Why do we, Christians, call God, our Father, and not our Mother?

Someone started a thread in one of the Christian forum with the following:

Why is God a father?

In the bible it says that God is a father, but why? A mother can be just as good as a father.

Later in the thread, he posted the following:

God is genderless, being that God is outside all of time and space that we know it, and it's really our chosseing to rufur to God as anyway we want. Even to be able to call God a goddess, and a mother, so I really don't have any problem having chirstens call God a father. All I'm doing is asking why christens ask call God father.

My reply has two parts. First of all, we don't arbitrarily call God our father instead of mother; we do so because we are commanded to do so. Secondly, there's a reason that God commands us to do so.

The Bible contains almost 170 references to God as the "Father"; about 900 verses use the word "theos"—a masculine noun in the Greek and not use the word "thea"-a feminime. However, one would be hard pressed to find a single verse that refers to God as the "Mother".

While, some people have argued that the use of the word "Father" is the result of a male dominated culture, I disagree.

Matthew 6:9

This, then, is how you should pray:

'Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

Jesus, who is God incarnated, said that when we pray we are to address God as, "Our Father who art in heaven." And that has nothing to do with cultural context. It's an explicit imperative.

The only way we can go around that one is to refute the accuracy of the quotation in the gospels; and if you disregard this part of the scripture, then what's to stop you from disregarding any other part of the scripture. And if every part of the scripture is suspect and we are allow to pick and choose from the scripture as it suits us, then we might as well just make it up as we go along.

See the slippery slope that we are sliding down?

So, why does God refers to Him self in the male gender?

In the scripture, when God refers to Himself in the male gender, it is not to be taken as a reference to physical features. God is spirit.

John 4:24

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

In fact, both men and women reflect the image of God.

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God chose to refer to Himself in the male gender because it defines his role in his relationship with us.

Throughout the Old and New Testament, God describes His role as the Bridegroom and His people as His bride. He is the suitor pursuing His beloved, his people. We, in our sin, do not pursue God; instead we give ourselves to own selfish desires, our own "gods". It is because He pursues us that we are able to repent (turn around) and see God as the only one worthy of our worship. (e.g., See Solomon's Song of Songs)

God also describes His role as the husband who gave himself up for his wife to make her holy.

Ephesians 25-27

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

God's use of the male gender, to define his relationship with us, cuts to the heart of the Gospel.