Are We All God’s Children?

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Wayne Davies

“We’re all God’s children!”

Have you heard that before?

But is it true?

In a biological sense, I guess you could say that.

Every person on the planet can trace their genealogical roots back to Adam and Eve. It’s true that all people are God’s creation.

But in the spiritual sense, no.

In the spiritual realm, there are two types of people: the children of Satan and the children of God. This is why Jesus told the Jews who did not believe in Him: “You are of your Father, the devil” (John 8:44).

Therefore, in Scripture, non-believers are never called “God’s children. They are called “sons of disobedience” and “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:2, 3).

But thanks be to God, believers in Christ become children of God when they first put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God.

“Sonship to God is not, therefore, a universal status upon which everyone enters by natural birth, but a supernatural gift which one receives through receiving Jesus . . . Sonship to God, then, is a gift of grace.” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God)

Our salvation brings many spiritual blessings – and one of those blessings is that we become children of God because God has adopted us into his family. He is now our heavenly Father, and we are His sons and daughters.

Paul explains this wonderful truth in Galatians 4:4-6 —

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’  So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Isn’t this amazing: God sent Jesus to earth to save us from our slavery to sin and make us His children.

He adopted us! And now we belong to Him and can trust Him to take care of us as only He can.

John also writes about the great privilege of sonship:

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are . . . Beloved, we are God’s children now”
1 John 3:1-2.

I love the word “now” in the above verse. This is reason for us to rejoice. If you know God through His Son Jesus, you are a child of God . . . right now.

Think about that for a while, and for the rest of your life.

“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctly Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.”
(J.I. Packer, Knowing God)

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“I’m OK with God Because I’m A Good Person”

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Wayne Davies

One of my favorite Bible teachers is Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason.

He’s been doing a series of “rapid-fire” critiques to common pushbacks to Christianity that you might face in conversations with others.

This post features one of the most common misunderstandings that most people have:

“I’m Basically A Good Person.”

(Permission granted by Stand to Reason. Copyright 2026 Gregory Koukl).

The vast majority of Americans believe in Hell, apparently, but almost no one thinks they’re going there. Their reason? “I’m basically a good person,” they say. They’re only little sinners, by their reckoning, since their good deeds vastly outweigh their bad ones. Their misplaced confidence is based on two points of confusion.

The first confusion comes from defining “basically good” according to human standards. God, on this view, is concerned with what kind of individual one is “on average.” If there’s more good than bad—if good is predominant—then God winks at the occasional moral lapse.

But justice never works that way, does it? The law demands that each person obey every law always, not most laws most of the time. No amount of good behavior can pay for bad behavior. Period. Law requires consistent compliance, and that which is already owed—obedience—cannot be used to pay for past errors.

A person may be an upstanding citizen all his life, but one single crime is still going to bring him before the court. He’ll never get a letter from the DA saying, “You’ve been a good, law-abiding citizen for five years. Go out and beat up a few innocent bystanders and rob a few gas stations—on us. You’ve got credit in your account.”

If you’re still not clear on this point, ask yourself what commandment of God—or any law of any country, for that matter—one can violate with impunity without fear of punishment.

God, like all lawgivers, requires nothing less than moral perfection. “But that’s impossible,” you say. You’re right. That is why we need a Savior. That’s the only way we can be right with God when we’re not thoroughly good.

The second confusion is tied to math. The “basically good” person simply hasn’t run the numbers and needs to do the calculus. For example, counting only the sins he’s committed from, say, his tenth birthday to his sixtieth—just fifty years—how many sins would he have committed if he’d only sinned ten times a day?

Of course, ten sins a day is a modest projection. Keep in mind we’re not only talking about rape, pillaging, murder, and theft. Sin includes the full range of human moral failings before God—heart attitudes and motives as well as actions, including failing to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength and failing to love others as ourselves.

If a person sinned just ten times a day for only 50 years, what would his rap sheet look like? He would have amassed 182,500 infractions of the law. What judge would turn anyone loose with a record like that? And that is a best-case scenario. In reality, each of us would fare much worse.

