I’ve been enjoying reading ‘The Good God: enjoying Father, Son and Spirit’ by Michael Reeves.
About the Father, he writes:
many theologians have liked to compare the Father to a fountain, ever bursting out with life and love (indeed, the Lord calls himself ‘the spring of living water’ in Jeremiah 2:13, and the image crops up again and again in Scripture). And just as a fountain, to be a fountain, must pour forth water, so the Father, to be Father, must give out life. That is who he is. That is his most fundamental identity. Thus love is not something the Father has, merely one of his many moods. Rather, he is love. He could not not love. If he did not love, he would not be Father.
I’ve found this so helpful. Firstly because it makes so much logical sense as to why Jesus is the eternal Son and not a created being (if ever Jesus had not existed then the Father could not have been a Father). But also, it just helps me personally so much as I still can struggle to connect with the idea of the Fatherliness of God at times. I know he is Father deep down, but I don’t always feel it. Getting to the issue through the line of reasoning has been helpful to me recently.