In one sense, God is the Father of all men, insofar as all men owe their existence to God (Acts 17:28–29). In another sense, however, man rebelled against God and became alienated from him, so that God has ceased to be man’s father. In John 8:42, Jesus told some of the leading Jews that if God were their Father, they would love him (Jesus). But because of their rejection of Jesus, they showed that they were “of [their] father, the devil” (John 8:44). In the verse we are considering, the pronouns “we” and “us” refer not to all humanity, but to God’s covenant people. God is their Father through the grace of adoption.