“We were not born of sexual immorality”
We are not illegitimate children… Our only Father is God Himself. (John 8:41 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A neutral family identification.
The cultural key
The exchange has turned to paternity: Jesus tells the crowd they do the deeds of their own father, and they retort, 'We are not illegitimate children; our only Father is God.' The emphatic 'we' is the barb. Many scholars hear a pointed contrast, unlike you, a whispered insinuation about Jesus' own birth thrown back in his face, the same rumor that surfaces when his hometown pointedly calls him 'son of Mary' rather than son of Joseph (Mark 6:3). This is an inference from the stressed pronoun and the charged setting, not a certainty; the words can equally be read as a plain claim to be Abraham's legitimate covenant children. Hence the tag.
Recovered meaning
Cornered on the question of whose children they are, Jesus' opponents reach for the oldest weapon available, a slur about his birth, even while claiming God as their only Father. If that is the insult, it only sharpens the chapter's irony about who truly belongs to God.