Each time I cringe. It’s those words, perhaps well-intended, but nevertheless careless words in need of theological clarity: “We’re all God’s children”. It’s a phrase almost always used to promote unity in an attempt to plead with others – as did Rodney King in the wake of the L.A. riots in 1991 – “Can’t we all just get along?” After all, we’re all God’s children aren’t we?

We are all God’s creation. He created us in His image. And marred as we are by sin, He loves His creation. Indeed, God graciously sends rain upon the just and the unjust. His patience and longsuffering compels Him to not immediately give mankind what it deserves. His wrath.

We are all children of God’s wrath. God’s Word makes this clear in Ephesians 2:3 – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. There are no categories of sinfulness here. All are under the sentence of condemnation and are bound for judgment at which the verdict will most certainly be guilty and the sentence will eternally be hell. The 80’s band AC/DC got one thing right – there is a “Highway to Hell” and it is broad and apart from God’s gracious work, they and all others who have not been born again into God’s family will reach the destination that road leads to. Why? It is our default destination. We were born in sin.

We are all in need of being spiritually born into God’s family. We are in fact born dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1). We must be born into God’s family. Spiritual birth does not take place in the waters of baptism nor by the good works which we may do. Spiritual birth occurs in the heart. It’s a heart surgery only the Holy Spirit can do. And it happens the moment an individual – seeing the plight of their sin and giving up all hope of ever being God’s child apart from God’s grace – repents and believes in Jesus Christ who died in their place on the Cross and rose again.

We are all in need of acting like God’s children. Jesus said in Matthew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Believers in Christ should want peace. We should want people to get along and we should seek to get along with other people as much as possible. But not at the cost of becoming advocates of universalism (the belief that all roads ultimately lead to heaven). Ironically, but truly, this is where the battle-lines must be drawn if we are to be faithful to Scripture. So, in the sincere effort to promote unity, it would be much better to repeat Rodney King’s plea, “Can’t we all just get along?”, rather than unknowingly advocate a false gospel which says, “We are all God’s children”.