Read: Romans 8:12-17 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
It’s a commonplace these days to hear preachers say ‘all human beings are children of God’. When they say that, what they actually mean is ‘we are all created in God’s image’ (which is true); but the bible is pretty clear throughout that not all human beings are ‘children of God’. The designation ‘children of God’ is a specific one which belongs to those human beings whom God has explicitly adopted – in the Old Testament, the faithful people of Israel, and, in the New Testament, the followers of Christ.
So how do we become the children of God? All those, says St Paul, who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. When you think about it, that makes sense. Those who share the will of God, whom God identifies as members of his own family because they want the same sort of things as he does – they are the ones he calls his ‘children’. Those who, following Christ as our ‘elder brother’, are moved by Christ’s Spirit within us to pray to God as ‘our Father’.
If we are God’s children by virtue of our faith in Jesus, then it means that we are part of the same family as Christ himself. And, since all children inherit their father’s estate, it means that we are (as Paul puts it) ‘joint heirs with Christ’ of the kingdom of God. That is an unthinkably massive thing, and it bears repeating. We, who have done nothing to deserve it, have by the sacrifice of Christ been made princes and princesses in the kingdom of God our Father. And that means we stand to inherit on exactly the same terms as Christ will. It beggars belief that you and I – who are sinners through and through – have not been condemned and rejected by God for our sinfulness. But it is much, much more incomprehensibly vast a thing that, far from being condemned and rejected, we who have faith in God have been granted the same inheritance as Jesus, the one who saved us!
The grace of God is really an unthinkably huge thing. And just when you think you’ve gotten your head round how unspeakably generous God is towards us, you suddenly realize he’s massively, massively more generous even than that. That’s what God’s grace is like; and Paul can’t stop shouting from the rooftops about it.
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.