We’re all God’s Children.

Or are we?

In our attempts to avoid being charged as offensive or appearing superior (separatists), we are prone to think, or even hope, all people are God’s children. It sounds inclusive and kind. But is it, if it isn’t true? I wish to show it is neither inclusive nor kind to say all humankind is God’s children, plus it leaves people complacent and potentially deceived.  

By saying everyone is a child of God, we lose what is rightly offensive (to modern sensibilities) and the necessity of demarcation; we are separate from this world if we are in Christ.

I contend it is more sentimental than biblical to say all people are God’s children when the testimony of Scripture doesn’t support this ideal.  Paul, in Ephesians 2.3, goes so far as to say that people, outside of being faithfully in Christ, are children of wrath. Clearly, he hasn’t read ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ Wrath needs nuance, of course, but no matter which way we exegete it, it is still wrath, carrying a tone of exclusion. 

The apostle John echoes Paul in 1 John 3.8-10, boldly stating that people who commit sin are children of the devil; if they do what he does, then the devil is their father. We act like our progenitors. 

And the New Testament term of adoption, so rich with meaning to people living in Roman society, is also instructive in this matter. Children were adopted into family privilege at the coming of age. Before being called a son, a child had few rights. After adoption, they had all the rights and privileges of sons. In other words, adoption was a new beginning with new privileges the unadopted do not share. So it is in Christ; we are not children of God until adopted in Christ. All people are created in God’s image, but this doesn’t mean all people are children of God until the decisiveness of commitment to Christ. Then we are. 

John, at the start of his gospel, summarizes these considerations. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” 

None of this implies that God doesn’t love people. Appealing, again, to John, we read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3.16. But it is the act of believing that allows us not to perish, not a claim that appeals to everyone being a child of God. God’s affection for his people is secured in Christ; for the world, God displays his love in the cross, at which we come to believe or not, and it is believing that makes the difference and allows us to be adopted into the family of God by the Holy Spirit. Then we are sons. 

The church is a different people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood with God as our common Father. It is to the church, God’s children, that John says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.” 1 John 3.1. 

What privilege, what elevation God has shown us, to be called his children. This invitation goes to all people who would hear and believe in Jesus, his Son.