The Triune God Works to Make Us His Children Again

Romans 8:14-17

Dear Fellow Children of God,

That sounds nice doesn’t it? “Children of God.” You hear people use that phrase especially when they are trying to get people to get along with each other. They say, “We are all children of God, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we be able to get along?” They are using the phrase in the sense that we are all God’s creatures, and so, some even include the animals in the mix. This is a very interesting phenomenon especially since many of the people who talk this way also accept evolution. But it just reminds us that people will appeal to God or something Biblical when it’s convenient or they think it will help advance their agenda, but will ignore what God says when it contradicts their agenda. When you do that, you reveal who your god really is—yourself.

It is true, of course, that God created us and all that exists and so we are all his creatures. But we know what happened after God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden where everything was perfect. Things didn’t stay perfect. Adam and Eve disobeyed their Father/Creator. As the Bible says, sin separates us from God, and so they had to leave the perfect garden and live in a world that is infected with sin so that life is a constant struggle to survive. They had bodies that were no longer perfect; bodies that would slowly wear out with hearts that would one day stop beating. They would have children, but those children would no longer be what Adam and Eve had been in the garden, in the image of God, they would be born in sinful image of Adam and Eve. They would inherit their sinfulness; bodies that would slowly wear out and hearts that would one day stop beating. They, and everyone born since Adam and Eve, would be born not as God’s children but as Adam’s children, separated from God because of sin.

That’s what the Bible says we are. We are children of Adam by birth. We are born dead in trespasses and sin. We are born as prodigals, created by God, but banished from his presence because what is sinful cannot be in the presence of holiness without being destroyed.

But that’s not the way God wanted it to be. This morning Paul reminds us of what the one and only true God, the triune God, does so that we can be his children again.

God, because he is perfectly holy and perfectly just, demands perfection. He says be holy because I the Lord your God am holy, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. But no one is perfect. Not even the great Apostle Paul, whom the Spirit used to write much of the New Testament, was perfect. He often confessed that he had persecuted the church and in the previous chapter of Romans he confessed that even after he came to faith, he didn’t always do the good that he wanted to do and sometimes did the evil he didn’t want to do. None of us is perfect as God is perfect. None of us can get ourselves to the point where God would say, “Now that you have made yourself holy, I’ll accept you back as my child.”

But God had a plan to reconcile us to himself. His plan involved his one and only perfect son, the second person of the Godhead, who chose to leave heaven and be born into this sinful world as one of us. Because he was conceived by God the Holy Spirit, he was the second Adam. He was born in the image of God, perfect and without sin. Like Adam he represented the whole human race. What he did would affect everyone who ever was or ever would be born. He came into the world to do what no one else had done or could do. He came not to abolish God’s law and his demand for perfection, he came to fulfill it. And the Bible tells us that’s just what he did. He was tempted to sin just as Adam was, just as we are every day, but he remained without sin. He satisfied the Father’s demand for perfection.

That was part one of God’s plan to reconcile us to himself. His demand for perfection had been fulfilled but not his demand for justice. His law had been broken. Justice demands that when laws are broken punishment must follow. You know what that meant. Jesus had to suffer the punishment we, and all people, deserve for our sins. Jesus had to be separated from God, forsaken by him. So, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. God made Jesus, who had never sinned, sinful. He put our sins and the sins of the whole world on Jesus and then unleashed his justice on him so that he cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Father made his Son, Jesus, a sacrifice of atonement so that he could be just and at the same time justify those who have faith in him. After Jesus provided this sacrifice once for all time God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand and placed everything that exists under his feet- he glorified him.

As we heard Jesus tell Nicodemus in our Gospel lesson today, this reconciliation, this redemption that he accomplished through his life and death in our place, doesn’t become ours automatically. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Everyone is born in Adam’s sinful image and is therefore an enemy of God, separated from God by sin. Everyone needs a second birth, a spiritual birth. The reconciliation and redemption that Jesus won for all can only be received by an individual through faith and that faith can only exist where the Spirit of God creates it. Jesus told Nicodemus that this spiritual birth comes through water and the spirit. Paul says, He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Like Nicodemus, many today ask, how can this be? How can someone be saved, how can they be born again by such a simple thing as applying water to someone in the name of the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Because the same God who said let there be light and there was light, has said that baptism now saves you also and faith comes from hearing the message, and the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

Through the Gospel in word and sacrament the Holy Spirit brings us to trust that Jesus lived and died in our place. Through the Gospel in word and sacrament the Holy Spirit makes our bodies his temple. He assures us that we are not slaves to fear anymore. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In Jesus the Father no longer sees us as sinful, but holy, clothed in the perfection of Christ. He assures us that, though we were born God’s enemies and worthy of eternal punishment, because of what Jesus has done for us we have been reconciled to God. Like the prodigal son we have been welcomed back by the Father, not as a slave, but as a son, fully and freely forgiven. He assures us that we can call the eternal, holy and righteous God, our Father, without fear. We can call him Father, as Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer, trusting that he hears us as a loving Father listens to his dear children, trusting that he will always answer our every prayer in the way that he, as the all-knowing, and almighty God knows is best.

Since we have been born again by water and the Spirit and the Holy Spirit of God has made our bodies his holy temple, we are children of God. As long as we continue to be led by the Spirit of God, we will remain children of God. But you see the warning here. If we begin to reject the leading of the Holy Spirit; if we start thinking that we can go our own way; if we think we can continually gratify our sinful nature; if we no longer listen to the guidance he gives us through the word; if we reject what he tells us in his Word; we can lose our status as children of God; we will drive the Holy Spirit from our hearts. May we heed this warning and do what Luther and Paul encourage, “drown our sinful Old Adam by daily contrition and repentance” so that our New Man may daily arise and be led by the spirit to rejoice in hearing God’s word and strive to live before God in righteousness each day.

As we daily hear the good news that God sent his Son Jesus to be our Savior, pay for our sin and reconcile us to God as his dear children, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. We confess Jesus Christ as our Lord which we can do only by the Spirit. We rejoice that since we are God’s children, purchased for him and reconciled to him by Jesus, we are also heirs. We are in line to inherit something beyond our imagination, riches so great that their worth cannot be counted. We are co-heirs with Christ of heaven and all its glory. Everything that he has is ours.

Paul reminds us that, on earth, we inherit what Jesus had—suffering. If we are like Jesus; if we are daily led by the Spirit to love what God loves and hate what God hates the world will hate and persecute us. But if we share in his sufferings we will also share in his glory. Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. In Jesus we are heirs of heaven and blessings beyond anything we can imagine.

Contrary to popular opinion, we are not all children of God by birth. Because we are descendants of sinful Adam we are born prodigals, enemies of God, and would be lost forever unless God did something to reconcile us to himself and adopt us back into his family. In his majesty and grace as the one and only triune God he did act. The Father sent his one and only perfect Son, Jesus, to satisfy his demand for perfection and justice. Jesus redeemed us and reconciled us to God by his life and death in our place. The Holy Spirit then proclaimed this good news to us. He worked faith in our hearts through the Gospel in word and sacrament. He enables us to confess that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, our only hope for salvation. He makes our bodies his temple and testifies with our spirit that we are children of God who are following his lead and heirs with Jesus of the glories of heaven. Because of the work of our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are children of God who have life now and forever.