Warning: If you don’t read this entire post, you’ll likely miss the point. It’s under 800 words, so take a quick break from YouTube or from binging your favorite TV show, and we’ll all be good.
For those who may not know the history, the concept of “The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man” is a fairly recent idea that was spawned by liberal theologians in the early 1900s. According to this doctrine, God is the universal Father to every mortal, and He indwells in each human, including those who have outright rejected Jesus of Nazareth and His kingdom message.
The concept has made another wave today. Social media abounds with memes saying, “God is in you” and “God is your Father” – not addressed to Jesus-followers, but to every person who breathes oxygen.
While the idea sounds warm and nice, especially to those who are drawn to new-age inspired ideas, it flatly contradicts the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.
Jesus was almost stoned (I mean by rocks!) because He made the shocking statement that He was God’s Son (see John 8). He also made plain that God is NOT everyone’s Father when He said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:3-8). Birth is the impartation of life. New birth is the impartation of divine life.
If Nicodemus was already a child of God (possessing God’s indwelling life), Jesus’ words would have been meaningless.
One of the centerpieces of New Testament revelation is that those who repent and believe on Jesus are made “sons of God” (John 1:12). In other words, God’s life indwells them, and they are kin to divinity. (“Sons” in the New Testament includes women. Just sayin’.)
The genuine Christian possesses divine life. The triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – indwells in him or her (see Romans 8).
Therefore, to assert that God dwells in every human is not only false, but it empties the gospel message of its power. The gospel isn’t just about the afterlife, it’s about the present life. And those who have entrusted their lives to Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, have the unique privilege of receiving the indwelling presence of God and being His child through regeneration.
The above realities are stated on just about every page of the New Testament, so I won’t bore you with a long list of Scriptures supporting the idea.
But I’m calling “bull” on all those memes and quotes that assert a fundamental untruth that has deceived many people and conned them into rejecting the message of Jesus Himself. After all, why bother with the claims of Jesus if God is already your Father and He indwells you?
While the New Testament is unshakably clear that not every human possesses the Holy Spirit (God dwelling in them), anyone can receive God’s life if they repent and entrust themselves to Christ.
“And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”
~ Romans 8:9
“What we [the Christians in Corinth] have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.”
~ 1 Corinthians 2:12
Now a word to those who have embraced a blue-blooded form of evangelical fundamentalism, who are or have been expressing hatred toward everyone who isn’t like them: Let me remind you that Jesus had the harshest things to say about such people. And as was the case with Warden Norton in Shawshank Redemption, the ability to quote the Bible and claim to be “born again” doesn’t make it so. Matthew 7:12 is the litmus test.
Do you treat everyone else the way you want to be treated? That’s the evidence of the new birth. So says John, anyway (see 1 John).
Two Additional Thoughts
1) It can be rightly said that God is the source of every human being, for He is the ultimate Creator. So says Acts 17:27-28
“God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
But that’s completely different from God being the Father — by life — to every human. It’s the difference between a man creating an item (he would be the “father” of that item in the sense that he is its source) and a man impregnating his wife and giving birth to a daughter. It is the latter sense in which a disciple of Jesus has God as Father.
2) There is an idea that’s popular in some high-church traditions that says that no human being is born separate from God. They just need to be made aware of their union with Him. But this idea is contradicted all throughout the New Testament.
Two passages that obliterate this viewpoint (and there are many more) is Ephesians 2:12 and 4:18:
“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.”
“They [the unregenerate Gentiles] 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.”
If every human is already unified with God, and not separated from Him, these statements by Paul make no sense at all. The view that says that no one is separated from God is built on the assumption that when Paul writes to the ekklesias, he’s speaking to every human being.
So when he says in Galatians, “Christ lives in me,” this is taken to refer to every human. But this isn’t the case. Paul’s words in the Epistles are to those who have repented and believed in Christ, so they do not apply to those who haven’t surrendered their lives to Him.
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Those Two-Faced Christians
I go cold every time I hear someone say we are all God’s children or that we are all brothers. If it is said aloud in the presence of one of my friends, she corrects them to say “creatures” instead of children, using that as her door to speak the truth. There is so much universalism taught that does not save anyone. There are going to be a lot of church goers who will be surprised when Jesus says, “I never knew you.”
This is similar ideology that saturates peoples minds today that says by being a good person one is acceptable to God. It makes so much sense to most people that they accept and practice it as true. I think that it has become so pervasive that it attracts like-minded people together ordering their lives under its banner. Look around and one can see it everywhere today.
Hi Frank, thank you for this timely word. I have been wrestling with this issue on many fronts. What is so deceptive is that people fall into the trap of wanting to reach people and then end up compromising the Gospel. Even among “mature” leaders this fallacy is being spoken but not recognized. Under the guise of the “original blessing” referring to Genesis 1 people are making the case that men are fully endorsed by God but they just have “a little sin issue” that is easily remedied with a simple change of focus. Thanks again for the straight talk to the church.
On, snap! You went there, Frank. I’m glad you’re touching on this controversial topic. I see it all over Facebook. Seems pretty clear in the NT that people are being converted from one life (flesh) to another Life (Spirit). There are multiple examples of the Holy Spirit falling on new converts for the first time. If God was indwelling them the whole time, why is there a need for any conversion, or receiving of the Spirit?
I assume that God is working *among* all people to draw them to Himself, but not *indwelling* all people. Major distinction.
Frank,
Amen. Thank you for speaking this in plain and simple terms. It’s this kind of message that helps clears up the nonsense being tossed around.