God is our Father.
Just as we each have only one earthly father, we have only one Father in Heaven. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" has an inescapable parallel in "honor thy father and thy mother".
And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so also shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly man. (1 Corinthians 15:49)
Prophets of Jesus Christ have always taught God's plan of salvation, which is centered in family relationships, beginning with the recognition that we are children of God.
In many ways, the God-ordained Family is a teacher to me. It is precisely because I have experience with my earthly family that I am prepared to understand what it means that God is the Father of our spirits. He is literally our Father:
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may
be also glorified together. (Romans 8:16-17)
Children who endure the Father's chastening will be "heirs" of the Father, and joint-heirs with Christ. What does it mean to be an heir? We look to Christ:
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. (John 5:19-20)
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. (Matthew 28:18)
His doctrine confirms that we can become even as He is:
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)
After His resurrection, He said:
"I am even as the Father" (3 Nephi 28:10)
Affirming what He had often said during His mortal ministry, that is,
The Father and I are one. (John 10:30)
The concept that God is not embodied, or that He is without any heir, is to emasculate Him and to pervert the Scriptures. It makes the very terms "Son" and "Father" so oft used by the God of the Universe utterly meaningless. It would make Him a liar. He is no liar. What father do you know who is incapable of raising up seed after his own kind, in his own likeness and image, as Adam begot Seth? And was not Seth in the very image of his earthly father? How much more so will God plant the heavens and lay the foundations of worlds without number with His posterity, that there may be man and woman in His plan, or in other words, that there may be joy! "Every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness", and "every beast after his kind" doth multiply. How much more significant is it then to be the literal offspring of Deity?
If God had no children then we would not exist.
C.S. Lewis rightly observed,
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship"
The earliest Scripture we have access to bears witness that we are created in the image of God. Does God have an image? Yes, and the whole human race is a reflection and a testament to His virile Fatherhood.
Perhaps the concept of a Living Inheritance stuns you. Perhaps we say with the corrupt husbandmen, of Jesus, "this is the heir, let us slay him, that the inheritance be ours!" Only in a corrupt and fallen world does inheritance follow the giver's death. In the Father's kingdom, inheritance makes us joint-heirs with the Living Father rather than heirs of the dead. This is eternal life. Christ is Heir of "All that the Father has".
If we are joint-heirs with Christ, we too must be heirs of All that the Father hath, and be sons of the Father together with Christ. Again, what child do you know that is not capable of growing up to be like its parents? Such a prohibition would be contrary to eternal law. Such spit in the face of Christ's Atonement, and the Father's plan to redeem His children. God is no liar. He calls us His children.
All Scripture attests that we have one Father in Heaven, who is God, and beside Him we have no Father of our spirits, or in other words, beside Him there is no other god unto us. Therefore we keep the ten commandments, by having no other god before Him. Yet we may, by His own promise, through the virtue which is in Christ, grow up and be like Him, through faith in Christ, meekness and repentance of all sin, by baptism and by the transforming power of the Holy Ghost through the Atonement of the Messiah. When such as are willing to mature have matured as Christ did, will they no longer need a Father? To the contrary, they will love and adore Him more than ever as their God, their King, their all-wise Creator, the Father of their souls.
Could a King indeed have no Kingdom? Could a Father be a father and yet have no children? Could a child be a child, and yet have no future? Where is continuation, and where is glory if there be no continuation?
My views are my own and do not represent the church.