than all, Scripture does not really mean that, but simply that He is that in the economy (arrangements) that Divine persons have made in order that God’s purposes may