Since God is not male, should we stop using masculine pronouns to refer to God?
The question rests on a true premise — God is not male — but draws the wrong conclusion from it.
God Is Spirit, Not Male
Scripture is clear that God has no body. As the Lord Jesus told the woman of Samaria, "God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). And both male and female bear His image equally: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27).
A. J. Pollock states plainly:
A. J. PollockGod is a Spirit, and therefore incorporeal. Yet we read of His "back parts," His face, His eyes, His nostrils, His feet, His hands, etc., etc., all intended to convey definite thoughts in symbolic language. For instance, "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil" (Ps. 34:15-16).
F. W. Grant draws the same distinction between God's nature and man's physical form:
F. W. Grant"Likeness" to God cannot be affirmed of such an one as this, for God is not "soul," but "spirit," and the "Father of spirits." Man is thus alone in relationship to God, as possessing not only soul, but also spirit.
So it is true that God is not male in any biological sense. But this does not mean His self-chosen name should be discarded.
"Father" Is God's Own Self-Revelation — Not a Human Label
The assumption behind the question is that "Father" is a metaphor we chose, and therefore one we can un-choose. The writings show the opposite. "Father" is the name God chose for Himself, revealed progressively through history and reaching its fullness in Christ.
F. B. Hole traces the entire arc of that revelation:
F. B. HoleSince we cannot discover God, it is needful that He should make Himself known to us. Revelation becomes a necessity; and the crowning point of that revelation of Himself was touched when in Christ He made Himself known as Father.
God first revealed Himself as "God Almighty" to Abraham, then as "Jehovah" to Moses, and finally as "Father" through His Son. Each name was not a human guess but a divine disclosure. Hole continues:
The full revelation of God, however, awaited the coming of the Lord Jesus. The utmost that was possible even for so great a man as Moses was to see "the back parts" of Jehovah (Ex. 33:23). Certain of the divine attributes were emphasized such as His mercy and long-suffering; the full-orbed revelation of Himself was only possible in the only-begotten Son who was God and became Man. "No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:18).
And what does this name "Father" specifically convey? Hole explains:
To begin with, it clearly means relationship. The knowledge of God as Almighty or as Jehovah did not involve this, which doubtless accounts for the way in which unconverted people use such a term as "Almighty God" in speaking of Him and instinctively avoid "Father." In their case the relationship does not exist.
Further, it means relationship of the closest kind. The correlative terms to Father are "children" and "sons," and both these are used in the New Testament of Christians.
Morrish's Bible Dictionary confirms:
Morrish's Bible DictionaryExcept as creator and preserver of all, God is not revealed as Father in the O.T. … It was reserved for the N.T. times that God should be made known as Father; and this was done only by the Lord Jesus while upon earth, who constantly spoke to His disciples of God as their Father in heaven.
The Name "Father" Is Inseparable from the Son Who Revealed It
This is the decisive point. "Father" is not a free-standing title that can be swapped out — it exists in eternal relation to the Son. To remove "Father" is necessarily to remove "Son," and with it, the entire framework of the gospel.
F. B. Hole writes:
F. B. HoleThe crowning point in the revelation of God as Father lies in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as incarnate is the Son. He was ever "the Son" in the unity of the Godhead, but we refer to the place He took in Manhood here… Hence in His advent there was the full setting forth of all that God is as Father in connection with all that He Himself is as Son; and the light in which we know God is as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 1:3).
And again:
Connect God's Fatherhood with Christ the Son — who is the worthy Object of His love, and in whom a perfect response is given — and at once you have the key that opens the subject in its fulness. That is the standard! There you see the revelation in its perfection!
W. J. Hocking reinforces this:
W. J. HockingThe competency of the Son of God to manifest the Father's name (John 17:6) rests upon His own relationship with the Father before His incarnation. His own self-revealing words were, "I came forth from the Father … again, I leave the world and go to the Father" (John 16:28).
The Father Is the Object of Christian Worship
F. B. Hole explains how this name transforms worship itself:
F. B. HoleDo not these words plainly show that it is God as Father that we are to worship? and, further, that He is only to be worshipped according to what He has revealed Himself to be?
William Kelly adds:
William KellyWhen He speaks of the Father, it is the fulness of grace to make us what He wants us to be, but when He speaks of God, it is a necessity of His nature, and of ours too as born of Him.
And:
The immediate object of Christ's becoming incarnate was to reveal the Father… on arising from the dead, He sends by Mary of Magdala the message, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Thus He addresses His own disciples in these two relationships.
So: God is indeed spirit, not male, and both men and women bear His image equally. The physical language Scripture uses for God — His hands, His eyes, His face — is, as Pollock says, "symbolic language" accommodated to human understanding. But the name "Father" belongs to a different category entirely. It is not a human metaphor projected upward; it is God's own chosen self-revelation, brought to completion by the Son who alone could declare the Father (John 1:18). To set it aside would not be to correct an error — it would be to set aside the revelation itself.
The name "Father" carries irreplaceable content: it speaks of relationship (not merely power), of a love that originates and gives (not merely sustains), and above all it is eternally bound to the Son who revealed it. To substitute a gender-neutral term would not merely update the language — it would obscure the very heart of what God chose to make known about Himself through Christ.