Whenever you’re tempted to trust in your own ability, take a good look at the standard, God’s Law (you’ll find it in Exodus 20), then look at your own rap sheet. To use Paul’s words, the Law “has shut up everyone under sin” (Gal. 3:22). It’s closed our mouths, and we all have become accountable to God (Rom. 3:19).

The psalmist says, “If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
(Ps. 130:3). Saved by our own goodness? Hardly. God’s Law gives us no hope.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
For more great Bible teaching from Greg Koukl and his team at Stand to Reason, visit www.str.org.

I highly recommend his books, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions  and Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity’s Toughest Challenges (available on Amazon). If you’re serious about engaging non-Christians in substantive conversations about the gospel, and need help doing so, these books will give you a boatload of biblically based strategies for effective evangelism.

 

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How to Pray for Vladimir Putin

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Wayne Davies


Unfortunately, the Russia/Ukraine military conflict has now been going on for four years.

In May 2022, a few months after the war started, I wrote this blog post:

What the Bible Says about Praying for Vladimir Putin

I commend this article to you today – not only because it provides straightforward Bible teaching on how to pray for any leader of any country, but because it dives into some of the most difficult passages in Scripture: the imprecatory psalms.

Christians disagree on how to interpret these psalms.

If this is a topic you’d like to explore further, please click on the link above. I welcome your feedback, so let me know your thoughts on this puzzling topic by leaving a comment.

 

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The Infinite Greatness of Jesus

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Wayne Davies

I’ve been reading through the New Testament this year, one book at a time.

I started with Mark, then John. Now I’m reading Matthew. I read a chapter each day, five or six days a week.

After reading the chapter, I go back through the text and ask God to show me one verse or paragraph to meditate on. This can present a challenge because there are so many worthy verses in every chapter!

But within a few minutes, I usually find myself drawn to one particular paragraph, verse, sentence, phrase, or word, and I focus on that.

Yesterday I read Matthew 12. I took a different approach here because it became evident that there is a recurring theme throughout the chapter: the identity of Jesus. This is a prominent theme throughout the New Testament, and especially in the four gospels.

I can’t get away from it. And if you read any of the gospel accounts, you can’t get away from it either. God has gone out of His way to answer this question: Who is Jesus?

Here is the answer to that question in Matthew 12:

JESUS IS . . .
Greater than the temple (v. 6)
The guiltless (v. 7)
The Son of Man (v. 8)
Lord of the Sabbath (v. 8)
My servant whom I  have chosen (v. 18)
My beloved with whom my soul is well pleased (v. 18)
The Son of David (v. 23)
Greater than Jonah (v. 41)
Greater than Solomon (v. 42)

Then I went back through each of these titles and descriptive phrases and noticed who the speaker was:

JESUS SAID . . .
Something greater than the temple is here
Something greater than Jonah is here
Something greater than Solomon is here

JESUS SAID . . .
If you had known what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the guiltless

JESUS SAID . . .
The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath

THE FATHER SAID (through Isaiah) . . .
Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,
my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

THE PEOPLE SAID . . .
Can this be the Son of David?

I am often overwhelmed by the clarity of Scripture. So I offered this prayer of thanks to God:

“Father, thank you for making the identity of Jesus so crystal clear! He is the Messiah, the Christ — the Son of David and the Son of Man. He is God’s beloved Servant, the guiltless One. You are well pleased with your chosen Son because He is greater than the temple, greater than Jonah, and greater than Solomon – He is greater than everyone and everything because He is Lord – Lord of the Sabbath and Lord of all! And He is Lord of all because He is God. Thank you for the clarity of Scripture. Amen.”

This is why we worship Jesus: because of who He is. He is infinitely greater than anything or anyone in the universe. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), because He and the Father, along with the Holy Spirit, are God.

Does it matter whether we believe what the Bible says about the identity of Jesus?

Absolutely. Our eternal destiny depends on it.

