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The sins of God’s children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children’s fellowship with their Father. “Be holy, for I am holy” is our Father’s word to us, and it is no part of justifying faith to lose sight of the fact that God, the King, wants his royal children to live lives worthy of their paternity and position.
If God in love has made Christians his children, and if he is perfect as a Father, two things would seem to follow, in the nature of the case. First, the family relationship must be an abiding one, lasting forever. Perfect parents do not cast off their children. Christians may act the prodigal, but God will not cease to act the prodigal’s father. Second, God will go out of his way to make his children feel his love for them and know their privilege and security as members of his family. Adopted children need assurance that they belong, and a perfect parent will not withhold it.
I am a child of God. God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother too
The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living. “Be the kind of person that Jesus was”; “seek this virtue, and this one, and this, and practice them up to the limit”; “know your responsibilities—husbands, to your wives; wives, to your husbands; parents, to your children; all of you, to all your fellow Christians and all your fellow human beings; know them, and seek strength constantly to discharge them”—this is how God guides us through the Bible, as any student of the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Prophets, the Sermon on
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God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly; God can restore the years that the locust has eaten. It is said that those who never make mistakes never make anything; certainly, these men made mistakes, but through their mistakes God taught them to know his grace and to cleave to him in a way that would never have happened otherwise. Is your trouble a sense of failure? the knowledge of having made some ghastly mistake? Go back to God; his restoring grace waits for you.
Think! says Paul in effect. God is for you; you see what that means; now reckon up who is against you, and ask yourself how the two sides compare.
You will never need more than he can supply, and what he supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present. “No good thing does the LORD withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps 84:11 RSV). “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13 RSV). “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Think on these things!—and let your thoughts drive out your inhibitions about serving your
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We found that the God who is “there” for us to know is the God of the Bible, the God of Romans, the God revealed in Jesus, the Three-in-One of historic Christian teaching. We realized that knowing him starts with knowing about him, so we studied his revealed character and ways and came to know something of his goodness and severity, his wrath and his grace.
knowing God involves a personal relationship whereby you give yourself to God on the basis of his promise to give himself to you. Knowing God means asking his mercy and resting on his undertaking to forgive sinners for Jesus’ sake.
“The best measure of a spiritual life,” said Oswald Chambers, “is not its ecstasies, but its obedience.”
Those who know God in Christ have found the secret of true freedom and true humanity.
