Children of God

God’s Children

Galatians 4

God’s Free Children in Christ

I mean that as long as the heir is not of age, he is no different from a slave, although he is the owner of everything, but he is under the supervision of guardians and administrators until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were not of age, were enslaved to the elemental powers of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

1 John 2-3

And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming. If you consider that he is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him.

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason that world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as he is pure.

Hebrews 12

“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by Him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.”

Endure your trials as “discipline”; God treats you as sons.

For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons but bastards. Besides this, we have had our earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them.

Should we not then submit all the more to the Father of spirits and live? They disciplined us for a short time as seemed right to them, but he does so for our benefit, in order that we may share his holiness. At the time, all the discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.

Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.