We hear much in these days of the "fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man," and it is well, provided we use these expressions in their true sense. Literally speaking, there has been on this earth only one person of whom God is the Father. When he is called the Father of any other person, and when any other person is called his son, the terms "father" and "son" are used, not literally, but metaphorically. Sometimes men have been called sons of God because of likeness between their characters and that of God; but in the strictly Christian sense of the expression, none are sons of God except those who have been born of water and the Spirit. These are metaphorically called sons of God because they have passed into a new life comparable to that on which an infant enters at birth. They are said in this sense to have been born again.

      But those people with whom this expression has become such a shibboleth of late do not confine it to this meaning. They usually include in it the whole human race. Here, for example, is that eccentric Episcopal clergyman in New York who has been telling in The Outlook the story of his own career--W. S. Rainsford. Speaking of a conversation which he once had in a railroad train, he says: "I was led on from step to step until I dwelt on what I have already said has been an immense power in my life--the relation of man to God because he is man; of the fatherhood of God; that men were children of God, not because they had been converted or baptized, but because they were born the children of God" (Outlook for May 16, p. 169). This is a direct contradiction of what Jesus says on the subject, and it styles children of God some whom the Bible speaks of as children of the wicked one, or, as Jesus himself put it in conversation with some Pharisees, "Ye are of your father the devil;" and, "If God were your Father, ye would love me" (John 8:42-44).

      I have seen the statement, either from this Mr. Rainsford or some other admirer of the pet phrase, that if a man is a son of God, he can never cease to be such any more than a son of Adam can cease to be a son of Adam. This would be a truism if a man were literally a son of God; but as no man is, the truism becomes nonsense. A man who is to-day called a son of God metaphorically, because of his obedience to God, may to-morrow cease to be God's son in the same sense because of his disobedience. He is delivered over to Satan, and becomes once more a child of the devil.

      This treacherous use of the phrase works in the interest of Universalianism. Track up the man with whom it is a favorite, and ten chances to one you will find that he does not believe in the Scripture teaching about future punishment. You will find, too, that he has an underestimate of the enormity of sin, and a very loose conception of the death of Christ as an atonement for sin. It is still true that straws tell which way the wind blows.

[SEBC 435-436]