W E HAVE A ROWDY DOG named Rudy. We call him Rotten Rudy. He’s a little over a year old now and still he gets into everything. He’s rambunctious. He chews up a shoe. He digs a hole to China. He takes a dip in the pool and then wallows in the dirt. He breaks out of the house and, at full speed, runs down the block. He torments our other dog, Faye.
Lisa and I have this thing about Rudy. When Rudy is relaxed, he’s my dog. My dog is well-behaved. My dog sits to get a treat. My dog quietly lies down. My dog comes when called. When Rotten Rudy is rowdy and rambunctious, he’s your dog.
“Lisa, your dog just grabbed the sandwich off the counter.”
“Keith, your dog just tracked mud in the house.”
We did the same thing with our children. My kids always did well in school, got home from dates on time. Your kids didn’t pick up their clothes. Your kids ate all the peanut butter. Of course, that was all in jest. In all times and situations they were our children. And in all times and situations we loved them.
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THIS BRINGS ME to our first point today. God must really love us. God calls us God’s children, saints. Not just calls us that, we are God’s children. We are not children of God because we have been good little boys and girls. Being children of God has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God. God chose us and God lavishes love on us.
Perhaps we have trouble believing that — God’s lavish love. We have character flaws. We know it. Or as John says in later verses, we sin. We know it and we feel bad about it and we hide from God and each other. And we don’t believe our true identity is a child of God. We’re phony, fake. God can’t possibly call us children.
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FOR ALL OF THESE REASONS and more, these verses are wonderful news. “We are the children of God.” That is our true identity. John is not just trying to cheer us up by saying something that isn’t true.
Parents, you know how that is. You try to cheer up a child who just struck out in baseball. “That was a great swing. You almost hit it.”
God isn’t cheerleading here. God is telling us the absolute truth. You are a child of God and you are lavishly loved by God.
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SECOND POINT: We are God’s saints. Now “saints” is a loaded word. We think of especially pious, holy people when we think of saints; men and women who have done great things through faith. But don’t be hard on yourself. As a child of God, which you are, you are also a saint of God.
But don’t let that go to your head. There is no hierarchy of saints. All who belong to Christ by faith are saints, and none of us are more “saintly” than our Christian brothers and sisters.
The apostle Paul, who is no more of a saint than the most obscure Christian, begins 1 Corinthians declaring that they were “sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2) In this verse, hagios is translated “saints,” “holy,” and “sanctified” in different Bible versions, leading to the unmistakable conclusion that all who have ever called upon Christ for salvation are saints, made holy by the Lord. Or as it says in Ephesians 2 (19), we are all “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”
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WE ARE NOT SAINTS BECAUSE we are better than everybody else. We’re not saints because we’re more holy than others. We cannot work our way to sainthood. We are saints because we are made holy through Jesus Christ.
Once we are saved by faith we are called to certain actions befitting our calling as saints of God — which is our third point. We might not fully understand the idea of saint but we do know that saints are like Jesus. So, as children of God, children loved by God, children made holy through Jesus Christ, we try to be like Jesus every day. God wants to make us like Jesus. “When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” God intends to work in us, with us, and on us until we fully reflect the spirit and character of Jesus. Don’t get complacent. God isn’t finished with us yet. We don’t know what we will grow into or become.
Someone said, “We think of ourselves now as human beings. We really aren’t that — not yet. We are human becomings.” If you are living in Christ, believing in him and trying to follow and obey him as the master of your life, you are by his grace, becoming ever more and more like him.
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GOD’S CONCERN IS that we become like Jesus Christ — people who live with a passionate concern that the will and way of God be done on earth as they are in heaven.
God’s love is beyond calculation, for not only does he call us his children, he makes us his children. We are saints, made holy by the Lord. We know that saints try to live like Christ. So, let’s do it.
— Keith Cardwell
