“You do the deeds of your father.” Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:41-44)
Fathers are fathers because they produce children. God gives spiritual life to all those who are His spiritual children.
There is the mistaken notion that everyone is a child of God. In the limited sense of God being the Creator, and all humans being made in His image, that is so. But, specifically, Jesus says here that not all have God as their spiritual father. He says that the devil was the father of the Pharisees.
By virtue of our first physical birth we are sinners—lost and under the wrath of God. Our spiritual daddy is the Devil—sinful and hellbound. What we must have is a second spiritual birth that makes us sons of God—saved and heavenbound. We will abide at home with our father forever. Whose your daddy?
Have you had that new birth? It comes as we turn from our sins and trust in the Savior. We respond to the gracious activity of God and the drawing of the Spirit.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
(John 1:12-13)
God the Father is the life-giver of His children.
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