Regarding Israel, Jehovah said, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me” (Isa. 1:2). As a nation, God had specially cared for His people Israel, nourishing and protecting them, disciplining them for their sins, and forgiving them when they turned to Him in repentance. In spite of all God’s goodness and care, Israel rebelled against His authority and gave their worship to idols, being “a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters” (verse 4). We can clearly see that these are not the features of true children of God, of those who have been born of God and belong to His family. Nor is it difficult for a true Christian to understand that although all men are God’s offspring (Acts 17:29), as derived from Adam into whom God breathed the breath of life, this is very different from the new birth that brings us into God’s family as His children.
Abel a Child of God
When describing the features of the children of God, the Apostle John wrote, “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever does not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother…because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:10-12). If Cain manifested by his wickedness that he was a child of the devil, Abel showed that he was a child of God by his righteousness. The divine righteousness that the saints of Old Testament times evinced, declared that they had been born of God, and were therefore His children.
Effects of Christ’s Coming
The coming of the Son of God into the world brought light into the world for men, but it also brought to light the children of God. As Son of God and Son of David He had title to much in this world, and especially in Israel, but His earthly people would not receive Him, thereby manifesting that they were not of God. But there were those who did receive Him, and some of their names are given to us in John 1; and “to them gave He power to become the children of God even to them that believe on His Name” (John 1:11-12). Faith in the Son of God manifested that they were born of God, and also enabled them to take their place as children of God.
It is an immense privilege to be able to take our place as the children of God, a privilege that none of the saints of olden days, before Christ’s coming, could have. As we have already seen, the saints of Old Testament times were God’s children, manifesting the nature of God, but they could not know the Father, for He had not yet been revealed, nor could they enjoy a Father’s love until that love had been made known in the Person of the Son. Now that the Father has been revealed in the Son, those who believe in the Son are brought into the knowledge of the Father, and into the knowledge of their relationship with the Father as His children.
God’s Children by New Birth
The children of God “were born, not of blood” (John 1:13), that is they have their divine relationship to God on quite a different line from that of the natural man. Blood relationships belong to the families of men in this world, and often bring with them much that men value. Position, wealth and power belong to many of the great families of aristocratic blood, but not even royal blood or religious blood can secure a place among the children of God.
Nor are the children of God born “of the will of the flesh.” Flesh is the nature derived from Adam, and the will of man’s nature can never have place in the things of God. It is not in man’s nature to desire or even will a place of nearness and relationship with God; and even if there was this desire, it could not secure it. By nature men are not children of God, they are “the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). So that we are children of God, not by the natural selection of blood, or by any desire naturally.
Man’s will, whether connected with his nature or his mind, has nothing whatsoever to do with our becoming children of God. We could not bring ourselves, or any other, into the divine family, by any act of our own will. So that all connected with the first man is totally excluded as regards the family of God: he is excluded body, soul and spirit from bringing into being the children of God. We become children of God by the work of God, by His sovereign working in our souls. The Apostle James states this clearly, “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” (James 1:18).
The Lord Jesus informed Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). This is how we come into God’s family, and as born again we have the spiritual perception to take in the things that belong to the kingdom of God. Then the Lord added, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (verse 5). The new birth that brings us into the family of God is the work of the Spirit of God, the water of God’s word being the agent used by the Spirit. We are cleansed from the moral pollution belonging to the old nature, and the word is used to form a new moral and spiritual nature by the Spirit.
There is nothing in common between the nature derived from Adam, and the new nature derived from God; the former is of the flesh, and the latter of the Spirit; they are entirely distinct and diverse natures. Of the nature received from God the Apostle Peter writes, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever” (1 Peter 1:23). Man’s nature has been corrupted by the entry of sin, the nature derived from the living word can never be corrupted, taking character from the word by which it came into being.
Features of the Children of God
We have the features of the children of God brought out in 1 John 3. In verse 9 the Apostle writes, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Here the child of God is viewed only as in the divine nature, altogether apart from the mixed condition in which he is found in this world. The nature received from God cannot possibly sin, and the child of God as having this nature is seen as not being capable of sin. This is our eternal condition, viewed abstractly now, but what we shall actually be, when the flesh is finished with forever, on receiving our glorified bodies, or in departing to be with Christ. The seed of God cannot sin, and this is the seed within the believer that makes him a child of God.
Righteousness and love mark the children of God, the former being manifested in Abel; the absence of them clearly showing that Cain belonged to a different family. The very hatred of the world is the evidence that we are children of God, for the world hates God and all who are born of God. The divine love that is hated by the world was seen in its fulness and perfection in Jesus, and the world expressed its hatred to God and His Son by putting Jesus on the cross. True believers know that they have passed from death to life because they love the brethren in whom the life of God is seen.
