We Are Now Now Children of God 10/27/2024

“We Are Now Children of God”
(1 John 3:1-2)
Christians find their identity in Christ. God is unchanging. He is reliable. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). If you find your identity in Him, ultimately, you will never be disappointed. My identity is found in Him. He is my Father, and I am His child.
Demonstration - “See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are.”
Divide - “For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him.”
Destiny - “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”
Lessons to Learn
Children of God Have a Spiritual Birth - John writes, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again (John 3:3).
Children of God Are Strangers to This World - Jesus said, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first” (John 15:18). Because of our unique relationship to our Father, we are strangers to this world. “To know” in 1 John 3:1 has the idea of intimacy of relationship.
Children of God Look Forward to Jesus’ Return - John gives two reasons why we are to anticipate Christ’s coming. 1) “We shall be like Him.” 2) “We shall see Him as He is.”
J.I. Packer, in his book, Knowing God, wrote the following concerning the fatherhood of God: “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God” [p. 126].