The Universal Fatherhood of God Concept Questioned

by Jim Hammond

      We live in a society where many people believe in the concept of God.  They believe in the concept of God being our Father and men being our brothers.  Maybe as you are reading these first two lines of this article you find yourself agreeing,  "Yes, I believe God is our Father and we are all brothers."  I am not surprised if you do.  We will run into an increasing number of people in these dare I say "last days" who will be teaching the concept of the Universal Fatherhood of God attempting to unite all religious systems into a one world system.  People are running into this generic God concept in pseudo religious organizations, in school, in the college philosophy classes.  The concept is everywhere.  Is it right?  No, it is dangerously wrong!  There are many false teachers who will twist these phrases to mean something the Bible does not teach.  Let me make some clarifications from Scripture.  The reason for these clarifications is critical.  The wrong concept of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man can lead you to a false security.  For example, there are many who believe that since "God is their father" when they die they will go to heaven.  This is only true if God is truly their Father in the New Testament sense.  What does it mean in Scripture to be the child of God?  In the Bible the Fatherhood of God does not imply the all men are His sons.  When the scriptures do teach the concept of God as Father of all mankind, other scriptures that teach what it means to be His child must clarify these scriptures.  Let me list for you below three sets of scriptures.  One list teaches that God loves us all (that is what may or may not be meant when someone uses the phrase "the Father of God").  Another list of scriptures teach that there are only a few sons.  The third list will explain why.  

1.       The Fatherhood of God:

Genesis 1:31  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.

John 3:16   "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Matthew 5:44-45  But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, {45} that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Acts 14:17  Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."

2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

1 John 2:2  He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

 It is clear from the above passages that God loves all of mankind as a Father loves His Children, and does not wish evil upon his creation.

2.   However, the Fatherhood of God does not imply Universal Sonship:

John 1:12-13  Yet to all who received him [Jesus Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--{13} children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

Romans 8:14   because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Galatians 3:26  You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,

John 12:36  Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light." When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.

Acts 17:23-31  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. {24} "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. {25} And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.  {26} From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. {27} God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  {28} 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' {29} "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill. {30} In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. {31} For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.  He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

John 3:36  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

Romans 5:6-11  You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. {7} Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. {8} But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. {9} Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! {10} For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! {11} Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Notice the phrases below that describe our relationship to God prior to accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Ephesians 2:3  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

Ephesians 2:12  remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

Ephesians 4:18  They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

1 John 3:1  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Notice, "the world does not recognize us as children of God because they are not children of God themselves.  The contrast is between those who accepted Jesus (the Children of God) and those who did not ("the world").  And the Fatherhood of God applies only to those who were not of "the world" but those who "know" Jesus Christ and thereby came out of the fallen world.

Romans 9:27  Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.

The scriptural concept is throughout the Bible that not all Israel is the true Israel of God.  Not all Christian Church Members are necessarily truly Christian.  God alone knows the heart and who are truly his sons.

3.    Since the Fall of Man Reconciliation must take place before God is truly our Father:

The following scriptures clarify why there are verses that talk about the universal Fatherhood of God.  Yes, God is our Father in the sense that He is our Creator but because of the Fall, man disqualified himself as the children of God and became children of wrath, or children of the devil.

Ephesians 2:1-2  As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, {2} in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

We followed the wrong "father".

1 John 3:10  This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

Notice that in the same verse as you have children of God contrasted with Children of the devil you have the mentioning of loving our brothers.  The brothers here is obviously talking about our Christian brothers.  This doesn't mean we do not love non believers.  This is simply saying you can tell true Christians because of their love for one another, a truth that is in other places in Scripture.

Acts 4:12  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

1 Timothy 2:5-6  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, {6} who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time.

  Jesus Christ is the remedy.  Any false teaching that emphasizes the Universal Fatherhood of God and the Universal Brotherhood of man is in grave danger of denying the unique role of Jesus Christ, God's Son, through whom we are adopted as sons by Faith.  One does not automatically get to heaven because they "believe in God" and are "good people." We are told the demons believe in God.  We are also told that there is no one righteous without Jesus Christ who is our Righteousness.  The real question is have you acknowledged Jesus Christ to be the only Way the Truth and the Life.  Have you acknowledged that no man comes to the Father except through Him!  (John 14:6).