Children of God
1 John 3v1
20th May 2022
1 John 3v1
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are!
The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Although it's not in the NIV, this verse begins with the word "behold" or "see". You'll find it in the ESV, for example. John says, "Behold how great is the love the Father has lavished on us". That is, think about these things.
I hope you sometimes find time to stop working, and watching TV, and tidying the house, and doing 1000 other things, just stop and be who you are in the presence of God, in the silence, and think about God, and about yourself. Perhaps you'll think to yourself, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"
If you have any self-awareness, and if you consider for a moment all the selfish things, all the damaging things, all the unkind things, all the mindless things, all the grey, dirty little things, that you've said and thought and done, you'll be amazed how great is the love the Father has lavished on people like you and me, that ordinary, sinful, sometimes quite unpleasant people like you and me, should be called children of God.
Jesus Christ, the One, the Definitive, the Only Begotten Son of God, was and is perfect, absolutely morally pure, without even a shadow of sin upon Him. He was and is the Child of God. How great is the love of God that you and I should be called children of God, a bit like Jesus. How great it is that He wants to include you and me in His family.
The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are perfect, and yet they want to include us in Their corporate life. We're children of God, not just legally, not just so we inherit - although we will - but children in the sense that we're a bit like God, and are becoming more like God. The family likeness is at least to some extent already upon us and within us. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!
It seems to me that the overriding attitude of the true Christian, whatever is going on, however difficult life can get, must be gratitude to God. Whatever is good or bad in our lives on earth, whatever difficulties we go through, the fact remains that through the grace of God alone, you and I are called children of God, and we always will be. I pray that that gratitude will grow in us every day, and will remain with us always, whatever we have to go through.
And the apostle John says that not only are we called children of God but that is what we are! The Bible describes people who've become Christians by saying we “have been born again” (e.g. 1 Peter 1v23). We're "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5v17). We've been "rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the son he [God] loves" (Colossians 1v13). We're "in Christ" (e.g. Romans 8v1). But perhaps the most beautiful way the Bible describes us is we're children of God. We're God's kids! Don't you just love that? It's wonderful. Hallelujah!
In the middle of this letter, which has lots of teaching about how to live the Christian life, about truth and morality and faith, this is the keynote verse. In all our lives, even when we get it wrong, and we all do sometimes, we're still children of God.
I hope you had earthly parents who loved you, but God the Father loves you infinitely more than they ever did. Or perhaps you had earthly parents who didn't love you. I want to tell you that you now have a heavenly Father who truly does love you, and has lavished His love on you.
John says, "The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him". You and I carry into this world the best news there is. We also carry into this world the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Sometimes, we get to carry into this world the word of God, when we quote scripture to those who are not yet saved. It can feel strange when we’re rejected by our friends, and family, and neighbours when we want to talk to them about Jesus. They don’t see that we Christians are uniquely the children of God.
They have two different perspectives on this, both wrong. Some people think there's no such thing as a God, and no such thing as a child of God, or that there might be a creator God but he doesn't really get involved in our lives, or like us all that much, and nobody can know God. Other people make the alternative mistake of thinking that everybody is a child of God, that since we're all His creation, we must all be His children. The church uniquely are the children of God, and the world doesn’t recognise us as such. If they did they would come to us in far greater numbers and say, "Tell us about God" but they don’t, because they don't know who we are. And the reason they don't know who we are us because they don’t know who Jesus is, not really.
It seems to me that overwhelmingly, most people who know who Jesus is will become Christians. Wouldn’t you, if you knew Jesus was the perfect Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, if you knew He was utterly sinless, utterly loving, if you knew he came to earth in human form from His dwelling in heaven, and died on the cross to pay for your sins, and rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God, and all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him, wouldn’t you give your life to Him?
People in the world: your neighbours and friends, and perhaps your family, don't really know who Jesus is, or who God is, or who the Holy Spirit is, or who we are. The god of this world, the devil, has blinded them, and only the Holy Spirit can blow the smoke out of their eyes so they can see clearly. So we pray for our neighbours, but don't be discouraged when they can’t really grasp who you are, or what you’re saying, or what gives you the right to say it. They don’t understand, so we pray that God will open their eyes, and unstop their ears, and give them hearts that want God, so that He might reveal Himself to them, and they might become children of God too, and join the church, and His love might be lavished on them.
The world doesn’t know you’re a child of God. Maybe even your wife or your husband or your parents or your children don’t know. But you are! You’re safe in His love for all eternity.