All God's Children?

Thursday, December 15, 2022

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  Galatians 3:26-27

A mixed message is where two or more ideas which contradict each other are both deemed to be valid.  If I tell you my team won the game, even though the other team scored more points, that is a mixed message.  Some mixed messages have greater impact than others.  If I tell you there are about 80,000 spiders on the acre on which your house sits, it could be a relatively interesting bit of trivia.  If I tell you not to worry about those 80,000 arachnoids who can eat 10% of their body weight daily, and that means if you weigh around 175lbs, all the spiders could only eat about half of your arm while you sleep tonight…that might be a mildly-concerning mixed message. 

One of the deadliest mixed messages is to hear:  We’re all God’s children.  There is some truth in the statement.  God created humans, and in that sense, we are all His offspring in the biological meaning.  However, the confusion of spiritual and biological convergence can have eternal significance far-beyond whether spiders will be chewing on you tonight.

When the Pharisees were looking for a way to convict Jesus of some offense to get rid of him, they claimed their biological heritage as descendants of Abraham as evidence that they were children of God.  Jesus disagreed and said so, plainly, that they were children of hell:

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.  John 8:42-44

Jesus also told the Pharisees they would not enter God’s presence, despite their biological pedigree, unless they repented of sins and trusted in Him:

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one can come to the Father except through me.  John 14:6

Apostle Paul picked up on this and restated it so that we would have no mixed message about what it means to be a child of God:

But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)  Romans 8:9

So the antidote for the mixed spiritual message sent by the statement “we’re all children of God” is to rephrase:  You’re a child of God if Christ lives in you.

For You Today  

The companion question about being God’s child is always on the table for any of us:  Have you accepted Christ?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

   Inclusive and Diverse - and Dying

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Final Huddle

[1]

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

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No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.  Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me.  Since I live, you also will live.  When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.  Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me.  And because they love me, my Father will love them.  And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”    John 14:19-21^(NLT)

In the years Jesus walked with and taught his disciples they’d learned so much, particularly during the “huddles”.  Huddle times were when they would gather together at the end of day, and Jesus would reveal to them understanding of what they’d seen and heard that day.  They would ask him questions while the evening fire crackled, and their minds were slowly being shaped and prepared for service in the kingdom.

Perhaps none of these evenings was more important than their final huddle.  Jesus was more than clear as he shared the Last Supper with his disciples; his death was not the end of things, but the beginning of a new life that would open the reality of God’s forgiveness for all people.

He said these few, cataclysmic statements:

1.     I am going to die, but I will live again – and that’s your future too.

2.     My resurrection will open your understanding.

3.     Throw your life in with mine and know the love of my Father…I won’t hold anything back from you.

For the “uninitiated,” those who have not placed their faith in Jesus, many of his statements and actions are difficult to understand.  But it was designed to be that way, because, in the final analysis, faith operates absent of empirical evidence.

Just ask Thomas!

After the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to the disciples, Thomas wasn’t there.  When he was told Jesus was alive, Thomas said: 

I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.  John 20:25b^(NLT)

And that’s how most of us are deep inside; how can you take such an important thing on faith alone?  The answer, of course, even for those of us who have hung around church for a long time and been privy to the huddles, is:

You say you won’t believe until you see;

But you won’t see until you believe!

And so it is with everything Jesus taught in the final huddle with his disciples; when you begin to believe, by choosing to believe, you also begin to see and experience the love of the Father – firsthand.  It is then – and only then – you begin to understand enough to know deep inside that it’s all true.  And then, you don’t need anything else, or anyone else to convince you – your empirical evidence is beating and breathing from within.

A step of faith in Christ leads to deeper faith in Christ, which leads to a closer walk with Christ, and the revelation deep inside your soul, of just how much the Father loves you.

For You Today

Like Jesus said to Thomas on that day, don’t be faithless anymore…believe.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] By Onofrio bramante (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons