SONS OF GOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 30, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 44.

SONS OF GOD.

Who are the sons of God? Is it true that all—irrespective of character or vital relationship—are sons of God? So Satan would have men believe. So would he lull them to sleep with the further argument that “God will not ‘destroy or suffer to be lost His son. You are His ‘son because He is the Father of all; therefore it is ‘well with you whoever and whatever you are.”

It is true that in the sense of original creation, in constant provision, God may be called the Father of all. If man had never sinned, God would have been the eternal Father of all. But sin has been permitted to pervert for a time God’s design, and the otherwise sons of God became sons of the wicked one, “children of disobedience.”

Let this truth be forever fixed in the heart and mind: It is character which God desires. It is character which He requires. It is character which He designed before man was created. It is character like His own, wrought out voluntarily in faithful obedience to His will. It is of these characters that God is the eternal Father.

These are blessed verities. True, they do not make every one a child of God in fact; but they do reveal that every one is a possible child of God; more, a possible eternal son of God. For the man in his sin forfeited his sonship, God in His goodness did not disavow or repudiate His Fatherhood. In His love He gave His only-begotten Son that men might know the depth of that Father’s love, in order that they might be won back to sonship again.

For, dear souls, sonship is a life relation with God, dependent on us. We may be the sons of earthly fathers who are dead. They once gave us life, in a sense; we possess the same life as they, and more. But God ever liveth. He gave not only the life which man has perverted through sin, but He continues that life, that man may “lay hold on ‘eternal life,” and so come into direct vital relation to Him.

This relation comes simply by faith, by giving up voluntarily, freely, our will to Him, that He may mold our character like His own. And so we read: “As many as received Him [Christ Jesus, the manifestation of God’s love and character], to them gave ‘He power [right, privilege, authority] to become ‘the sons of God, even to them that believe on His ‘name; which 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.

“Name,” in God’s nomenclature, indicates character. Believing on His name is accepting His character, is receiving Him. It is taking His character as the only sure foundation in all the universe; it is choosing His will above any will of man howsoever desirable it may seem. It is preferring life-union with God above all human desires of the flesh, above all earthly descent or titled or honored pedigree. It is receiving Christ Jesus for all He longs to be for us, Teacher, Sacrifice, Example, Redeemer, Saviour, Lifegiver, Eternal Friend—all the fulness of God. That is sonship with God.

Again: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness ‘at all.” With Him dwelleth the morning and the day. Men by sin have become sons of darkness, children of the night. God in His goodness makes it possible for every soul to become a son of light. Therefore said Jesus to those in darkness to whom light had come, “While ye have the light, believe in ‘the light, that ye may become the sons of light.” Turn the eye singly to the radiance of God’s brightness, open door and window of the heart, and let the light shine in. All that light asks is place to shine; let it shine into your heart and dissipate the darkness. All that life asks is an opening by which to flow into the dry, dead, barren ground of sin-hardened hearts, and heal and restore them. All that love asks is a channel by which it may enter a loveless existence, and be shed abroad by the life of the Holy Spirit.

O soul, child of darkness, of doubt, of sin, of death, receive the Lifegiver, the Light of the World, the Beloved One. Let faith yield all and receive all, and so become in character, in deed, in life, in faithful, loving service, a son of God through Jesus Christ.