Is Everyone a Child of God?
Although both St. Paul and St. John speak of
the fact that Christians have become children of God as an extraordinary grace,
it is common to hear people refer to every human being as a child of God. What
does Scripture teach?
To begin with, Genesis presents Adam, who
represents humanity as a whole in God’s image and likeness, as God’s son (see
Gen 1:27; 5:1-3), and the Gospel of Luke confirms this perspective in its
genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:38). It is therefore legitimate, biblically
speaking, to speak of all human beings as God’s children.
Scripture also speaks in a particular way
about the people of Israel as God’s son (Exod 4:22-23; Hosea 11:1) and about
the Israelites as “sons and daughters” (Deut 32:19; Isa 43:6).
God promises a special relationship of
sonship to the kings who descend from David: “I will be a father to him, and he
shall be a son to me” (2 Sam 7:14). Although this promise, famously expressed
in Ps 2:6-9, applied in some measure to all the Davidic kings, it found its
complete and ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, the Messiah.
Jesus revealed that his own relationship to
God as Son was something altogether new and of a different order from any other
sonship. On the one hand, he was the human son of God by being the son of
David, by embodying Israel in himself (Hosea 11:1), and by being the Son of Man
(Hebrew ben adam)—that is, Adam’s
preeminent descendant. On the other hand, Christ was the preexistent divine
Son, who was the Father from all eternity (Matt 11:27; John 1:1-14; 3:12;
5:19-20; 6:38; 10:30; 14:9-11; 16:28; Phil 2:5-11; Col 1:13-16; Heb 1:2).
Jesus’ coming into the world made possible a
new kind of relationship with God that comes by divine power, through faith in
Jesus, rather than by ordinary human generation (John 1:12-13). While John
speaks of this new divine sonship as being born of or begotten by God (1 John
2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18), Paul uses the analogy of adoption to describe it
(Rom 6:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5) but indicates that it entails far more than a
change of legal status, since God has sent “the spirit of his Son into our
hearts” (Gal 4:6; see also Rom 8:15).
Nonetheless, the New Testament points to an
even more wonderful future relationship with God as his sons and daughters.
Paul speaks of an “adoption” that we await, “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom
8:23). For John that future intimacy with God goes beyond the marvelous current
condition of being God’s children in whom his seed (Greek sperma; RSV, “nature”) is present (1 John 3:9). He says, “Beloved,
we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do
know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he
is” (1 John 3:2).
To sum up, while every human being is a child
of God, created in his image and likeness, and Israel is God’s son through God’s
covenant with the patriarchs, baptized Christians have been adopted by God and
made his children in a far deeper way. We have received in our hearts the
Spirit of God’s only begotten Son, who makes possible an extraordinary intimacy
with the Father (to know him as “Abba,” Gal 4:6) and with Christ himself (to
become “one spirit with him,” 1 Cor 6:17). An even greater intimacy with the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit awaits us when Christ returns (1 Cor 15:28; Eph
2:7). (Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williams, Galatians [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture; Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2019], 142-43)
