"Knowing God" [VIII]

- Sons of God - 

On the Holiness of God. "[The] aspect of His character on which God laid most stress in the Old Testament was His holiness... The basic idea which the word 'holy' expresses is that of separation, or separateness. When God is declared to be 'holy', the thought is of all that separates Him and sets Him apart and makes Him different from His creatures: His greatness [Hebrews 1:3; 8:1] and His purity [Habakkuk 1:13]. The whole spirit of Old Testament religion was determined by the thought of God's holiness. The constant emphasis was that man, because of his weakness as a creature and His defilement as a sinful creature, must learn to humble himself and be reverent before God. Religion was 'the fear of the Lord'--a matter of knowing your own littleness, of confessing your faults and abasing yourself in God's presence, of sheltering thankfully under His promises of mercy, and of taking care above all things to avoid presumptuous sins. Again and again it was stressed that man must keep his place, and his distance, in the presence of a holy God. This emphasis overshadowed everything else. But in the New Testament we find that things have changed. God and religion are not less than they were; the Old Testament revelation of the holiness of God, and its demand for humility in man, is presumed throughout. But something has been added. A new factor has come in. New Testament believes deal with God as their Father."

God the Father. "'Father' is the name by which [His people] call Him. 'Father' has now become His covenant name--for the covenant which binds Him to His people now stands revealed as a family covenant. Christians are His children, His own sons and heirs. And the stress of the New Testament is not on the difficulty and danger of drawing near to the holy God, but on the boldness and confidence with which believers may approach Him: a boldness that springs directly from faith in Christ, and from the knowledge of His saving work. [Ephesians 3:12; Hebrews 10:19 ff.] To those who are Christ's, the holy God is a loving Father; they belong to His family; they may approach Him without fear, and always be sure of His fatherly concern and care. This is the heart of the New Testament message."

"The thought of our Maker becoming our perfect parent--faithful in love and care, generous and thoughtful, interested in all we do, respecting our individuality, skilful in training us, wise in guidance, always available, helping us to find ourselves in maturity, integrity, and uprightness--is a thought which can have meaning for everybody."

St. John & Sonship. "In John's gospel the first evangelical blessing to be named is adoption (1:12), and the climax of the first resurrection appearance is Jesus' statement that He was ascending to 'my Father and your Father, my God and your God' (20:17, NEB). Central in John's first epistle are the thoughts of sonship as the supreme gift of God's love (1 John 3:1); of love to the Father (2:15, cf. 5:1-3) and to one's Christian brothers (2:9-11, 3:10-17, 4:7, 21) as the ethic of sonship; of fellowship with God the Father as the privilege of sonship (2:13, 23 f.); of righteousness and avoidance of sin as the evidence of sonship (2:29; 3:9 f.-5:18); and of seeing Jesus, and being like Him, as the hope of sonship (3:3)."

The Westminster Confession (Chapter XII). "All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have His name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him, as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation."

Justification vs. Adoption. "That justification--by which we mean God's forgiveness of the past together with His acceptance for the future--is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual needs. We all stand by nature under God's judgment; His law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves, because we have no peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers anything else... But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves... Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge. In justification, God declares of penitent believers that they are not, and never will be, liable to the death that their sins deserve, because Jesus Christ, their substitute and sacrifice, tasted death in their place on the cross. This free gift of acquittal and peace, won for us at the cost of Calvary, is wonderful enough, in all conscience--but justification does not iteself imply any intimate or deep relationship with God the judge. In idea, at any rate, you could have the reality of justification without any close fellowship with God resulting. But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into His family and fellowship, and establishes us as His children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the father is a greater." 

"The depressions, randomnesses, and immaturities that mark the children of broken homes are known to us all. But things are not like that in God's family. There you have absolute stability and security; the parent is entirely wise and good, and the child's position is permanently assured. The very concept of adoption is itself a proof and guarantee of the preservation of the saints, for only bad fathers throw their sons out of the family, even under provocation; and God is not a bad father, but a good one."

Holiness as Family Living. "[The] entire Christian life has to be understood in terms of [adoption]. Sonship must be the controlling thought--the normative category, if you like--at every point. This follows from the nature of the case, and is strikingly confirmed by the fact that all our Lord's teaching on Christian discipleship is cast in these terms. It is clear that, just as Jesus always thought of Himself as Son of God in a unique sense, so He always thought of His followers as children of His heavenly Father, members of the same divine family as himself. [Mark 3:35; Matthew 28:9 f.; John 20:17 f.; Hebrews 2:12 f.] As our Maker is our Father, so our Saviour is our brother, when we come into the family of God... [Just] as the knowledge of His unique sonship controlled Jesus's living of His own life on earth, so He insists that the knowledge of our adoptive sonship must control our lives too. This comes out in His teaching again and again, but nowhere more clearly than in His Sermon on the Mount. Often called the charter of God's kingdom, this Sermon could equally well be described as the royal family code."

Rewards and Pleasing God. "In [Matthew] 6:1-18, Jesus dwells on the need to be a single-minded God-pleaser in one's religion, and He states the principle thus, 'Beware of practising your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven'... Such 'reward' is not, of course, a mercenary matter--it will be a reward within the family, an extra-love-token such as parents love to surprise their children with when the children have tried especially hard to please. The purpose of our Lord's promise of reward (verses 4, 6, 18) is not to make us think in terms of wages and a quid pro quo, but simply to remind us that our heavenly Father will notice, and show special pleasure, when we concentrate our efforts on pleasing Him, and Him alone."

