God is the Father of all. Paul made that fairly clear for us in Ephesians 3:14-15. He wrote, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named…” Every human being is a 25 our redemptionchild of God. God created everything and everyone. As the Universal Father of all, we all belong to Him. We are all created in His image. Through God’s creative miracle each human being is instilled with the image of God and can relate to God in this spirit when nothing else in all creation can do so. God is referred to as the Father of Angels, but it’s never said that they are created in God’s image. Only men and women are created in God’s image. Since every man and every woman have been created by God and in God’s image, every man and every woman deserve respect and honor. God does not make distinctions based on gender, economic standing, or race. Paul asks in Romans 3:29, “After all, is God the God of the Jews only? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Of course he is.” When John wrote that God so “loved the world..” he meant every human being in it!

But we must not forget that although we are all children of God by creation, we are not all children of God by redemption. Jesus taught that we all must be born again into the family of God to become redeemed children. John taught us that although we’re all created in God’s image and are referred to as God’s children in a universal sense, there is much more involved in becoming complete children of God. In John 1:12 we read, “But to all who did receive him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Looking again at the passage in Romans from above, we add the 30th verse and see that together (Romans 3:29-30) it says, “After all, is God the God of the Jews only? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Of course he is. There is only one God, and he makes people right with himself only by faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.”

It is the relationship that we establish through faith in Jesus that brings true life. It’s not being born of the flesh that gives true life. We know that the destiny of this life is only the grave. Death is the result of sin. The only remedy for death is to adequately deal with the root cause: sin. Jesus did that for us. Real life, true life, abundant life and eternal life begin when we put ourselves in subjection to our heavenly father by faith in His provision for our sin. I love the way the author of the book of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 12:9. He says, “Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?”