What Does It Mean To Be A Child Of God?

First ever Think Podcast Preachcast! Listen to a sermon Joel Settecase preached at Park Community Church on Sunday, March 1, 2020. This is the audio from the Forest Glen 9 a.m. service. For the 11 a.m. version, which is slightly different, go here.

What follows is my (slightly revised) outline for the sermon I preached last Sunday at Park Community Church’s Forest Glen and Norwood Park locations. Listen to the audio from the Forest Glen 9 a.m. service. For the 11 a.m. version, which is slightly different, go here.

Intro
- Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 8:12-17. On page _______ in the house Bibles.
- Opening illustration: my dad.
  - My dad has a very distinct personality. Seriously, to know him is to love him. Everybody likes my dad.
  - I’m the firstborn son in my family, and it’s a sociological fact that firstborns tend to take on traits of their fathers. I’ve taken on a lot of his characteristics and mannerisms. This has been both good and not so good. Certainly there were times when I chafed against this, say in adolescence, but as I’ve grown older and become a dad myself, I find myself emulating my dad more and more. I’m not intentionally impersonating him; it’s just that he left an impact on me.
  - So when I face certain daunting or unfamiliar circumstances with my own family, II find myself asking, “How did my dad handle challenges like this when I was a kid? As an example, when our basement flooded recently because our sewer backed up, I immediately remembered how my dad cleaned out our sump pump, and I thought, Okay, this is what dads do. And I dealt with it.
  - I’m actually very grateful for the example I have in my father. I know not everyone had a great dad, but I did, and for that I thank God.
  - In the New Testament, God is called Father quite frequently. In the Old Testament, this is not the case. He is referred to as Father very infrequently, and often it has more to do with being the Creator rather than a close and personal relationship like in the New Testament. But in the New Testament He is called Father often, and that’s because of the special relationship we have with Him, due to Jesus. In the Old Testament era, Jesus Christ hadn’t come yet, and opened the way for us to know God in such a personal way.
- But today, followers of Jesus do call God Father. We have a relationship with God, and it’s by far the most important relationship in our life. So of course, it’s vital that we understand that relationship.
- So today we are continuing our series through Romans, and this is our question today: what does it mean to be a child of God?
- Let’s read the text.
- We’re asking what it means to be a child of God, and this is absolutely vital to interpreting not only our experience with God but also our experience with the world and ourselves. How we answer this question will affect our personal lives, and our attitude toward God, and our thoughts about the future.
- And the big idea I think God has for us today is this: God’s children resemble Him. Fairly simple.
- So my job this morning is to help you see what Paul is teaching us here. And we’ll look at three ways God’s children resemble God: by holy opposition to sin, by harmony with God Himself, and by hope in suffering.
- Let’s pray.
The first way Gods children resemble God:: holy opposition to sin.
- Anchor: “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
- Explain: God is holy and hates sin. He fights against it. And the image here is that his children will likewise fight against sin.
- Validate:
  - We need this, because all too often we let our flesh dictate what we do—what we watch, how much time we spend on social media or putzing around online, how we react when pushed by frustrating people. We feel that rage, or fear, or desire boiling up, and it’s more than mental, we feel it in our actual bodies. And what happens? We explode in impulsive action. We act without thinking, because that’s what we feel.
    - The flesh is the nature we had when we were brought into this world. Because we’re natural-born sinners, our flesh was thoroughly sinful.
    - Sin had dominated our flesh.
      - Ro 7:14 says, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
      - Ro 7:17-18 says, “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”
    - And if we had continued in that way, we would have received eternal death (Ro 6:23).
  - But God hates sin so much that he refused to let his children be overcome by it. We were facing condemnation for sin, but God condemned our sin in the body of His Son.
    - Romans 8:3 says, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
    - We are now set free from sin’s condemnation, and sin’s control over our lives. Sin controlled our flesh, but we are no longer debtors to the flesh. We’re not obligated to do what our flesh wants us to do.
