The truth is, universalists, unitarians and other theological liberals will have to try to dig up other biblical texts than Malachi 2:10 to try to make this patently unbiblical case that all people simply by virtue of their physical birth are somehow children of God, united with Father God. Being created by God does not automatically make everyone his spiritual children.

No, we are not all children of God:
On a surface reading this verse does not appear to be all that problematic. But as with many passages in this series, it is the way it is so readily misused and abused by many others that causes the problem. The verse in question says this: “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?”
The misuse of this text comes about when cultists and heretics try to make the case that we are all not only God’s children by physical creation, but we are all also his children in a spiritual sense as well. Universalism is one of the names of this particular heresy – the idea that we are all saved, that there is no hell and final judgment, and that we are all doing just fine with God. See more on this theological error here: billmuehlenberg.com/2011/03/12/against-universalism/
There are several challenges that we can bring to bear in dealing with such a faulty understanding of this verse in particular and the whole of Scripture in general. The first thing to say is this understanding is only partly right. And that is how cults and heresies usually flourish: by using part of the truth, and twisting it as well.
We ARE all God’s children in the obvious sense that God created every single one of us. We all exist because God made us. So in that sense, sure, everyone is a child of God. But Scripture also uses this notion of being a child of God in a different sense – a different spiritual and theological sense.
That is, only those who are in a right relationship with God are seen to be children of God. This is clear from all of Scripture. Ancient Israel as a whole was seen as being part of God’s family, but not the surrounding pagan nations. And in the New Testament only those who come to Christ in faith and repentance are regarded as being a child of God.
Jesus made this crystal clear when he rebuked the religious leaders of the day who were clearly NOT in right relationship with God. He called them children of the devil (see the whole exchange in Matthew 25:31-46). That is the condition of everyone unless they make a deliberate turn away from sin and turn to God. But all this I discuss in much more detail elsewhere: billmuehlenberg.com/2016/01/13/no-we-are-not-all-gods-children/
The second obvious thing to say about this erroneous interpretation of this text is this: as always, context is king. Simply reading this verse in light of its immediate context makes it clear that there is no universalistic mush being promoted here.
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Written by Joel R. Beeke and Christopher W. Bogosh |
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Scotsman, David Dickson (c. 1583–1662), well-known for writing the first commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith and for his commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, and Hebrews. When his friends were gathered around his deathbed, one of them asked him when in the throes of a painful death what he was thinking. Dickson replied, “I have taken all my bad deeds and put them on a heap, and I have taken my good deeds as well, and I have put them on the same heap. And I have run away from that heap into the arms of Jesus. I die in peace.”2

God gives dying grace to His people for death’s hour. Some of His people die with little fanfare. They depart this life quietly, serenely, with barely a sigh. For others, the king of terrors is more violent, but Jesus brings them through in the end and gives them the victory. Still others receive special measures of dying grace, so that their deathbeds become their best pulpits. Such was the case with the well-known Scottish theologian, Thomas Halyburton (1674–1712), who died at the age of thirty-seven. To read in his Memoirs the nearly seventy pages of his last sayings, which were recorded by those around his deathbed, is to dwell in the vestibule of heaven. Here is only one example: “Come, sweet Lord Jesus, receive this spirit, fluttering within my breast like a bird to be out of a snare. I wait for thy salvation as the watchman watcheth for the morning. I am weary with delays. I faint for thy salvation. Why are His chariot wheels so long a coming?”1
History is full of tens of thousands of saints who have died victoriously in Jesus with great joy, despite the affliction death brought. Biblical examples, such as those of Paul (2 Tim. 4:6–8) and Stephen (Acts 7:54–60), are well known. So are the cases of many martyrs, such as John Huss (1369–1415), Hugh Latimer (c. 1486–1555) and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500– 1555), and repentant Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). Cranmer recanted under pressure from Roman Catholic Queen Mary (1516–1558), but he recanted his recantation, went to the stake, and as the flames crept up his body, he stretched his right hand into the midst of the flames, and cried out: “This hand hath offended”—and died horrifically but victoriously!
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Written by Samuel D. James |
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
The recovery of American masculinity will be a counterrevolution of dignity, encouraging men to embrace their God-given strength, competitiveness, and desire for meaning as signposts pointing them toward a rich life of worship, temperance, and self-sacrifice. 

The firebrand gender philosopher Camile Paglia once famously declared that there is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. Provocative as always, Paglia’s point is that, historically speaking, the extremes of human achievement—both superlative genius and murderous sociopathy—tend to be occupied by men. Society, Paglia argues, must therefore pay close attention to masculinity because the stakes are particularly high. The trajectory of the American male over the past few decades is proving Ms. Paglia unnervingly correct.
Conservatives have often sensed an anti-masculine bias in elite spaces of journalism, higher education, and pop culture. This was the animating spirit in a recent speech by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to the National Conservatism Conference. Hawley’s talk, titled “The Future of the American Man,” eloquently summarized many concerns that religious and traditionalist Americans have about contemporary masculinity.
Hawley pointed out that record numbers of young men are failing to graduate, work, or marry, and that this constitutes a genuine social crisis. Moreover, as Hawley observed, the emerging generation of American men do not seem to have a definite vision for their lives. Vocational ambition and community leadership are increasingly ceded to women, as many twenty and thirtysomething men languish in inactive lifestyles dominated by video games and pornography.
These are trends conservatives certainly should be talking about, and Hawley should be commended for talking so transparently about them. But if “The Future of the American Man” gets the symptoms correct, it names the disease only in part. Throughout the speech, Hawley casts the current plight of masculinity on “the Left,” arguing that third-wave feminism’s misandry is at the heart of Democratic and progressive policies, and thus, the primary agent of this crisis.
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