We Are God's Children!

1 John 3:1-7 When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he began this way:  “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  That is how Jesus wants us to understand our relationship with God! 

We have prayed those words thousands of times over the course of our life but I wonder if we have really considered what they mean—how wonderful, how incredible they really are—that we can, at Jesus’ invitation, call God:  Our Father?!

What those words mean is that the one, true and living God of the universe—the Creator and Sustainer of all things—the One who simply is and was and always will be—is our Father!

Can you even begin to imagine what a wonder this is, what a blessing this is, that God is our true Father and we are his true children!?  But –so- we- truly -are because of his love for us in Jesus Christ.  The Bible says:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

            That we are children of the heavenly Father is the fulfillment of God’s purpose and plan for us.  The relationship of a loving Father and his beloved child is why he created us in the beginning—so that we would live in loving fellowship with him through time and eternity.  It’s what he wants for us and from us.

That is what God wanted for all people-- but sin wrecked that divine purpose and ruined God’s creation and separated us from our heavenly Father.  But such is God’s love for us that sacrificed his own Son so that we could once again be God’s children.

That is the kind of love that our heavenly Father has for us—that is how far he would go-- to make sure that we have a place in his family as his own dearly loved children. 

And so then, even when we go through hard times, and even when we suffer some terrible loss, and even when we stumble and fall, even when the world rejects us, how can there ever be any doubt that we are loved by God with an everlasting love?

We are his children and he is our Father and we can count on him to help us and we can come to him in our need and call to him in prayer and know that he hears us and will answer us for our good. 

God loves us and he will protect us and provide for us and guide us on life’s journey until that day he brings us to our heavenly home.  It was this incredible, glorious good news that filled John’s heart when he wrote these words:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

            And so we are.  John has to emphasize that.  We really are God’s children!  So why do we need to emphasize that?  It is because our identity is not immediately obvious to those around us.  Who we are as God’s children is often hidden by the brokenness of our lives in this world.

Let me explain:  if you knew nothing of Jesus or of the true things of God (as so many in our world do not) you might have a very different idea about what it means to be God’s child.

If that is really true, the world says, if you really are the royal sons and daughters of God then why are so many of you being martyred across the world?  Why are so many of you poor and weak and humble and obscure?  Why do you suffer?  Why are you held in contempt by the powers that be?

The world wants to know:  if you Christians really are children of the living God of the universe, why aren’t you rich and powerful and prominent?  God has an answer:  The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Jesus.  

            There is a reason that the world does not recognize us for who we are as God’s children and that’s because they did not recognize Jesus for who he was as God’s Son. 

When John began his Gospel he said that Jesus was God and the world was made through him and he was the light and life of all men but the world did not know him or receive him.

That’s exactly the way it is for us as God’s children.  The world persecutes us and ridicules us because that’s the way they treated our elder brother.  The world thinks that we are fools because that’s the way they think of Christ.  The world scorns our deepest held values because they scorned the words of Jesus. 

But there is coming a day when the world will see Jesus for who he is and they will know us to be God’s children.  The Bible says:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when Jesus appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 

            We are God’s children right now-- and even though that status and identity is not clearly seen by the world, there is coming a day when it will be revealed and made manifest.

            As we live our lives on this earth as Christian people, we experience the hardships of life in a broken world just like everyone else.  We get old and sick and die like everyone else.  In fact, life on earth is even more difficult for us than for others because we are Christians.  That is what the Bible means when it says that our life is hidden in the humility and meekness of Christ.

But Jesus is coming again in glory—not in the weakness of the Baby of Bethlehem and not in the humility of the suffering servant—but in the glory of Almighty God as the King of kings and Lord of lords—and he will raise us from our graves and with our own eyes, in our own flesh we will see Jesus and we will be like him.

Our bodies will be glorified like his body—no longer subject to death and disease.  The image of God will be perfectly restored in us so that we will dwell forever in righteousness and holiness. 

We are God’s children and that is our glorious future --and that identity and that hope have a direct, powerful, and meaningful impact on how we live our lives.  The Bible says:

Everyone who thus hopes in Jesus purifies himself as he is pure.   Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that Jesus appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 

            There is no sin in Jesus.  He was the faithful, holy Son that God intends all of us to be and he sacrificed himself to take away our sins.  There will be no sin in heaven where God and the angels dwell in holiness and light.

It is because we are God’s children through faith in Jesus-- and it is because we have a sure hope of heaven-- that we take the sin in our life seriously and deal with it through heartfelt repentance and amendment of life.

The life of a child of God is a spiritual battle and we might as well come to grips with that.  It is not a life of ease or safety or comfort—it is a battle against the sin and impurity that Jesus came to take away—the sin and impurity that have no place in heaven or in our lives.

And so then, what does it mean that those who hope in Jesus, those who are children of God, purify themselves? 

It means that by God’s grace and the help of the Holy Spirit we hate the sin in our lives as God’s hates it.  We make no place for sin any more than Jesus allowed money changers in the temple for we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  We struggle against temptation as Jesus struggled in the wilderness against the temptations of the devil.

From the perspective of the Bible, it is absolutely inconceivable that the child of God would be content to abide in sin.  The Bible says:

No one who abides in Jesus keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 

            Here’s the thing:  you can either abide in Jesus or you can abide in sin but you cannot do both.  That is not my opinion—it is what God says.  Now maybe you are saying to yourself, “But pastor, I sin all the time!  What exactly do you think I am doing during the confession part of our worship service?!”  I get it, me too, but here’s the thing…

The sins that we fall victim to through the weakness of our flesh and the constant temptation of the world and the devil—the sins that we hate—the sins that we are sorry for and fight against and resolve to amend--are a very different thing than abiding in sin and practicing lawlessness and living in open rebellion against God. 

Abiding in sin is living in sin without sorrow or a willingness to change.  Abiding in sin is making a place for sin in our lives.  Abiding in sin is excusing our sin and finally saying that it is no sin at all. 

And that is exactly what is happening all over Christendom today as entire church bodies have abandoned the moral teaching of the Bible for the immoral spirit of the age so that they can tell people what their itching ears want to hear rather than the plain word of God. 

The same thing was happening in John’s day and this is what the Holy Spirit has to say then and now:  Little children, let no one deceive you. 

Children of God, you should be very, very clear in your own mind that there is a concerted effort in the world today on the part of the media and our government and the false church to deceive you into believing that what has always been a sin- is no longer a sin- and that God has changed his mind about sin and now puts a stamp of approval on immorality. 

That is a lie from the devil and it smells like smoke and the child of God must not believe it, much less participate in it! 

Instead of practicing lawlessness and abiding in sin the Bible says that the child of God is to practice righteousness.  Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as Jesus is righteous.  We are righteous in God’s sight through faith in Christ Jesus.  By virtue of our baptism into Christ, we have been adopted into God’s family as children.  We will one day be like Jesus.

Because this is our identity, we make it our practice to live righteous lives like Jesus did.  There was no “disconnect” between who Jesus was and how he lived:  he was God’s Son and so he spoke his Father’s words and did his Father’s will. 

So it is for us who are adopted into God’s family as his children.  Our lives and our words and our values are a reflection of our heavenly Father and we dedicate ourselves to putting this into practice in our lives—not to earn our salvation or work our way into heaven—but simply because that is who we are.

We are God’s children!  What a blessing it is to know that!  What a blessing it is to live it out in time and eternity!  Amen.