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” (John 3:36)

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The Love of Jesus on Display

Posted on February 15, 2026 by Wayne Davies

In John 11, the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the empathetic love of Jesus is on display.

Christ exhibits this compassion after the death of Lazarus and the resulting grief of his sisters, Mary and Martha.

 

“When Jesus saw her (Mary) weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (v. 33)

“Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him’ (v. 35-36)

“Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb” (v. 38)

Jesus arrives at the scene, sees how sad they are, and He too is overcome with sadness and weeps with them. He was both “deeply moved” and “greatly troubled.”

The phrase “deeply moved” can include a person’s anger. The New Living Translation renders it, “a deep anger welled up inside him.”

Why was Jesus angry? The Amplified Bible offers this paraphrase: “He was deeply moved in spirit to the point of anger at the sorrow caused by death.” 

Mark Johnston, in his book Let’s Study John, provides this explanation:

“The word is much stronger in the original and is closer to being ‘outraged in spirit’ or ‘indignant and angry.’ It is Jesus’ instinctive reaction to the presence of death in the world that he made.

“As a race, and even as Christians, we have become too accustomed to death and too ready to regard it as ‘normal.’ We see it as simply the final step in the sequence of life. For Jesus, nothing could be further from the truth. For him, death was an ugly intruder in his beautiful world. It was a curse: the very antithesis of the life that is cradled in creation. He displays all the disgust of the Creator whose good creation has been marred and scarred by the presence of an evil intrusion.

“In a thrilling way, his strength of feeling reflects his determination to overcome death once and for all.”

Even though Jesus knew that He would soon raise Lazarus from the dead and all this sorrow would be turned to joy, His love for Martha and Mary compelled Him to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

He was indeed “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He was intimately aware of the pain of his dear friends, and He shared their sadness as His own.

This is the Jesus who “loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (v. 15). And this is the Jesus who loves you and me. I take much comfort in that.

How about you?

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Why Did John Write the Book of John?

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Wayne Davies

I’m always thankful when a writer tells me his or her purpose for writing.

For example, the Apostle John told us why he wrote the fourth gospel:

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
John 20:30-31

John wrote this book so that the reader would believe that Jesus is who He said He is: the Christ (the Messiah promised in the Old Testament), and the Son of God (i.e., God the Son).

Furthermore, John wrote this book so that the reader can have, through faith in Jesus, life – eternal life!

Only by believing in Jesus as Messiah and God can anyone have life – spiritual life. This is a key component of the gospel message that Jesus gave His disciples to take to all peoples of the world.

Because we are all born in sin, we come into the world as the living dead – physically alive but spiritually dead. But thanks be to God, He sent His Son into the world so that “whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

This is reason to get excited. This is reason to wake up in the morning.

If you are a believer in Jesus, you have life. You are no longer a living corpse, and you will not end up in the lake of fire with the devil and his thugs. Jesus said so:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).

This is a recurring theme in John’s gospel: God offers eternal life to all through faith in His Son.

Let repetition continue to be our teacher today:

“Whoever believes in Him may have eternal life” (3:15)
“Whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (3:16)
“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the Son of God” (3:18)
“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day” (John 6:40)
“Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (7:38)
“Jesus said to her (Martha), I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25-26)
“Jesus said to him (Thomas), Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (20:29)

So when we come to the end of John’s account, we should not be surprised when he tells us that the purpose of his book is for us to believe in Jesus unto eternal life. In fact, the word “believe” occurs 98 times in the book of John. And the word “life” appears 36 times.

This begs the question, What does it mean to “believe” in Jesus?

Do you believe in Jesus? If so, what does that entail? How would you define and describe “faith in Christ”? How would you explain it to someone?

Let me know your thoughts on this by leaving a comment below.

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When Sharing the Gospel, Why Diagnosis Must Precede the Cure

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Wayne Davies

Here’s a quote from Charles Spurgeon’s book, The Soul Winner.

(See the link below to get a free copy.)

