Becoming the Children of God

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

One of my favorite television shows of all time is The West Wing. I’ve seen every season at least five times. The West Wing was where I learned the term “third rail.” The episode was about fixing Social Security and President Bartlet, presumably quoting Tip O’Neill, called Social Security the “third rail of American politics.” The metaphor refers to the electrified rail in a subway system that would most likely cause death if one were to touch it. Hence, social security was an untouchable topic for legislators.  If they touched it, their political career would be over. There are many third rails in American Christianity, and calling out trite statements that are ingrained in our brains as though they were written by God on stone tablets, handed to Moses, and reiterated in the Sermon on the Mount is surely one of them.  Because I’m one of those “learn the hard way people,” I’d like to tell you why I think the statement, “We're all God’s children,” is nonsense, without any solid footing in Scripture or doctrine.

Some of the greatest delights in my life were the conversations I had with Dennis Kinlaw before he died. He was and remains a hero in the faith for me, and I didn’t learn until it was almost too late that I could actually talk to him. The first phone call I had with him was in October 2015 and it was an amazing conversation. He loved to talk about everything including humanity and personhood. Though I had learned it some years before, the truth that God is a person who relates to us as persons before he ever takes on any other role in our lives became as clear as day to me in that conversation. What God does is a result of who God is. This is what theologians mean when they teach us that the economic work of the Trinity comes forth from the immanent Trinity. God was Father long before he was judge. He was Son long before he was savior. He was Holy Spirit long before he was comforter. Familial language takes precedence over law court language. As he said to me, “The way a father deals with the sin of a child is much different than how a judge deals with sin.” This also led him to say, “It's all a family business. From the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, it's all a family project.” Family is an important metaphor within Scripture. It’s why we still refer to Father Abraham or give a woman the honorific Mother in Israel. It’s all a family project.

Thus, we can be forgiven to a degree for our repeated statement and belief that all human beings are children of God. To some this is going to read like an unnecessary division in an already divided time. It is fair to ask whether or not this is a question worth raising and answering. I say yes. Truth and accuracy are important. The bearing this question has on the mission of the church is important as well. If we view all humanity as made in the image of God, but not necessarily children of God, it brings the church’s mission into clearer detail. More on that in a moment.

Are we all children of God? Many think so. The reasons behind this belief are fair and loving. It promotes unity as a species. If we remind ourselves that we are all children of God, brothers and sisters, then we have to reckon with the fact that when we sin against one another we are sinning against someone in our family. Another reason is possibly a misunderstanding of Biblical anthropology. We are all created in God’s image. Some would extrapolate from that fact to say that, because of this, we are children of God. But that doesn’t square with what the Bible says about us as human beings. To start with, when Paul begins the second chapter of Ephesians—a letter written to a church of people who were Christians—he says, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else” (Ephesians 2:3, emphasis mine.) Before they became heirs of the promise (1:18), they lived out of the flesh and were according to their nature “children of wrath, like everyone else.” That was their default state, and ours as well. The phrase “like everyone else” says to us that all people are flesh-obsessed creatures who are children of wrath—not children of God! 

That’s a rough start, but the good news is this: God is on a mission to adopt us who walk in the passions of our flesh and who are by nature children of wrath. God’s purpose is to make us children of God. According to that same conversation with Dr. Kinlaw, the New Testament uses the term “adoption” five times. In Ephesians 1:5, Paul says that God “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.” In other words, from the foundation of the world God knew we would become estranged children of another, but he wanted to adopt us by sending the eternal Son of God to rescue us and make us his kin. This is the image in John 14 when Jesus tells the disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2). Sandra Richter teaches us that Jesus was using the image of the father’s house from Israelite history and tradition. When there is another child, another room is added. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension are part of a cosmically huge home addition project for everyone who believes in his name because to those who do, “he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12.) Kinlaw said, “the purpose of creation was adoption.” God’s purpose is to adopt us.

Galatians 3:26 says that “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God, through faith.” It is by faith in Jesus Christ that we become children of God. Later, in chapter 4, Paul writes, “but when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:4-5). Through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ we are able to receive adoption as children. It is by virtue of Jesus Christ that any of us might become God’s children. Jesus’ shed blood, the atonement, is how we become children of God. Or, as Dr. Kinlaw said, “the purpose of the cross is adoption.”

The remaining passages concerning adoption come in Romans 8. It is by the Spirit’s witness that we know we’ve been adopted. Romans 8:14 says that those who are led by the Spirit, rather than the flesh, are God’s children. The Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirits that we are children of God. If we’re adopted, we started out life as someone else’s children, but God in his mercy sent his Son for us so that those who are in Christ Jesus would never see condemnation (Romans 8:1). In vv. 22-24, we groan inwardly, along with creation, for the final act of adoption, the consummation of all things in the end. And finally, in Romans 9, Paul lists seven advantages of having been born a Jew, the first being adoption. Or put another way within the context of what Paul is saying, election is for adoption. The family of God is the elected vehicle of salvation through adoption. 

Adoption is a theme because God loves us and pursues us. This means, finally, that we come to understand the saving work of God through the Son, Jesus Christ, as being about adoption. It also frames the mission of the church in a way that gets missed when we tritely say, “we’re all God’s children.” To say that all human beings are God’s children not only explicitly rejects passages like Ephesians 2, it also sets the church on a course that misses the point of the Great Commission. Why make anyone a disciple if we’re all God’s children? If we are all already God’s children, then there is no reason to make disciples of all nations. We just need to feed, shelter, clothe, and tend to each other’s wounds until we die or Jesus returns. These are all great things we should be doing, but they are not disciple-making acts. They do not plead with people to turn from the passions of the flesh and become children of God because, in this view, to do so is unnecessary. On the other hand, if God destined followers of Christ for adoption, the church is the elected vehicle of salvation for all who are born again to a new and living hope, and there are people out there who are not yet children of God. We thus have a job to do. The church’s mission of making disciples and witnessing to the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ means something. It means that we are a part of God’s purpose of adoption. We get to go out and tell people who have been orphaned by the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) that there is a Father who wants to be their forever family. I “ugly cry” every time I see a video of a child opening up a present that is his or her adoption papers. One, you’re a rock if you’re not moved by a child’s emotional reaction to being told they’re loved and valued. Two, there is something intrinsically human about being adopted. Remember our bodies are groaning as we await the final act of adoption. This groaning is in every single human being. It’s transcultural and stretches across space and time. Jesus is on the move desiring us all to become adopted children of God. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:6 (NLT), “And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.” God’s plan in the gospel was that we orphans, who have nothing to bring—no way of providing for ourselves, no one to teach us how to live, no family collateral—we are now heirs with Christ and recipients of a glorious inheritance in all the saints (Ephesians 1:18). The adopted are children, children with an abundant inheritance which will never run out, and the church’s mission is go to and fro throughout the world telling those orphaned by our enemy that God wants them. He wants to give them a new identity, a new birth certificate that says they are God’s sons and daughters.

To admit that not every person is a child of God is not a hard-hearted exclusion tactic. Rather, it is a statement of reality and truth which ought to lead us to our knees in tears praying for all people to become reconciled to God. We who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good have the privilege of running through this world waving adoption papers, and telling people, “The Father wants you! He wants you! He wants to make you his beloved adopted child!” We should share the means by which the act is sealed: by grace, through faith, with the witness of the Spirit being the gavel that finally declares it is finished. You belong to God.

Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor in the Arkansas Conference and the editor of The Guide to Holiness, a newsletter about entire sanctification which can be found at guidetoholiness.com.