Relationship Shows the Father’s Love
The Apostle John calls upon us to consider the wonderful love of the Father, made known to us in giving us the relationship of children to Him. He says, “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 John 3:1). What more could the Father’s love do for us than what it has done? He has brought us into the nearest possible relationship with Himself, where His love rests upon us, and where we have the privilege of manifesting His nature in this world. It is little wonder that the world does not recognise us as God’s children, for the divine nature that we have from the Father was perfectly made known in Jesus in this world, and they did not know Him as Son of God.
It will be very blessed when we get to the Father’s House, there to enjoy the fulness of blessing that awaits all who are God’s children, but we do not need to wait till then to be in the family of God, we are His children now, having the love resting upon us as it will be in the coming day, and knowing the joys of the relationship as passing through this world, for the world can only discern what it sees in a natural way; but we know what we shall be like, for at the appearing of the Son in glory, “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
We shall have bodies of glory like that of the glorified Son of God, the children of God sharing the glory that He has received from the Father, and the world will then see the fruit of the work of the Son, and see too that we share the love of the Father that rests upon the Son. Moreover, the children of God will see the Son of God “as He is.” We did not see the Son in Manhood here, but we shall see Him as He is in all the glory that the Father has given Him in His house above. The world will never see Him as He is, but they shall see Him as He will be when displayed in His glory as Son of Man, and in the Father’s glory, and the glory of the holy angels.
Growth in the Family of God
From 1 John 2 we learn that there are fathers, young men and babes in God’s family. All God’s children begin their Christian lives as babes, but it is God’s desire that we should grow in the knowledge of Himself and of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. The fathers have matured in the knowledge of “Him that is from the beginning,” that is the knowledge of the Son of God in whom there was and is the revelation of the Father. There is nothing of the Father to be found outside of the Son, and at this knowledge the fathers had arrived; they had overcome the wicked one, and, it would seem, they were past the danger of being ensnared by the world.
The young men had overcome the wicked one, being strong, the word of God abiding in them; still there was the danger of being attracted by the world, a world that consists of lust and pride, and that is opposed to the Father and His things. The babes had not only the danger of the world, but also of being ensnared by the teachings of antichrist. To overcome, the word of God must have its true place in their hearts and lives: this would make them strong, and enable them to overcome the wicked one. Growth then depends on the word of God abiding in us, and in our continuing in communion with the Son and the Father; and the exhortation of the Apostle to the babes is, “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us, even life eternal” (1 John 2:24-25).
Children and the Inheritance
Although Paul does not write of a new birth as do John, Peter and James, he nevertheless writes of the children of God. In Romans 8, where Paul says much of sonship, he also tells us that “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (verse 16). We are not only adopted into God’s family as sons, we are also born into God’s family as children, and the Holy Spirit within us bears witness to this blessed relationship, as does also our own spirit. We have the feelings that true children have, a real sense of the divine relationship that we have with the Father.
Because we are children of God we are His heirs, and joint-heirs with Christ. The truth of the inheritance is opened out to the saints at Ephesus by the Apostle Paul, where he shows its great extent, for all things in the heavens and upon the earth comprise what comes under Christ, and that shall be taken up by God in Christ’s joint-heirs. Meantime the children are in a scene where the whole creation groans, and they have their part in the groaning. Soon, at the coming of the Lord, the children who now taste the grace of God, and the liberty it gives, will enter into the liberty of the glory, and then the groaning creation will be set free from the bondage of corruption in which it is now held.
Children in Ephesians
As children of light (Eph. 5:8), the children of God are to walk in this world for the pleasure of God, manifesting the fruit of the Spirit “in all goodness and righteousness and truth,” separate from all that is inconsistent with the divine light that has come to them through Christ, the giver of light.
While Paul writes mostly of our relationship to God as sons, John almost invariably writes of our relationship as children, the only exception being in John 12:36, where the Lord Jesus said, “While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the sons of light.” The children of light are viewed as having their origin in the light of God, the sons of light are those who receive the light through faith in Him in whom the light was perfectly made known. Believing in the light is to accept the revelation of God that came in the Person of the Son.
Children in Hebrews
After the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes of the risen Son of God declaring to His brethren the Father’s Name, to further emphasise the reality of His Manhood, the Lord says, “I will put my trust in Him. And again, Behold I and the children which God has given me” (Heb. 2:12-13). These quotations from the Old Testament bring out the place into which the incarnate Son of God came: He is so really man, He has children, those that God has given to Him. Moreover, it can be added, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself took part in the same.” How wonderful this is that Jesus became a Man because those He would associate with Himself for ever.
Jesus became Man to set the children free from the dread of death, entering into death to annul its power. Only by becoming Man could the Son of God enter the domain of death, and this He has done in wondrous grace. By dying Jesus dealt with all our sins, but He also dealt with the power of death, so that His own, the children that God had given Him, might be for ever free from the bondage of fear that the devil used to terrify them.
R. 6.11.67