 

I find these words convicting, compelling, and convincing.

“The withholding of the doctrine of the total depravity of man has wrought serious mischief to many who have listened to a certain kind of preaching. These people do not get a true healing because they do not know the disease under which they are suffering.”

In other words, if we don’t confront people with the seriousness of their sinful condition and its devastating consequences, we are not doing biblical evangelism, and there is no way the lost can be saved from the terminal illness of sin.

Let’s say you are sick, but don’t know it. In fact, you are clueless. The only symptom is a subtle rash on the back of your neck that you haven’t yet noticed. Your best friend is a doctor. The two of you go out to dinner, and when you walk in front of him to enter the restaurant, he sees the rash and knows you might have the illness that accompanies it. When you sit down to order, he suddenly says, “I know you might not believe me, but I think you are really sick.”

You are baffled. You don’t believe him. He tells you to go to the emergency room right away, but you laugh and think he’s joking.

Eventually, you give him a chance to explain the rash and the illness that goes with it. And so now you are getting concerned. Before the food arrives, you’ve come to your senses and decide to take action to get help. Without eating your meal, you head for the hospital with a sense of urgency. You’ll do whatever the doctor says – take any medicine, undergo any further tests. Whatever is necessary, you will do.

Why is that? Because you now understand the seriousness of your condition.

When we explain the gospel to the unsaved, isn’t it tempting to get right to the “good news” of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the promise of eternal life, the blessings of heaven, the streets of gold, and the absence of pain, suffering, and tears?

But if the person doesn’t realize his need for a Savior, he won’t take action. If a person doesn’t realize he is lost, he’ll never see the need to be found. If he doesn’t understand his disease, he won’t appreciate and pursue the cure.

Telling someone that Jesus died for his sins, without first explaining the nature and severity of his sins, is the same as your doctor telling you to take the medicine before he diagnoses your illness.

We must follow the pattern laid down by the Apostle Paul and explain the problem before presenting the solution.

We must diagnose the disease before prescribing the cure.

It’s essential to tell the sinner about hell and why he deserves to go there before promising him heaven.

Let’s not take any shortcuts. Let’s do biblical evangelism.

NOTE: The Soul Winner, by Charles Spurgeon, is available for free in EPUB and PDF formats here:
https://www.monergism.com/soul-winner-ebook

 

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A Tribute to the World’s Greatest Teacher

Posted on January 25, 2026 by Wayne Davies

Jesus was, and is, the greatest Teacher ever.

Look how He amazed those who heard Him in person.

 

 

14 About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. 15 The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?”

16 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
John 7:14-18

Jesus spoke the truth because He came from God and always spoke the words that He received from His Father – “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.”

Furthermore, Jesus never said anything false because there is nothing false in Him. “I am the truth,” He said in John 14:6, and therefore it was impossible for Him to lie, to deceive, or to sin in any way by His words.

Can you believe someone who always tells the truth? Can you trust a person who never lies or never even fibs just enough to let you down?

Then you can rely on Jesus. You can believe Him and trust Him with all your heart, for even the officers who were sent to arrest Him, but came back empty-handed, testified, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46).

No one ever spoke like Jesus because there has never been a man like Jesus. He is the only man who was also God. He is the one and only God-Man, both Son of God and Son of Man. His infallible words are a testimony to that. “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).

When we come to Jesus, we come to worship Him as our great God, and we come to listen to Him as our great Teacher. We bow before Him and pray, “Teach me, Lord.” We come to Him and gladly submit to the command of His Father, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him” (Mark 9:5)

Oh, that we would have ears to hear and eyes to see. And may we have hearts to believe, understand, and love the words of the “Word of Life” (1 John 1:1), the One whose very name is “The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13).

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A Blog Post about Jesus

Posted on January 18, 2026 by Wayne Davies


I’m quite excited that I get to study the Gospel of John this year.

It’s my favorite book in the New Testament.

At my church, we have a seniors’ Bible study group that decided to dive into the book of John. We began last week with a discussion of John 1:1-18. This week, Lord willing, we will cover John 1:19-51.

