In the previous sharing we saw that we are children of God – born of God with the divine life and the divine nature. But as we all know, being children is the initial aspect of our life (in both our human life and our Christian life) – we are daily growing in the divine life to become sons of God, and even heirs of God!
This morning I was impressed with the fact that God’s desire in His economy is to produce many sons who are just like His Firstborn Son, Jesus Christ, to express Him for eternity! God’s intention is not to have us obey some rules and laws that will eventually improve our behaviour.
God’s desire is not just to redeem us and then bring us to heavens, to a lovely place, where we can be with Him forever – He wants us to be His sons, those who are led by the Spirit(Rom. 8:14), who express Him!
First of all, God “predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). This is His good pleasure – not just to have Christ as the Only Begotten Son (John 1:18, 3:16) – His desire is to have Christ as the Firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29).
Christ is not ashamed to call us His brothers (Heb. 2:11), and He told Mary to go and tell His brothers (John 20:17) that He was resurrected. In resurrection, Christ became the Firstborn Son of God, and we all His believers were regenerated to become children of God! As we have already seen, by receiving Christ as the Spirit, we become children of God – born not of the will of man or of the flesh, but born of God (John 1:12-13).
Even more – Gal. 3:26 says “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” – by believing into the Lord Jesus, we become children of God, growing in life to be sons of God! God’s economy is for us to become His sons, inheriting the blessing of God’s promise – which was given for His eternal purpose.
We should remain here, in this sonship, to become His heirs to inherit all that God has planned for His eternal purpose. This is also the central thought of the book of Romans (as presented by brother Witness Lee) –
In His salvation, God is making sinners His sons with His life and nature so that they may become constituents of the Body of Christ for His expression.
The Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16) – we take the lead to witness this, and the Spirit follows us and joins us in our witnessing. Also, we who are led by the Spirit are sons of God (Rom. 8:14) – we take the initiative to be led by the Spirit, to take the Spirit’s leading, and the Spirit leads us & we are growing unto sonship. The leading of the Spirit marks us out as being the sons of God in the growth in life.
And even more – in Rom. 8:19 we see that “the anxious watching of the creation eagerly awaits the manifestation of the sons of God” – the whole creation is waiting for us to grow in life, mature in life, and be manifested as sons of God, so that the entire universe would be freed from the slavery of corruption that came in through the fall!
Lord, thank You for Your desire in Your economy – keep us growing in life as sons of God unto maturity!
