Isaiah 1:2 - Are We All God's Children?

Isaiah 1:2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.

Are we all the children of God? Well, yes, in a sense, but actually no. Let me explain.

When Paul spoke before the philosophers of Athens at the Areopagus he used this language . . .

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think . . . 

So there is a case to be made that in a certain sense we are all God's children. But this is true only in the sense that he is the Creator and Sustainer of all things (and people) and we come from him. We are the offspring of his thought.

But there is another sense in which the Scripture is clear that we are not all the children of God, that is in the covenantal (there's that word again) sense of the phrase. The people of Israel were God's children by covenant adoption.

Exodus 4:22-23 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”

Israel were God's children in a special way that strangers and foreigners to Israel were not. Witness:

Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.

Paul acknowledges this also in Romans.

Romans 9:4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.

So while everyone is the offspring of God, only those in covenant relationship with God are truly his children.

John 1:10-13 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

It is clear then from Scripture that while God is the God of all people, not all people are his unique people. Some have a special relationship with him and can be called uniquely the children of God. What has this to do with Isaiah 1:2? We will cover that in the next post. But for now we need to look inward and ask ourselves whether or not we can legitimately say we are uniquely the children of God. Can we? Can you?