"See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."  (1 John 3.1 NRSV)

The greatest honour that can be conferred upon any mortal being is that of being called a Son of God. We know that all life is of God, that He holds in His hands the breath of every living thing and that at the first He was the great First Cause of all that lives. In that sense all intelligent creatures are His children and He is the Universal Father. But that is not the sense in which the term is used in the Bible. A Son of God in the Biblical sense must fulfil one essential condition; he must be in harmony with God, not in a condition of alienation because of sin. Of all the millions of men and women, named and unnamed, from antediluvian days to apocalyptic times, who crowd the pages of the sacred record, only very few are dignified with the title 'Son of God'.

The instances are so rare that they can be listed here quite quickly and quite briefly. Before we take to ourselves this honour which the New Testament tells us is ours by right, if we be Christ's, we do well to note the previous occasions in Scripture history where the title has been conferred.

Our earliest reference is that in Job 38.7, where it is said that at the foundation of the earth the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. The Creator Himself is speaking; no human eye was witness of the events, for this was long before man's creation. The expression is obviously a poetic one, for if this was before the appearance of man upon the earth those who are thus described as rejoicing together and shouting for joy must obviously have been citizens of the spiritual world. They are those righteous celestial creatures who had been brought into being by God before He proceeded to the creation of the material universe. Whether the term 'morning stars' is a poetic name for the two who figure so largely in later history, our Lord before His coming to earth, and Lucifer the Adversary before his fall, may be decided by each student for himself according to the extent to which the suggestion appeals. Both these are described as "morning stars" in other and later Scriptures. That is not relevant to our present study. That the "sons of God" who "shout for joy" must have been the angels of heaven is perfectly obvious and this is right in line with our present enquiry. At that remote time in the ages which preceded this world there were angels, fully righteous and in harmony with God, known as "Sons of God". 

The next instance is at the time of man's creation. Adam awakened to life perfect and in harmony with his Creator and there was no trace or shadow of sin or imperfection in him. He was upright, pure and innocent, fresh from the hand of his Maker. In that condition he was a son of God. Luke testified as much (3.38) in his record of the genealogy of Jesus. The line of descent, father to son through the centuries, commenced, not with Adam, where it might have been expected to commence since he was the first man, but with God, who gave life to Adam. Since all of God's work is perfect and He has never created a being in whom sin is inherent, it follows that Adam, the son of God, was perfect in his sonship. It was only after his transgression and his fall that he lost the proud title.

Next we have the antediluvian angels who "kept not their first estate". Genesis 6 tells of these sons of God and of their fall into sin. They were sons until that grievous disaster but are never referred to as sons again.

From the days of the Flood it is a long stride to the days of Jesus, and in all those long intervening ages there were no sons of God upon earth. Not one of Adam's race had proved worthy. All, as says the Apostle Paul, had alike become unprofitable. There was none to do righteousness, no, not one. Jesus was the first since Adam to lay rightful claim to the title. Peter's bold declaration settles that for all time; "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God". The accusation laid against Him was that He claimed to be, or at the least allowed Himself to be called, the Son of God. And the claim was true. The One in whom was no sin, the One holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, was indeed able to take to Himself the title which of all titles proclaimed His sinlessness and His full and complete harmony with God.

And now the same honour is ours. We, who by nature are by no means sinless and righteous as He was, are nevertheless brought into a condition of justification before God that enables Him to call us His sons. We have come into the family of God and are called by His Name. There are so many Scriptures to assure us that this is no empty phrase; we are accepted by Him as though we had indeed attained to actual righteousness and perfection of being. What manner of love is this that has led the God of all, to call us His children?

It is because of our faith in the first place. "To as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the sons of God'' (John 1.12). That is the first essential, our acceptance of Christ. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Being led by the Spirit of God (Rom.8.14). Paul likens this to an adoption; we who were by nature children of the fallen Adam have been adopted into the family of God. The adoption is a real one, and we are indeed and in truth the sons of God. The Holy Spirit is a witness to that.

The Holy Spirit assures us, bearing witness to our own spirit inwardly, that we are the children of God, receiving and enjoying all the rights and privileges pertaining to that exalted position (Rom. 8.16,17). We are therefore heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, sharing with Him not only His life of suffering but also His life of glory, "glorified together".

"Therefore the world knows us not, because it knew Him not," The servant is not greater than his lord, and seeing that the world ignored and turned away from Jesus when He was upon earth we should not regard it strange if it does the same to His followers. That is not the only meaning in John's words though, and perhaps not the most important meaning. "Therefore" is a critical word in this sequence of thought. It is because we have become sons of God that the world knows us not. The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. This sonship into which we have entered is a very real thing to us and we have the Spirit's witness as to its genuineness; but is it so real to the world? How can they understand? Even Nicodemus, an educated man and a ruler among the Jews, found it impossible to comprehend what Jesus was talking about when He spoke of being born from above, and men in the world today are in just the same position as was Nicodemus. They just cannot understand. And the further that the world drifts towards materialism and away from God the more difficult it is going to be for them to receive any conception of that inner life which we live by the power of the Spirit and which to us is the hall-mark of our sonship.

There is much in this chapter to remind us of John's first words in his Gospel. We must not think that the "other worldliness" which the men of this world find impossible to understand is something, that is as it were, against nature. "He was in the world" says John, "and the world, was made by Him; and the world knew Him not" (John 1. 10). He was of the spirit realm and this world is of the material realm, yet He was in this world and this world was made by Him. Spiritual and earthly are all of one and if men are unable to appreciate the reality of spiritual things it is not because it is unnatural for them to do so but because they have lost the link that binds the two worlds together. Whilst it will always be true that the purely natural, material man will never understand or be able to visualise accurately the things of the spirit, he will when restored to the Divine image realise and know that there is a spiritual order of things, transcendently high above the natural. He will believe and accept the fact. It will no longer be true then that "the world knows us not" just as it will not be true that they then will 'know Him not'. Mankind upon earth will themselves have become sons of God by then; Rev. 21.7 is our guarantee of that. "He that overcomes" on the earthly plane of being, during the Millennial Age "shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son". Those Millennial overcomers, sons of God, will realise at last, that the ones who, in former times, they "knew not", have inherited the greatest and noblest of all destinies, that of eternal association with Christ in the heavenly realm. In the gladness of that knowledge they will brush all their former ignorance away and regain that link with the unseen world which Adam had before his fall and which all men will have after the restoration. As in heaven, so on earth, "when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away".

(To be continued)

AOH