Though the focus of this article is not on Piper's article on adoption and predestination, the focus in this review will be on how he minimizes being a child of God in the other way. That being a child of God because one is a human being seems to be insignificant to him. Such a view was neither expressed in the Scriptures nor was it expressed in by those working in the Civil Rights Movement. And thus we need to avoid Piper's downplaying of being a child of God outside of being a Christian.
From a Christian perspective, I understand why Piper takes the approach to minimizing the fact that all people are children of God in one context. He wants to focus on how important it is to believe in Christ for the forgiveness of one's sins. At the same time, we need to ask whether being a child of God can in any way be insignificant.
Civil Rights advocates used the fact that we are all children of God as a foundational part for the message on equality. Please note what Martin Luther King Jr. said (click here for the source):
When we allow freedom to ring--when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the word·s of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, Free at last, Great God almighty, We are free at last."
Why did those like Martin Luther King Jr. oppose the discrimination and racism of their day? Those activists who came from a religious background believed that inequality was wrong and sinful because it denied the fact that we were all God's children.
But Civil Rights advocates were not the first ones to recognize that we are all children of God. James 3:9-12 says the following (click here for the reference):
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
For here, James seems not to be talking about how we only curse fellow believers. There is every indication that James is complaining about how we sometimes curse people in general.
The fact that the Scriptures tell us that we are God's children because we descend from Adam and he was made in God's image and called God's son tells us that such a status is important. It is important as James stated so that we control how we treat each other. And it is important because it talks about one of our ties to God. Paul preached about how all of us are God's children in Acts 17:24-29 (click here for the source):
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.
Because Adam is called the son of God (see Luke 3:38), our connection to Adam makes all of us children of God. And since we are all children of God, we must always treat each other as equals. And we must all see the value each person has because we are His children. Whether we have treated another person justly or not is determined by the fact that that other person, regardless of their nationality, race, ethnicity, economic class, religion, or what other classification we wish to employ, is a child of God and made in His image. That others are fellow children of God is why we should work for justice for others while remembering everyone's need for mercy and forgiveness. So how can we afford to trivialize that connection between any person and God?
At the same time, Piper is drawing an important distinction. For not all children of God by way of Adam are saved and considered to be God's redeemed. Being a child of God through faith in Christ is a much more important connection to have than our connection through Adam. In fact, Jesus called some who did not believe in Him and opposed Him children of the devil in John 8 (click here):
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!
So though it is very important to be a child of God by believing in Christ is most important; being a child of God through Adam is nothing to sneeze at.
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