The creation of a new nature does not come from our own determination. True, we must be determined to change – for if determination is absent, then intention is absent. Without intention, no one will get anywhere. It can be said – and accurately so – that one reason many of those who profess fellowship with Christ do not exhibit the extremity and depth of discipleship and life change that Jesus advocates is simply because they do not intend on that change becoming a reality in their own lives. But even the most hard-edged and determined soul will get nowhere – except caught in the bonds of legalism – if God is not involved. For we cannot change ourselves, it is an unfortunate side-effect of our own rebellion against God. Coming from the womb we are indebted to the sinful nature, and we cannot escape that sinful nature without God’s divine touch and guidance. God will often perform the removal of our sinful nature and the replacement of the godly nature by means of spiritual disciplines – meditation, study, fasting, worship, etc.

Just as your outer appearance is the result of genetics between your mother and father (hence you are a son of man), so the creation of a new nature is the result of divine genetics from our Triune God. We are called the children of God not because they are pretty words (for they have deep meaning), but because the new us – ourselves as found overcome with a new nature – comes from the divine genetics of God. As I am a child to my biological parents, so I am a child to God; as my parents passed on some of them to me, so God breathes His life into me. The truth is simple to grasp: we who have been changed are called children of God because God Himself has imparted Himself upon us. He has worked in the deepest corners of our beings, even in the regions of our existence we cannot reach, and he has changed, rewired, and completely redone us. It is a process, to be sure, but we come to realize that it is not something we did (though we intended and desired it) but it is something God did. So we stake our claim as children of God and it means something concrete and real.

Yet the phrase Children of God can be taken deeper. If my parents are shy, then chances are, I will be shy; if my parents are hardworking or lazy, then I’ll be one or the other. It isn’t just the physical make-up that our parents decide – who they are plays a defining role in who we will be. When we call ourselves Children of God, we are acknowledging that who we are has changed; who God is has become part of who we are. We are not God, but we belong to God in an intimate and connected way. Knowing this, we can look at the scriptural expositions on the make-up of the child of God (examples we’ve been referring to are the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and Galatians 5:22-6:10) and understand that the attitudes, personalities, and attributes that become second-nature in the new creation are precisely the ways that God is on the inside! We begin to understand that God is loving and patient and kind, and as God breathes Himself into us, so we begin to find ourselves divorcing the sinful nature for a nature whose outsourcing involves loving and patience and kindness. In becoming new creations with new natures, we are not simply just picking up on a new way of living, but we are living life as God would live it (and has and does live it) in our day-to-day lives. The Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and Galatians 5:22-6:10 are windows into the being of God, and as God imparts a new creation onto us, we step into the window beside God, and we can say with certainty we are like Christ. We are truly Christians.