The Glory of Sonship in the Son (1)

  

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” (1 John 3:1; all quotations are NASB unless otherwise noted).

 

“Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father! Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:6 – 7; see also Romans 8:14 – 17).

 

How do we think about God? How do we think about ourselves? How do we think about our relationship with God in Christ? What is our primary image of God, our center-of-gravity image? Our center-of-gravity image of God will determine how we think about ourselves and how we view our relationship with God. This, in turn, will determine how we view our relationships with others, both within and without the Body of Christ.

 

There is a sense in which the Church does not have a witnessing problem, or an obedience problem, or a problem with loving others, or even a holiness problem; it has a problem with a center-of-gravity image of God. If our navigation is off, our destination will be off; that is, if our navigational assumptions are wrong, we will end up far wide of the mark of God’s eternal purpose for our lives.

 

The Apostle John writes, “See [Behold!] how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are…” Paul writes that our hearts cry out, “Abba Father!”

 

And yet, the questions remain; how do we see God, how do we see ourselves, how do we view our relationship with God in Christ? If the lens of our vision is off, we will not see these things with clarity.

 

There are stories of children having problems in school, of not being able to learn, of being considered “slow” or diagnosed with a learning disability; only to find out that they couldn’t see well and needed glasses. Theodore Roosevelt lived many years as a near-sighted child, being confined to seeing the world close-up; when it was realized he was near-sighted and he received glasses he could not believe the change in his world – though of course he was actually the one who changed.

 

When our mind and thinking are taught to see things a certain way it can be difficult to accept other ways of viewing life and people and God. So strong can our preconceptions be when approaching the Bible that we gloss over what we read, forcing what we read into our preconceived images and doctrines. In Jesus’ time the preconceptions of the religious leaders were so strong that they didn’t recognize the Messiah and they engineered His crucifixion – even though they knew what we call the Old Testament. They saw the Truth as not the Truth, but as a threat. The Truth made them angry, so angry that they became murderers and persecutors.

 

We can search the Scriptures, thinking that by knowing the Bible we will have eternal life, and yet miss Jesus Christ (John 5:39 – 40). We can hear the Bible read every week, and yet not “hear” what the Word of God is saying (Acts:13:27) and condemn the Truth.

 

In the eternal counsels of God, in the Trinity, before the foundation of the world, God purposed that the Son would have many brethren, many brothers and sisters. In these counsels God purposed that the Son would have a Body, a Bride; and that God would live in a living Temple.

 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…just as He chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will…” (Ephesians 1:3 – 5).

 

Note that the word “adoption” is used differently than we use it today. We will look at this in the next post. We are God’s sons and daughters not by adoption in the sense that we use the word today, but rather by new birth in Christ.

 

We see in Romans 8:29 that it is God’s desire and purpose that the Son “would be the firstborn among many brethren.” All that Romans chapters 1 – 7 cover is to lead us to our glorious sonship in the Son in Chapter 8.

 

In Hebrews Chapter 2, one of the great passages on the Incarnation, we see that the Son came to earth for His brethren, to declare the Father’s Name to them; “I will proclaim Your name to My brethren…” We also read that God’s purpose is to “bring many sons to glory,” and that “…both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one [Father]; for which reason He [Christ Jesus] is not ashamed to call them brethren.”

 

In Genesis we see a picture of Christ Jesus in Joseph, who was rejected by his brethren, sold into slavery, later put into prison, and who was then exalted to Pharoah’s side and became the source of salvation for his brethren. What the brothers meant for evil, God meant for good.

 

Yet, we also see in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that the descendants of Jacob forgot who they were and adopted an identity of slavery, they saw themselves as beasts of burden and therefore worshipped a calf (Psalm 106:19 – 21); they exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass (a symbol of the flesh, the natural world and natural man).

 

The people whom Moses was sent to no longer saw themselves as sons and daughters of the covenant that Yahweh made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; instead their identity was one of slaves in slavery, working with straw and earth.

 

O dear friends, Jesus Christ has declared the Name of our Father to us, He has come to bring us into the Holy of Holies and to live there as a way of life. Christ Jesus calls us to live in intimacy within the holy Trinity, as His continuing Incarnation in this world, as His broken bread and poured out wine for this world. This is why the Apostle John can write:

 

“…what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship [koinonia] with us; and indeed our fellowship [koinonia] is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3).

 

To have koinonia with John and his friends was to have koinonia with the Father and Son.

 

 Would we write such a thing today about ourselves? About our congregations?

 

This is the same John who writes, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God…”

 

How do we view God? How do we see ourselves? How do we view our relationship with the Trinity?