Are you a child of God?

What does it mean to be a child of God? What does a Son or Daughter of God do? What does one look like? Jesus Christ is the incarnate, eternal Son of God and defines for all time what the Sonship of God looks like on earth.  One of daily readings today was Hebrews 5.7-6.8, in which the author describes what Sonship of God looked like during the incarnation.

Divine Sonship offers prayers that are born out of pain.

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears (Hebrews 5.7a, ESV), …

Satan want us to assume that being a child of God should mean life comes easy. He plays this trick on us because he believes the promise of Genesis 3.15 that the serpent’s head will be crushes when heels of God’s people are bruised (cf. Romans 16.20). When things are not going well we often believe Satan and question our status as God’s children. The pain of an approaching surgery and the long arduous recovery to follow – the breathless feeling that comes when your doctor uses “that word” to describe your condition – the lonely feeling of a burdensome life that goes on without a loved long after everyone seems to have forgotten your pain. Times like these cause us to wonder if God really is our Father. But when Jesus defines Sonship for us, we know that to be God’s Son does not mean to be spared from all suffering.

Divine Sonship gains strength from the one who can deliver us from death.

… to him who was able to save him from death (Hebrews 5.7b, ESV), …

In the midst of his pain, Jesus was not left to his own resources. He turned to God in prayer with loud cries and tears. When life hurts we endure the temptation to take life into our own hands and not trust God. Jesus, however, reverently turned to God for strength, received it, and offered up his life in faithfulness as a faithful Son and High Priest. He laid his life in the hands of his Father and trusted in the promise and power of resurrection. As the faithful Son of God, Jesus trusted God, not to spare him from suffering, but to resurrect him, having suffered.

So in the midst of our suffering, when our minds are tortured by doubts that lead us to wonder about our status before God, let us look “unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12.2).