We are continuing to consider who we are in Christ. As I have said in previous segments, our identity is, perhaps, the single most important thing about us. Who we believe we are and what we think about who we are touches every part of our life. Our Heavenly Father has gone to great lengths to reveal our identity in Christ, so it must be very important.
In the Gospel of John, the apostle begins with a great deal to say about Jesus. He identifies him as the Word of God and the one through whom and for whom all things were made. He speaks of his incarnation and then wraps up this amazing section of scripture by saying, “Yet, to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (Jn.1:13).
In this section, John reveals that the very reason Jesus came was so that we might become children of God. In the beginning, God determined to make man and to give him a position of a son or daughter of God. In Luke 3, we are given a genealogical record from Jesus back to Adam. He ends that genealogy by saying, “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Lk. 3:38). Adam was not a son in the sense that Jesus was the Son, as fully God and fully man, but was given the position of a son who yet knew no sin. Satan’s temptation and
Adam’s moral failure in the Garden cost us our position as sons and daughters of the King, but through Jesus, that opportunity has been offered to us again.
Although mankind has been made in the image of God, only those who believe in Jesus have been given a position of sonshipor daughtershipagain. This is not just a matter of legality. It is true that we have been adopted, but something more has happened. Each of us who have been declared sons and daughters in the household of God were born again. Our very nature, our DNA, has been changed by a work of the Holy Spirit.
Paul tells us that before we knew Christ, we were slaves to sin. We had no ability to resist our fallen nature. However, since being born again, we still have the capacity to sin but we also have the capacity to choose righteousness. He says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6). Not only has our very nature been changed, but we have also been given a position of righteousness before our Father. We are told, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).
The amazing thing about being born again as children of God is that we have a capacity for righteousness that the remainder of mankind does not have. Not only that, but your heavenly father relates to you on the basis of your sinless position in Christ rather than your inconsistent performance. Too many of us think that God sees us as saved, but still rebellious sinners. We may see him as an angry father punishing us for every stumble and every misdeed. When life doesn’t go our way, we think God is withholding his blessing from us because of past deeds or our imperfection. We may see him as a father who only tolerates us and only grudgingly answers our prayers from time to time. Many of us take the template of our own earthly fathers who were broken, angry, controlling, and selfish and lay that template on a heavenly father who isn’t broken; who is totally unselfish; who loves us unconditionally; and does not hold our sins against us – love keeps no record of wrongs. In fact, what he does see when he looks at us is the righteousness of Christ.
As children of the King, we carry the royal seal in the spiritual realm (Eph.1:13). Because of that status we have authority, privilege, and responsibilities in the kingdom. First of all, we are to represent our Father well and live in a way that honors his name. As children of the king, we are to be courageous, confident but not arrogant, and kind. We are to have integrity in everything we do and should be marked by faithfulness since our father is faithful. We are also to be about our Father’s business of making disciples and destroying the works of the devil.
Secondly, we have the resources of heaven to meet our personal needs and to meet the challenge of those things we are involved in that are kingdom business…missions, caring for the poor, ministry to the hurting, redeeming culture, and so forth. As children of the king, we should jettison any since of being an orphan and have a mindset that there will always be enough. When Jesus fed the 5000, his reference point was the resources of heaven because he was a child in the household of God. The apostles looked at their own resources and concluded there was no way to feed the crowd. Jesus gave thanks for what he could access in heaven and fed everyone with twelve full baskets left over. Jesus did that to demonstrate that there is no shortage in heaven and that the king will provide for every good work of his children.
As children of God we are promised provision, protection, and victory in our battles. We always have the ear of our Father. We have angels to assist us. We have the direction of the Holy Spirit and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead working in us. We are loved, forgiven, provided for, anointed, and given a great destiny in Christ. The only thing that limits us is a lack of faith that these things are true for us.
When I first became a Christian, I knew that God loved his children. However, I understood that as a generalized statement in which God loved “all his children” as a class, but not as individuals. I still felt like just a face in the crowd. And yet that is not the witness of scripture. Because his Spirit lives in us, he knows us each by name. He knows our every need and even knows the number of hairs on our heads. We are not just a bunch of kids that he hardly knows but each has a special relationship with him. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven” (Heb.12:22-23). The writer is not talking about a future tense for us, but present tense. In the spiritual realm, we already belong and are already present. Interestingly, the phrase “church of the firstborn” is a plural, meaningfirstborn ones. The idea is that each of us is loved by God as if we were his firstborn. Paul says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Rom.8:13). In other words, we have tremendous standing in the courts of heaven and in the heart of our father.
As believers, we need to know who we are, how favored we are in heaven, and how much is available to us for our personal needs and as we conduct kingdom business. Too many of us still see ourselves as orphans, weak, broken and insignificant. We expect little and dare little. That is not God’s will for his children. We must begin to say what God says about us and speak that over one another. One of Satan’s great strategies is to keep us from knowing who we truly are in Christ, because if we ever grasp it, the kingdom of darkness is done.
