What do you mean when you say you’re a child of God?
Dear Friends,
Sometimes we say things without thinking carefully about what we really mean. While many people would claim that they are a child of God, do they mean what the Bible means? Today’s devotional will help you be clear in your own mind on the subject.
God bless you.
Because of Calvary,
John Janney
John 1:12-13 (ESV)
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
“We take no delight in the universal fatherhood which comes of creation; that is a poor thing, and belongs as much to dogs and cats as it does to us, for they are as truly created by God as we are; and that sort of fatherhood, of which I hear men talk, which is the portion of those who blaspheme God, and live in utter rebellion against him, is not that of which the apostle wrote: ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ’ Sirs, until God renews your nature, you are children of the wicked one. and not children of the Most High; neither have you any right to talk about the fatherhood of God towards you. ‘Ye must be born again;’ and only when you are born again, and have believed in Christ, are you God’s children, for ‘as many as received him, to them gave he power’ — the right, or privilege, — ‘to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1898), p. 4-5]