- Apply: We have freedom from our flesh, and we have a God who hates our sin. So how should we then live?
  - God doesn’t make us guess.
  - The Bible says He gave us the Holy Spirit when we became Christians. Look at Ephesians 1:13: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit….”
  - Have you repented and trusted in Jesus? Are you a Christian? If so, you have the Holy Spirit.
    - And the Holy Spirit gives you guidance and power to put sin to death. Look again at that phrase.
    - The image here is not merely avoiding sin, like you might avoid someone with bad B.O. on the “L.” No, sin is evil. Sin in my heart is an enemy.
    - We hunt for sin. We search for it so we can destroy it. We don’t coddle it or try to reform it. We don’t try to coexist with sin.
    - We are ruthless toward our sin. We engage in full-frontal assault against it.
    - What does this look like? Like this:
      - It looks like intentionally keep one’s mouth shut when anger swells up, and instead of acting out in rage, it looks like praying for the person offending us.
      - It looks like battling the desire to covet what’s not yours.
      - It may look like canceling your Disney+ or Netflix subscription or ditching your smartphone (!) to keep yourself from sinning. And getting other godly men around you to hold you accountable.
      - It looks like refusing to badmouth someone or gossip.
      - It looks like setting your alarm fifteen minutes earlier to fight laziness and passivity and spend time in Scripture and prayer in the morning.
      - None of these actions contribute anything at all to our forgiveness or our status with God. We are saved by Gods grace ALONE. But when he has saved you and given you his Holy Spirit, you begin to resemble him… and he is holy and opposes sin.
      - For me, I have a problem with running my mouth. Proverbs 10:19 says, “When there are many words, sin is unavoidable.” Often in my life, putting the flesh to death has meant keeping my mouth shut—remaining silent—and this is often very, very uncomfortable. It can feel painful.
      - But to let sin love and thrive, to live by the flesh, is a sign that you haven’t fully trusted in Christ. And God has something so much better for you than that.
      - Let’s talk now about one of the most beautiful aspects of what it means to be Gods child.
The second way God’s children resemble him:: harmony with God
- The second way God's children resemble him: harmony with God.
- In His nature, God is triune—three-in-one—and exists in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These three are perfectly unified and have loved one another since literally forever.
- In this passage, followers of Jesus are called both sons and children. The term "son" is used in Scripture to denote legal membership in a family. It's an allusion to Roman law, in which an individual who was adopted into a family enjoyed all the legal rights and obligations of family membership, including inheritance of property (about which more later). The term "child" on the other hand is used to connote a shared nature with a parent. It's more in line with biological birth than adoption—like we understand today how a son has his father's genes, his DNA. And Paul says about his audience that they are both, sons (verse 14) and children (verse 16).
- As followers of Jesus, we enjoy a closeness and intimate fellowship with God himself. Back when he was still on earth, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be one with each other, and also that they would be one with Jesus, just as Jesus is one with the Father (Jn 17:20-21).
- Just as the flesh is an obstacle to our holiness so fear is a potential obstacle to our harmony with God. The Bible says fear has to do with punishment (1 Jn 4:18). We are talking about God as a Father, and one who hates sin. So it’s understandable that we would be fearful before him when we consider our sin, which still remains, though we do fight against it. What’s the remedy for this fear?
- The Holy Spirit himself. He testifies with our spirit that we are God’s sons (a legal term, having nothing to do with sex). And what is that testimony? He comes alongside our spirit, from within us, drawing our love and affection toward God, reassuring us that God loves us and that we belong to him. This internal witness is not spectacular but everyday. It’s the object of our affection that is spectacular: God Himself. (It’s interesting too that Paul uses both the Aramaic “Abba,” and the Greek “Patēr,” which is translated Father in our English Bibles. There’s a powerful statement there that both Jewish and Gentile believes are united together as God’s children—given supernaturally love from God, and for God). And it must be from God.
