Child of Whom?

9/23/2011 | By Will Brannon

The world often says we are all children of God. Mormonism teaches that everyone alive is a child of God because everyone was created by God. While the Bible clearly affirms that God created all mankind (Acts 17:24-26), it also clearly affirms that we are not all children of God.

Most Christians do not have a problem with that statement. Christians are true children of God, right? But the real problem comes when you ask: if you are not a child of God, then who are you a child of?

Satan?

I remember one time this conversation surfaced, a couple of Christians in a Bible study said rather adamantly that they were never a child of Satan. Nor is anyone, Christian or not, a child of Satan. In fact, they found the entire thought highly offensive. The answer Scripture gives to this question is terrifying to some: if you are not a child of God, you are a child of Satan.

...and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one. Matthew 13:38.

I [Jesus] speak the things which I have have with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father...You are of your father the devil...John 8:38, 44.

[Paul] filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him, and said, "You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?" Acts 13:9-10.

By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:10.

That is a tough pill to swallow. In our sin, we were not simply imperfect or people who sinned from time to time. We were fist shaking, sin loving, depraved, sons of the devil. No doubt a lot of people who read that think it is hate filled and bigoted. Are you actually saying that ALL people who do not trust Jesus are sons of the devil? God has spoken, and I am simply reporting what He has said.

But praise be to God that He does not abandon us and leave us as children of the evil one. Galatians 4:4-5 proclaims this truth beautifully:

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Ephesians 2:4 says,

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

In our sin we are children of Satan. But the perfect, holy, awesome, loving God who owes us nothing chose to send Jesus. Why? So that we might become children of God. We cross from death to light. From the family of Satan to the family of God Himself.