We are all God’s children in the sense that we are created by Him.  However, John 1:12-13 says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”  If we were all innocent, then we must wrestle with a cruel God who would send His Son to die on a cross.  What kind of dad could watch His Son, tied to a whipping post, be beaten 39 times until his insides were visible; watch his boy carry a cross up a hill, fall under the weight of it, and then be nailed to that cross—if everybody will eventually be ok in the end?  What kind of dad would listen as his boy screams from the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” if in the end everybody’s going to be ok anyway?

The condition by which we become children of God in the specific sense is receiving Jesus by faith.  Our faith in Christ gives us the right to be called children of God.