  - This also means that our connection to God supersedes our biological families of origin. We are not destined to follow the sins of our parents. We are God’s children now.
- How do we know God is testifying with our Spirit? Should we expect a supernatural feeling? No.
- To illustrate, water never rises higher than its source. This is why the source of a river is uphill from its mouth. In the same way, the affections of a human heart seek their own level... they never rise higher than their source, any more than water could flow uphill. So if we find in our hearts a love for God as Father, a desire to know Him as such and a desire to please him (not out of fear but love and gratitude) that doesn’t come merely from ourselves but rather from the Spirit along with our (transformed) hearts.
- Our sins had separated us from God. Because Jesus has died for our sins, we are united with Christ (more on this in a moment) and reconciled to God as Father—in a very real sense, in the same sense that Jesus knows God as Father.
- When we feel afraid that God won’t accept us or worried that we aren’t his children, we can point both to the fact that Jesus died for us and that God’s Spirit Himself is testifying with our own spirit and crying out to God, “Abba , Father.”
The 3rd way Gods children resemble God: hope in suffering
- The third way God's children resemble him: hope in suffering.
- You might be thinking, "Hope? God doesn't need to have hope for anything. God writes the future! He doesn't hope! And what's this about suffering? God is impassible. He doesn't suffer!" With respect to His eternal divine, you'd be totally correct. However, God, the only-begotten God, the Son, made God known to us, face-to-face as it were, by becoming a human being (Jn 1:18). As such he faced down suffering and unbelievable pain. And although things seemed incredibly bleak for him at points (e.g. in the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Lk 22:42) and on the cross (Mt 27:46)) he willingly faced suffering because of the joy of a glorious future that was waiting for him—on the other side of his death! The Bible says that he "endured the cross, scorning its shame" (He 12:2) because of that hope.
- Earlier in this letter, Paul is clear that followers of Jesus are united with Jesus into his death and resurrection when we are baptized (Ro 6:5; being plunged into the water represents Christ’s death and burial, while being brought up symbolizes his return to life). Here he takes the point further by saying Christians will even share in our Lord’s future glory. When we consider what that means, I don’t know about you, but I almost have to stop myself from thinking too long about it. It almost feels blasphemous or arrogant to think about sharing in Christ’s glorious future, when I’m such an undeserving wretch. Yet this is what God promises us! Talk about hope! He says we have that kind of hope.
- And yet there is an obstacle to our hope: namely, suffering.
- Paul says, “we suffer with him,” and the structure of his statement gives the indication that he expects this will happen. It’s not so much a condition of being glorified but rather an expectation on the way to glory. So the natural question then is, what counts as suffering with Christ? Is it only being persecuted? Because I’m not in a country where Christians are persecuted. Does this mean I will miss out on my inheritance? Furthermore, I do suffer in life. I suffer from external circumstances (e.g. family sickness) as well as from the pain of putting my sin to death. Is it supposed to be easier? Is my suffering an indication that I’m doing something wrong? Has God rejected me?
- One commentator says (and I agree) that this is what Paul has in mind: both the “daily crucifixion of our old nature” and the “lessons and blessings of outward calamities and change.” Jesus never promised his disciples an easy or smooth life! On the contrary he promised we would have tribulation in the world, but that we could have courage because he has overcome the world (Jn 16:33). He also promised to be with us (Mt 28:20).
- We know that pain precedes good things. Anyone who has ever played a sport, belonged to a gym, taken a fitness challenge or been on a diet knows that pain comes first, then the glory of losing weight, being more healthy, winning the match. If you’ve dealt with a serious health crisis, such as cancer, you know how brutal chemotherapy is. And yet it is necessary in the way to healing and health. Dealing with a sinful and fallen world, and dealing with our own sin, this is painful. And Jesus knows that firsthand. He suffered because of sin—not his own, but yours and mine. And we suffer with him—it’s the same struggle. We are united with him in suffering... and we can be hopeful (as he was hopeful) with certain expectation (not wishful thinking) that future glory awaits us!
