Embracing Our Identity as Children of God
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"Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know Him. But beloved, now we are children of God." Now, we notice in the tone of John's writing here a sense of amazement that would seem to go right over our heads in the culture in which we live today. [00:16:41]
Because if there's anything we tend to take for granted that was never taken for granted by the apostolic church, it is that we are the children of God. Now, there're reasons for that. We've been raised in a culture that has been heavily influenced by 19th century liberal theology and in the 19th century there was a rise of interest in the study of world religions as explorations had traversed the globe in those days. [00:54:41]
And what happened during this period was that the anthropologists, the sociologists and the theologians as they examined the world religions, sought to penetrate to the core of each of these religions to distill the essence and discover the rock bottom similarities among Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and so on. And Adolf von Harnack, for example, wrote a book entitled in German, 'The Essence of Christianity' and it was translated under the English title, 'What Is Christianity?', in which he sought to reduce Christianity to its most basic common denominator that it shared with other religions. [01:26:21]
And he said the essence of the Christian faith is found in two premises: one, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. Both concepts of which, in my opinion, are not taught in the Bible. There is a vague reference to the universal fatherhood in the sense that Paul, when he encountered the philosophers at Athens, quoted from one of their secular poets saying, "We are all God's offspring" in the sense that God is the creator of all people. [02:13:97]
But the idea of the fatherhood of God is something that is, in the New Testament, a radical concept and not something that is just simply tacitly assumed that everybody in the world enjoys. But because of the influence of 19th century liberalism and comparative religion, as I say, we've been reared in a culture where we've been told over and over and over again that everybody in the world is a child of God. [02:24:38]
Yet by contrast, when we come to the New Testament and we examine the prayers of Jesus, in every single recorded prayer of Jesus in the New Testament -- save one -- Jesus addresses God directly as His Father. Now, that was not missed by His contemporaries. Oh incidentally, Jeremias went on to say that then apart from the Christian community, the first reference in print that he could find of any Jewish person directly addressing God as Father in prayer was in the 10th century A.D. in Italy. [06:00:36]
In other words, this was a radical departure from custom when Jesus dared to address God as Father. Again, that was not missed by His contemporaries because this is one of the things that outraged the Pharisees when they heard Jesus speak of God as His Father. They took that as a tacit claim to deity. He's making himself equal with God. Now, why would you conclude that? [07:10:58]
Now, one of the things that is even more astonishing is that not only did Jesus address God as His Father, but when His disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray, He said to them in the first instance, "When you pray, pray like this saying, 'Our Father who art in heaven'." And the very first word of the Lord's Prayer is radical beyond measure. [07:47:48]
And so we must be very careful to protect the uniqueness of the sonship that Christ has with the Father. Indeed, He is called the monogneis or the only begotten of the Father. And of course Jesus spells it out that by nature we are not the children of God; by nature we're children of wrath; by nature we're children of Satan. The only one who can lay claim to being a child of God inherently, or naturally, is Jesus Himself. [11:17:09]
So the claim to being children of God is not a claim that we can just simply assume by virtue of our being human. And yet, John says, we are the children of God. How can that be? Well, let's go back earlier in John's writing to the first chapter of his Gospel, where in the prologue to John's Gospel we read in verse 10, "He was in the world and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. [11:31:01]
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Now, other translations will read that text, "As many as received Him to them He gave the power to become the children of God." Or "the authority to become the children of God." [12:12:72]
In this case it was "the right to become the children of God." The word that is in the Greek there is a powerful word for authority; it is the same word that is used of Jesus by His contemporaries when they are awestruck by Him and they say, you know, "He speaks not as the scribes and the Pharisees, but as one having authority." It's the same word here -- that that extraordinary authority is given to us by the Holy Spirit that we are given the right to be called the children of God. [13:20:86]
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Because if there's anything we tend to take for granted that was never taken for granted by the apostolic church, it is that we are the children of God. Now, there're reasons for that. We've been raised in a culture that has been heavily influenced by 19th century liberal theology and in the 19th century there was a rise of interest in the study of world religions as explorations had traversed the globe in those days. [00:54:41]
And what happened during this period was that the anthropologists, the sociologists and the theologians as they examined the world religions, sought to penetrate to the core of each of these religions to distill the essence and discover the rock bottom similarities among Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and so on. And Adolf von Harnack, for example, wrote a book entitled in German, 'The Essence of Christianity' and it was translated under the English title, 'What Is Christianity?', in which he sought to reduce Christianity to its most basic common denominator that it shared with other religions. [01:26:21]
And he said the essence of the Christian faith is found in two premises: one, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. Both concepts of which, in my opinion, are not taught in the Bible. There is a vague reference to the universal fatherhood in the sense that Paul, when he encountered the philosophers at Athens, quoted from one of their secular poets saying, "We are all God's offspring" in the sense that God is the creator of all people. [02:13:97]
But the idea of the fatherhood of God is something that is, in the New Testament, a radical concept and not something that is just simply tacitly assumed that everybody in the world enjoys. But because of the influence of 19th century liberalism and comparative religion, as I say, we've been reared in a culture where we've been told over and over and over again that everybody in the world is a child of God. [02:24:38]
Yet by contrast, when we come to the New Testament and we examine the prayers of Jesus, in every single recorded prayer of Jesus in the New Testament -- save one -- Jesus addresses God directly as His Father. Now, that was not missed by His contemporaries. Oh incidentally, Jeremias went on to say that then apart from the Christian community, the first reference in print that he could find of any Jewish person directly addressing God as Father in prayer was in the 10th century A.D. in Italy. [06:00:36]
In other words, this was a radical departure from custom when Jesus dared to address God as Father. Again, that was not missed by His contemporaries because this is one of the things that outraged the Pharisees when they heard Jesus speak of God as His Father. They took that as a tacit claim to deity. He's making himself equal with God. Now, why would you conclude that? [07:10:58]
Now, one of the things that is even more astonishing is that not only did Jesus address God as His Father, but when His disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray, He said to them in the first instance, "When you pray, pray like this saying, 'Our Father who art in heaven'." And the very first word of the Lord's Prayer is radical beyond measure. [07:47:48]
And so we must be very careful to protect the uniqueness of the sonship that Christ has with the Father. Indeed, He is called the monogneis or the only begotten of the Father. And of course Jesus spells it out that by nature we are not the children of God; by nature we're children of wrath; by nature we're children of Satan. The only one who can lay claim to being a child of God inherently, or naturally, is Jesus Himself. [11:17:09]
So the claim to being children of God is not a claim that we can just simply assume by virtue of our being human. And yet, John says, we are the children of God. How can that be? Well, let's go back earlier in John's writing to the first chapter of his Gospel, where in the prologue to John's Gospel we read in verse 10, "He was in the world and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. [11:31:01]
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Now, other translations will read that text, "As many as received Him to them He gave the power to become the children of God." Or "the authority to become the children of God." [12:12:72]
In this case it was "the right to become the children of God." The word that is in the Greek there is a powerful word for authority; it is the same word that is used of Jesus by His contemporaries when they are awestruck by Him and they say, you know, "He speaks not as the scribes and the Pharisees, but as one having authority." It's the same word here -- that that extraordinary authority is given to us by the Holy Spirit that we are given the right to be called the children of God. [13:20:86]
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