God Is Not Father of All

Jim Packer said: “You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the Holy Creator. In the same way you sum up the whole of the New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s Holy Father. Father is the Christian name for God.”

There are those who claim that the teaching given in the Old Testament is quite different. There, they say, God is viewed as being the Father of all. But is He? Consider this: “Israel is My firstborn son … ‘Let My son go'” (Ex 4:22-23). There are many such passages. The Old Testament as well and the New Testament shows God as the Father, not of all men and women but of His own people, Abraham’s descendants. Galatians 3:26 tells us that God is not the Father of all, but only of those who know themselves to be sinners and have accepted His Son into their hearts. When we have done this, Paul says, we belong to Christ and are ourselves Abraham’s offspring.

Divine sonship is not ours because we have been born into this world; it is ours because we have been born again into another realm—the kingdom of God. Sonship is a gift, a gift of grace. It is not a natural sonship but an adoptive sonship. God takes those who receive His Son and makes them His adopted children, to see and share His glory into which His one and only Son has already come.

Further Study

Rm 9:4-12; Jr 31:9; Hosea 11:1; 2Co 6:18

What makes people children of God?

What does “Abraham’s children” mean?