Absolutely not! That is, if you believe the Bible. I don’t like to disagree with Christian leaders, such as Pope Francis. But Christians should let the Bible teach them both how to believe and how to live, and the Bible never says all people are “children of God.”
Pope Francis has been saying this throughout his papacy. He said it again today in an interview about homosexuality. The Bible very clearly condemns homosexuality. But Pope Francis seems to have a different viewpoint about it. Today, he said, “being homosexual is not a crime.” That depends on definitions and where you live. In over sixty countries in the world, it is still a crime to practice homosexuality, as it used to be in the U.S. Does Pope Francis mean that if a person has attraction to the same sex, that person is a homosexual? Or does he mean a person who engages in sexual acts with people of the same sex? That is what the Bible means by homosexuality, which it condemns (Leviticus 18.22; 20.13; cf. Genesis 19; Romans 1).
Some people admit that the Old Testament condemns homosexuality, yet they claim Jesus did not. I think that is wrong. Jesus was many things, including a Torah teacher. He began his public ministry by prefacing his teaching in his Sermon on the Mount–as though prescient about accusations that were to come against him and get him killed. He said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5.17 NASB95). Jesus then further explained concerning the Law of God delivered to Moses, “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches then, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (v. 19).
Jesus later explained, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries” etc. (Mark 7.20-21). The word in the Greek text here translated “fornications” is porneiai. It means simply “sexual immorality” and therefore has a wide range of meaning, which most certainly includes homosexuality due to Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13. But that is not the subject of the title of this post.
When Pope Francis says all people are “children of God” he thereby follows Vatican II (1962-1965). Prior to that, the Roman Catholic Church’s most important doctrine about personal salvation was that “there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” That it, the Church said you must be baptized by it to be a true Christian. The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 by reacted to that. So, Vatican II made a change about it. But in so doing, in my opinion, it went too far by saying that all human beings are “children of God.”
The Bible says from its very beginning and throughout that God created humans beings in his image. But that does not make all human beings “children of God,” which refers to a spiritual relationship. Christians must get this straight, since it is important.
A man and a woman couple, a fetus is conceived, and that person born to them is their “child.” But that is not the way it is with God. A “child of God” does not mean God performed some sexual activity and thereby produced his “child.” No, a “child of God” means that person is related to God in a spiritual sense. For this reason Jesus regularly called God his “Father.” And Jesus taught his genuine disciples to call God their “Father.” But all of this is spiritual, not physical.
A human being can only become a child of God by entering into a spiritual relationship with God. The Gospel of John in the New Testament says of Jesus, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1.12). This means that those who believe in Jesus’ name gain “the right to become children of God.” Thus, a human being cannot rightly be included among those who are “children of God” unless that human has believed in the meaning of Jesus’ name.
What does Jesus’ name mean? The name Jesus is the Aramaic translation of Yeshua, pronounced Ye-SHOO-ah. This word is the translation of the Hebrew word Yehoshua, which is the same as Joshua. Ye is the shortened from of Yahweh or Yehvah (from (YHWH or YHVH), which is God’s name (Exodus 3). The Hebrew word hoshua means “salvation.” So, putting ye and hoshua together as Yehoshua means “Yahweh is salvation” or Yahweh saves.” For Jesus of Nazareth to have Jesus as his name means Yahweh saves through this man.
So, according to the Christian Bible, more particularly its New Testament, a person can only rightly be regarded as “a child of God” by believing that God saves through Jesus of Nazareth. How does God do this? Every human being sins. According to the Bible, people need for God to forgive them of their sins to become children of God. That is why God’s plan was for Jesus to die on the cross. The New Testament repeatedly says Jesus died on the cross, bearing the sins of others. So, the New Testament calls people to genuinely believe in Jesus dying for their sins in order for God to forgive them of their sins and thereby become a true child of God, which means a person who belongs to God and Jesus by virtue of a spiritual relationship. This is what it means to believe in Jesus as Savior, that is, savior from sin and its result, which is divine condemnation.
That is why Jesus told Nicodemus, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3.3). Jesus meant that all people need to be spiritually born, that is, renewed in spirit, to become a true child of God and thereby enter spiritually into the kingdom of God. Nicodemus was a Jew, a member of the elite Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, which ruled the religious life of Jews, and most Jews thought they were children of God simply by being born a Jew. Jesus corrected that error in this remark to Nicodemus.
The apostle Paul explains most succinctly, “They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; neither are they all children because they are descended from Abraham’s descendants, but THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED” (Romans 9.6-7; the all caps is a quotation of Gen 21.12). Paul means that God’s promise to Abraham–that he will have children of God even though both Abraham and his wife Sarah were beyond childbearing years–comes through Abraham’s only son, Isaac, with Sarah. Therefore, the promise was not with a previous son which Abraham had with Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, which son was named Ishmael (Genesis 12.7; 15.18; 16.11; 17.9; 18.9-14; 21.1-5).
The apostle Paul continues, “it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise regarded as descendants” (Romans 9.8). Paul means that God’s promise to Abraham that he will have “children of God” will be through Isaac, thus not through Ishmael. But both Paul and Jesus agree that even these descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who came to be called “Jews,” still are not children of God simply by being physically born as Jews, but they need a spiritual birth as do all people in order to become children of God and thereby spiritually enter God’s kingdom.
In sum, according to the New Testament, “children of God” are not all people but only those who have a genuine, spiritual relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
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