Assurance of Our Identity as God's Children

It is ever necessary to repeat that, that our Salvation does not consist only in being forgiven. Thank God for forgiveness of sins, but that's merely the beginning of our Salvation. To be reconciled to God is a thing which we can never overestimate, but we are actually offered something even greater than that, and that is that we become the children of God. [00:01:16]

Assurance is necessary, of course, for our own personal spiritual wellbeing. We are meant to rejoice in the Lord always, and you can't rejoice in him unless you're certain of your relationship to him. So from the standpoint of our own happiness, peace, joy, it is essential that we should be clear about this. [00:02:01]

If the spirit of God dwells in us, well then we proceed to manifest and to show something of the fruit of the spirit. And so we apply to ourselves the nine differentiating aspects of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance, faith. [00:04:26]

Our Lord himself pointed this out, that this was the way in which the world might know that we are his disciples, if we love one another. It's in his high Priestly prayer, one of the last things that he said, one of the last things he prayed for was that his people might be one and might be kept as one. [00:06:44]

Though we are saved individually, though we are saved one by one, and that is a fundamental doctrine of the New Testament, we are all nevertheless saved in the same way. I don't mean by that that all the details are going to be identical in every case, but I do mean that there is only one way whereby one can become a Christian, and that is through being born again. [00:07:35]

We are all adopted into the family of God. Now the Apostle Paul, of course, preeminently teaches this particular doctrine. He points out in the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans that so many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the children of God. [00:10:52]

We know that we have passed from Death to life because we love the Brethren. Nothing can be plainer. We know that we have passed from Death to life because we love the Brethren. That's the thing we want to know. How can I know that I'm a Child of God? Here's the test: I love the Brethren. [00:13:37]

We know that we are the children of God and that we are in this relationship to the members of the family in the double sense that we are aware of the fact that we've been separated from others and in addition with we have been joined to these. You see, here is a new family. [00:23:41]

The gospel and the Holy Spirit applying the gospel becomes a sword, and we are divided from old attachments, old relationships, things which we regarded as sacred, things which we regarded as the highest and the greatest and the most wonderful of all. If those to whom we were thus attached are not also Christian, it means of necessity that we are separated from them. [00:28:04]

We have the same interest in the kingdom of God and in its success, so we are naturally at one with these people. They're interested, we are interested. We see now that the most important thing in the world is the kingdom of God and that one should belong to it and that it should be spread. [00:37:40]

We speak the same language, and this is a very interesting thing again. We speak the same language, I say. Now language is a very interesting thing. There is such a thing as having the same idiom. People say today we're on the same wavelength. They say quite right. You see, in general, they're speaking the same language. [00:40:14]

We know that we have passed from Death to life because we love the Brethren. Yes, and we love them above everybody else. We prefer them to everybody else. It's a very delicate test, this. We enjoy their company more than that of anybody else. [00:45:39]