- This transforms our suffering. Instead of being an indicator that we’ve done something wrong, it’s a sign that we are Gods children. Now, a warning here: it’s certainly possible to suffer as the consequence of your own sin—not from fighting it but giving in to it. Sin brings pain in that way. If you find yourself there, God gives grace. Repent, trust in Jesus, and get to battling it. Move from suffering from sin to suffering with Christ.
- I want to stop and say that effectively suffering I’m this way is not merely keeping a stiff upper lip or a positive attitude. Rather it is dealing with the reality of suffering and facing it head on, and saying,
(Run:)
This suffering is hard but it will not break me, because it can’t, because no matter what happens to me here and now I have a sure and certain hope. I have an inheritance that is going to be glorious when this life is through, and it’s been promised to me by God, and it’s because of who I’m united to, and that’s Jesus Christ!
- In this passage, followers of Jesus are called both sons and children. The term "son" is used in Scripture to denote legal membership in a family. It's an allusion to Roman law, in which an individual who was adopted into a family enjoyed all the legal rights and obligations of family membership, including inheritance of property (about which more later). The term "child" on the other hand is used to connote a shared nature with a parent. It's more in line with biological birth than adoption—like we understand today how a son has his father's genes, his DNA. And Paul says about his audience that they are both, sons (verse 14) and children (verse 16).
- As followers of Jesus, we enjoy a closeness and intimate fellowship with God himself. Back when he was still on earth, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be one with each other, and also that they would be one with Jesus, just as Jesus is one with the Father (Jn 17:20-21).
Objections: Aren’t we all children of God? After all, he created us. We belong to him. So why all this extra information? Doesn’t God love everyone?
- In a sense “we are God’s offspring (Ac 17:28). And yet, the Bible does not say that every human being is God’s child. Rather, we are brought into this world as sinners in rebellion against God (Ps 51:5). We need to have our sin dealt with before God will accept us into his family.
- Here’s the rub: there’s nothing you nor I can do, sinners that we are, to earn God’s acceptance. We can’t make God adopt us into his family. We can’t force our way into the legal benefits and blessings of being God’s children. Even if we say we’re going to act like it:
  - We’re going to put sin to death and stop sinning
  - We’re going to pray and cry “Abba Father”
  - We’re going to keep a cool head in suffering and force ourselves to have hope.
  - None of these behaviors will make us God’s children, because God’s not looking for behaviors. He’s looking for repentance. And he’s looking for faith.
  - The Bible says that we have a problem: the wages of our sin is death. When you sin you rebel against the Author of Life, and the only alternative is death.
  - Yet the Bible says that the gift, or provision of God is eternal life.
  - And the one who determines the difference between life and death is the person of Jesus Christ.
- When Jesus was telling folks how to become his followers, he didn’t say “Behave!” He said, in Mk 1:15, “Repent and believe the Gospel!”
- If you want to belong to God, if you want the King to be your Father, then you need to stop pretending you’re king or queen. We’re not in charge, He is. And that’s a good thing. Because He has the control to overcome sin in our lives, because He’s holy. He has the loving presence to unite His Spirit with ours and testify with our spirit that we are His children. And he has the authority to guarantee us a glorious future with himself, and the authority to make sure He only allows into our lives those experiences that will work together for good in the end, to make us more like Jesus—more fit for His eternal kingdom (Ro 8:28-29).
Conclusion: God’s children resemble God. Not perfectly—never perfectly. But in substantial ways, we are growing to be more like him in holiness, while experiencing harmony with him, and all the while, even when it hurts, keeping hope that our Father has a glorious future waiting for us. The Holy Spirit is preparing us for that future. And that future was purchased by our Lord, our Savior, our Brother, Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.