God the Father and Creator

The Apostles’ Creed begins with the statement “I believe in God the Father, Almighty,” thereby proclaiming that there is only one God and that He is in control of all. That opening line of the creed also refers to God as Father, and here we must make a distinction between unbelievers and believers with respect to divine fatherhood.

All too often today, we hear statements such as “all people are children of God.” However well-intentioned such sentiments may be, they do not actually reflect biblical truth, at least not in any precise way. In truth, Scripture does not view all people as children of God simply by virtue of their being a part of the human race. Paul, of course, does quote the pagan poet Aratus approvingly when that writer says, “We are indeed [God’s] offspring” (Acts 17:28). Yet the entire scope of Paul’s teaching indicates that this does not mean that every human being is a beloved child of God. After all, in Romans 8:15–17, the Apostle describes how only Christians receive the “Spirit of adoption as sons.” John 1:12 explains that only those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith have “the right to become children of God.” Thus, when we find references in Scripture that seem to imply that God is Father to all people, we understand that this is true only in the sense that He is their Creator. He is not their Father in the sense that He loves them unto salvation and is pleased with them. That privilege belongs to Christians alone. Only we can address Him as “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15).

In the first section of the Apostles’ Creed, we read also that God is “Maker of heaven and earth.” Here is the confession of God as Creator, which is the very first truth about Him revealed in Scripture (Gen. 1:1). He is the explanation of the age-old question, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” Philosophers and theologians have long recognized that for anything to exist at all, there must be something or someone who has the power of being in Himself. There must be a self-existent First Cause of the universe upon which all things depend but that itself depends on nothing. This self-existent First Cause is the God of the Bible, from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things (Rom. 11:36). Everything else is dependent on someone or something outside itself to exist, but not God, who is the great I Am (Ex. 3:14). This is also known as the doctrine of divine aseity.