Children of God

In the Doctrine and Covenants the Savior said to us, “Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me” (D&C 50:41).  In calling us His children this verse highlights the fact that one of the roles of the Savior is to be a Father.  This can be confusing since we also look to our Father in Heaven with the same title, and this is the “Father” mentioned in this verse.  From my observations it seems in Church culture we refer to the Savior as our “Brother” far more often than our “Father” (and that is certainly an appropriate name given that He was the Firstborn in the spirit and hence the “eldest” among the spirit children of our Father in Heaven).  But the scriptures to my knowledge don’t speak of Him as our Brother while Christ as “Father” is very common.  He is referred to as “the Father of heaven and earth,” the “Eternal Father” and “the Father and the Son” (Mosiah 3:8, Mosiah 15:4, Ether 3:14).  The First Presidency 100 years ago issued a Doctrinal Exposition talking about how the Savior is both the Father and the Son, and in it they said, “[Another] sense in which Jesus Christ is regarded as the ‘Father’ has reference to the relationship between Him and those who accept His gospel and thereby become heirs of eternal life.”  In other words, He is the Father of our Salvation and we should look to Him as such. 

                I believe it is this relationship with Christ as our Father that the scriptures are referring to in most cases when speaking about us as “children of God”.  In the song I Am a Child of God the words refer to the fact that we are all spirit children of our Father in Heaven.  But often in the scriptures the title of “children of God” is spoken of conditionally.  In other words, there are actions we must take in order to become this kind of children of God, or, more specifically, children of Christ.  Here are a few examples which illustrate this.  Christ said, “Blessed are all the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,” clearly implying that not all are called the children of God (3 Nephi 12:9).  Mormon wrote how the people who followed Alma “became the children of God” which means they weren’t always the children of God (Mosiah 18:22).  Paul wrote to the Romans about the distinction between “the children of the flesh” and “the children of God” implying that not all are in the latter group (Romans 9:8).  In the days of Alma it was “the children of God” who “were commanded that they should gather themselves together of, and join in fasting and mighty prayer” (Alma 6:6).  Over and over in the scriptures we see that being “children of God” was a distinction to strive for, not one that applied to everyone.  Perhaps King Benjamin put it most clearly about how we thus become children of Christ: “And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters” (Mosiah 5:7).  It is as we make covenants with the Father of our salvation that we become the children of Christ.