A Few Notes on Prayer. "First, prayer must not be thought of in impersonal or mechanical terms, as a technique for putting pressure on someone who otherwise might disregard you. [Matthew 6:7 f.] Second, prayer may be free and bold. We need not hesitate to imitate the sublime 'cheek' of the child who is not afraid to ask his parents for anything, because he knows he can count completely on their love. [Matthew 7:7-11] Not, indeed, that our Father in heaven always answers His children's prayers in the form in which we offer them. Sometimes we ask for the wrong thing! It is God's prerogative to give good things, things that we have need of, and if in our unwisdom we ask for things that do not come under these headings God, like any good parent, reserves the right to say 'No, not that; it wouldn't be good for you--but have this instead.' Good parents never simply ignore what their children are saying, nor simply disregard their feelings of need, and neither does God; but often He gives us what we should have asked for, rather than what we actually requested. Paul asked the Lord Jesus graciously to remove his thorn in the flesh, and the Lord replied by graciously leaving it and strengthening Paul to live with it (2 Corinthians 12:7 ff.). The Lord knew best!--and to suggest that because Paul's prayer was answered this way it was not answered at all would be utterly wrong. Here is a source of much light on what is sometimes mis-called 'the problem of unanswered prayer.'"

"In the ancient world, adoption was a practice ordinarily confined to the childless well-to-do. Its subjects... were not normally infants, as today, but young adults who had shown themselves fit and able to carry on a family name in a worthy way. In this case, however, God adopts us out of free love, not because our character and record show us worthy to bear His name, but despite the fact that they show the very opposite. We are not fit for a place in God's family; the idea of His loving and exalting us sinners as He loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild--yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means. Adoption, by its very nature, is an act of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a child, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because He chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins save punish us as we deserved. But He loved us; so He redeemed us, forgave us, took us as His sons, and gave Himself to us as our Father. Nor does His grace stop short with that initial act, any more than the love of human parents who adopt stops short with the completing of the legal process that makes the child theirs. The establishing of the child's status as a member of the family is only a beginning. The real task remains: to establish a genuinely filial relationship between your adopted child and yourself. It is this, above all, that you want to see. Accordingly, you set yourself to win the child's love by loving it. You seek to excite affection by showing affection. So with God."

On the Holy Spirit. "[The Holy Spirit's] work has three aspects. In the first place, He makes and keeps us conscious--sometimes vividly conscious, always conscious to some extent, even when the perverse part of us prompts us to deny this consciousness--that we are God's children by free grace through Jesus Christ. This is His work of giving faith, assurance, and joy. In the second place, He moves us to look to God as to a father, showing towards Him the respectful boldness and unlimited trust that is natural to children secure in an adopted father's love. This is His work of making us cry 'Abba, Father'--the attitude described is what the cry expresses. In the third place, He impels us to act up to our position as royal children by manifesting the family likeness (i.e. conforming to Christ), furthering the family welfare (i.e. loving the brethren), and maintaining the family honour (i.e. seeking God's glory). This is His work of sanctification. Through this progressive deepening of filial consciousness and character, with its outworking in the pursuit of what God loves and the avoidance of what He hates, 'we are transformed by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendour into His own image (2 Corinthians 3:18)... So it is not as we strain after feelings and experiences, of whatever sort, but as we seek God Himself, looking to Him as our Father, prizing His fellowship, and finding in ourselves an increasing concern to know and please Him, that the reality of the Spirit's ministry becomes visible in our lives."

Gospel Holiness. "'Gospel holiness' is no doubt an unfamiliar phrase to some. It was Puritan shorthand for authentic Christian living, springing from love and gratitude to God, in contrast with the spurious 'legal holiness' that consisted merely of forms, routines, and outward appearances, maintained from self-regarding motives... [Gospel Holiness] is simply a consistent living out of our filial relationship with God, into which the gospel brings us. It is just a matter of the child of God being true to type, true to his Father, to his Saviour, and to himself. It is the expressing of one's adoption in one's life. It is a matter of being a good son, as distinct from a prodigal or black sheep in the royal family."

Divine Discipline. "The children know that holiness is their Father's will for them, and that it is both a means, condition, and constituent of their happiness, here and hereafter; and because they love their Father they actively seek to the fulfilling of His beneficent purpose. Paternal discipline exercised through outward pressures and trials helps the process along: the Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God's kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline, which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of Kings. The clue to understanding all His dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives He is training them for what awaits them, and chiselling into them the image of Christ. sometimes the chiselling process is painful, and the discipline iksome; but then the Scripture reminds us--'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons... Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness...' (Hebrews 12:6 f.; 11) Only the man who has grasped this can make sense of Romans 8:28, 'All things work together for good to them that love God'; equally, only he can maintain his assurance of sonship against satanic assault as things go wrong. But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith's victory over the world. Meanwhile, however, the point stands that the Christian's primary motive for holy living is not negative, the hope (vain!) they hereby he may avoid chastening, but positive, the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father's will for him."

"[While] it is certainly true that justification frees one for ever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one's new-found Father. Law-keeping is the family likeness of God's children; Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, and God calls us to do likewise. Adoption puts law-keeping on a new footing: as children of God, we acknowledge the law's authority as a rule for our lives, because we know that this is what our Father wants. If we sin, we confess our fault and ask our Father's forgiveness on the basis of the family relationship, as Jesus taught us to do [Luke 11:2-4]. The sins of God's children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children's fellowship with their Father. 'Be ye holy, as I am holy' is our Father's word to us, and it is no part of justifying faith to lose sight of the fact that God, the King, wants His royal children to live lives worthy of their paternity and position."