(We’re using a study guide from LifeGuide Bible Studies, published by InterVarsity Press, which I give two thumbs up.)

Just reading John chapter 1 can be breathtaking. In 51 verses, the Apostle John gives us at least a dozen names or titles of Jesus.

Here they are, along with the verses (from the ESV):

God (1)
The Word (1, 14)
The maker of everything (3, 10)
The life (4)
The light (4, 5, 7, 8)
The true light (9)
The only Son (14)
The only God (18)
The Lamb of God (29, 36)
The Teacher/Rabbi (38, 49)
The Son of God (34, 49)
The Christ/The Messiah (17, 41)
The King of Israel (49)
The Son of Man (51)

Here’s my favorite question on John 1 from the study guide:

“Which of the names of Jesus has the most significance to you personally? Explain why.”

As difficult as it may be to answer this question, given the overwhelming nature of the list, for me, the answer is a no-brainer: Jesus is God.

John 1:1 has become one of the most important verses in the Bible for me.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

When the universe was created, the Word (Jesus) already existed as the eternal God. He and the Father, along with the Holy Spirit, have always existed as one God in three coequal Persons that Christians call the Trinity.

There is much mystery here, for sure.

But this is what Scripture teaches, and this is reason to fall on our faces in humble adoration of “the only God, who is at the Father’s side” (John 1:18).

In the beginning, Jesus was God. And therefore He is still God. And if He is God, I am accountable to Him and will stand before Him on Judgment Day because God the Father “has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23).

I spent many years ignoring Jesus and doing my own thing. Thankfully, God shone the light of Christ into my heart, and my sinful darkness could not overcome it. Jesus granted me the gifts of repentance and faith, enabling me by grace to receive Him and believe in Him. Oh, how I praise Him for that today!

Because Jesus is God, He is now “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28), and I want to live my life, first and foremost, for Him, i.e., for His glory. I want to make much of Christ by worshipping Him and pointing people to Him.

I want to be like Andrew, who spent the day with Jesus and then immediately tracked down his brother Peter and said, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41). What happened next? “He (Andrew) brought him (Peter) to Jesus” (John 1:42).

Oh, that I would have this kind of joyful zeal. I’m asking God to give me the same joy from being with Jesus that propelled Andrew to tell Peter about the incomparable Christ.

How about you?

Which of those names of Jesus above has the most significance to you personally? Let me know by leaving a comment below, and I will gladly rejoice with you!

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A Short Bible Study on Prayer

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Wayne Davies

I’d like to start this short Bible study with one of my favorite verses.

It’s about Jesus and the way he prayed.

After a typically exhausting day of teaching in the synagogue, casting out demons, and healing many sick people (all on the Sabbath — see Mark 1:16-34), here’s what Jesus does to begin the next day:

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35)

Sinclair Ferguson offers these insights:

“Before anyone else in the house had stirred, he had gone to a quiet place in order to pray and spend time in deliberate communion with his Father. He needed to pray that his first day of public ministry in Capernaum would bear fruit, and he wanted to pray over the actions which he was about to take.” (From his book, Let’s Study Mark.)

Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God (Mark 1:1). He is God (John 1:1). And he was also a man who needed to spend time alone with his God. The Son of Man was a man of prayer.

Luke provides much insight into the prayer life of Jesus. Take time to read the following verses.

What do these passages teach us about when, why, and how Jesus prayed? Write down your thoughts.

1-Luke 3:21-22
2-Luke 6:12-16
3-Luke 9:16, 22:17,19
4-Luke 9:28-29
5-Luke 22:41-42
6-Luke 22:44

Here we see the ultimate example of what it means to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Reflect on your own prayer life. In light of what you just read about Jesus’ prayer life, what can you do this week to follow his example more completely and with greater faithfulness?

If you benefited from this Bible study, feel free to leave a comment below. I welcome your feedback.

For more short Bible studies, click HERE.

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