Tuesday, December
27, 2016
Everyone
who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. 1 John 5:1(NLT)
Her mother was a migrant farm
worker who was living in an old car.
Vicki was only two and her Mom had run out of money, food and options. She walked into the Food Stamp office in
Florida and was turned-down again because “her car” was not an address. What she then said and did (according to the
social worker) was reply, Fine; here,
you feed her, and walked away.
That was how Vicki came to
live with us as a foster child in 1978.
Within a short time Elizabeth and I both knew we would adopt this sweet,
vibrant young lady into our family. So
we began the paperwork, inspections and more, making room in our hearts for yet
another child.
God had other ideas; so did
the State of Florida. It seems the law
on abandonment in that State don’t kick-in for a year. So, just a few days short of 365, Vicki’s Mom
returned and wanted her child back. We
were heartbroken, but the last we’d heard, Vicki and her Mom were doing well in
Texas.
Forty years have not dimmed
the imprint of that little one’s smile in our memories. But she was
not our
child. The law said she belonged to
someone else, and, as much as we were willing to open our hearts and home to adopt
this little girl with the big smile, we had to give her back.
Nearly abandoned and loved,
but not our child.
This is somewhat the essence
of John’s sentence about becoming God’s child.
Often (incorrectly) someone – even a preacher – will say something
like: we’re ALL God’s children. That may be true in one sense, that we are
all born in the image
of God, and we all experience the providence of God’s care, and there is the
loving reach of God that would embrace us, much like (but better than) Elizabeth
and I wanted to embrace Vicki as our own.
But there is something which
stands between that desire and reality.
That something is the law. The
law says we are born in sin, and because we all sin, the law condemns us. John says we become God’s child by belief – faith in God that Jesus
Christ is His son.
Now that is not a very
popular viewpoint, and there is pushback whenever you try to point out that
some people are genuinely children of God by faith, and some are not. Many people prefer that, like the
Constitution says, we are all equal, we are all equally children of God. But the Scripture isn’t the Constitution, and
national pride has little to do with Scriptural truth. So, what do you do with truth?
Jesus, Himself pointed out this very fact when the Pharisees argued that
they were children of Abraham, making them God’s favored sons. Here’s the hard truth Jesus declared to them:
Jesus told them, “If God were your Father, you
would love me, because I have come to you from God. I am not here on my own, but he sent me. Why
can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s
because you can’t even hear me! For you
are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things
he does. He was a murderer from the
beginning. He has always hated the
truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his
character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. So when I tell the
truth, you just naturally don’t believe me!
John 8:42-45(NLT)
The line is drawn in the
sand, if you choose to reject the Son, to not-love God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, you don’t have
the Father, you’re not a child of God, no matter how much you want it to be
otherwise.
For You Today
Elizabeth and I wanted to
welcome Vicki into our home, but she was the child of another. That was a hard truth.
A much more important
question with a hard truth we must all face is:
whose child are you?
NOTES
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