Some teach that God the Father is the spiritual father of all people and that we are all His children. This is known as the Universal Fatherhood of God. It is a false teaching.

Jesus shocked the religious leaders of His day by calling them the children of the devil: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44).

We become the children of the Heavenly Father through faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” ( John 1: 12). The disciples were taught to pray: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

As a result of the new birth, the Christian is a child of the Father. He has been born into the family of God. And all the family benefits belong to him.

Samuel Zwemer wrote: “I understand the loving fatherhood of God as Jesus taught it because I saw it in my own father.” The tender and close relationship of a father to his child enables us to grasp something of the Heavenly Father’s closeness to us.

I feel secure with my Father’s hand in mine.