p. 483 | SONS OF GOD by Rev. T. L. Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 3, 1881

SONS OF GOD.

By Rev. T. L. Cuyler

TITLES are much coveted in this world, although some of them are as worthless and paltry as the tinsel paper cap worn by a school-boy. When God confers a title it means something. None is more to be coveted than the endearing appellation of "Sons of God." This means adoption into the royal family of Heaven. If it was a great honor for a Hebrew foundling to be taken from a basket in the Nile into the imperial palace of Egypt, what a supreme honor is it to be picked up in beggarly rags of sin and guilt and to be "renewed after the image of God," and adopted as his child! Adoption is an act of God's free grace whereby he receives us into the number and gives a right to all the privileges of sonship. The nature of this sonship is spiritual. It requires a new heart, and a likeness more or less distinct to Jesus Christ. Happy the man or woman in whom this family likeness is so strong as to be recognized by every one. Those early Christians bore such a clear, unmistakable stamp in character and conduct that others "took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus."

Beloved, now are we the sons of God. This is a rich and right royal relationship. It brings three glorious privileges—prayer, provision and protection. What we ask we shall receive; the prayers of a true child of God have this peculiar power, they "avail much" with him. As we parents furnish good raiment and shelter to our children, and numberless comforts, so God prepareth a table for his sons and daughters, and garments for them to wear, and maketh their cups to run over. They are under the shadow of his wing, and while they abide there, Satan and all his demons can do them no harm.

They are also "led by the Spirit." He leads them to clearer views of truth, to a deeper knowledge of themselves, and guides them in difficult decisions as to duty. I do not believe that a Christian ever asked God honestly and fervently for guidance in a time of perplexity and was ever left wholly in the dark. Where he leads it is always safe to follow. God has led many a faithful child up steep cliffs of difficulty and over some hard, thorny paths, and into the valley of the death-shade, but never once into the smooth, velvet pathway of self-indulgence. That is not his way. He sometimes lays on the rod of correction, sometimes chastises sorely, but this is only to get the self-conceit, or pride, or unbelief out of our hearts. God's school has a corps of skillful teachers, and the tuition is often costly, and some hard lessons are learned through eyes swimming in tears—but he graduates ripe and wonderful scholars into glory. "What can my heavenly Father mean by taking away that sweet daughter of mine?" inquired a heart-stricken friend of me lately. I could not answer, only that God makes no mistakes in his loving discipline; but I have already seen such blessings that the "rod had honey in it." Tears sometimes water graces wonderfully. The pruning-knife makes the clusters on a Hamburg grape-vine all the larger and the more luscious.

God knows all his own children. Their names are all in their directory. He never commits the strange blunder of Benny Franklin's mother when she did not recognize her own son in the grown-up youth who came to her door unexpectedly on a stormy night and asked for lodgings. He knows where his poorest and obscurest children are—in their attics or on their beds of poverty and suffering. The aged negro in his hut said to his pastor, "Sometimes God comes and feeds me wid a spoon; and den I tells him to keep a place for ole Johnson up at his big table in glory."

If sons, we are heirs. The child adopted from an Orphan Asylum into a rich man's family becomes an heir to the estate. Better still, we are "joint-heirs with Christ." His glory shall be ours. The crown on Victoria's head ennobles her own person. Jesus is the head of his ransomed Church, and the crown that flashes on his brow will be the joy and luster and diadem of us all. Do you doubt this? Then turn to that verse in the book of John which declares—"The glory which Thou gavest me I have given them."

God takes great delight in the affections of his children. He loves to have us love him. When we keep his commandments at severe cost and sacrifice, it is a savor of a sweet smell unto him. Little at the best can we do for him, but he repays with a smile that is worth more than a kingdom. By and by he will bring us home; and it will be a great day when we are introduced among such relatives as Paul, and Isaiah, and John, and the other men and women of whom this world was not worthy. Beloved, behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called THE SONS OF GOD!—Rev. T. L. Cuyler in Christian at Work.