1 John 3:1 - Adopted by God

Some words can have a very powerful effect on us.

There might be certain words that, when you hear them, they trigger all kinds of thoughts and emotions in you. Sometimes that will be positive and sometimes negative.

The word Father can often be one of those words.

For children in care, the words father, dad or daddy will most likely come with a variety of feelings, depending on their experience of male father figures in their lives. Some won’t really know what it means because they never knew their birth dad.

For others, we might have very strong attachment to our dads and so the word will trigger very happy feelings. Our dads might not have been that great, and so we might have sad or even angry feelings.

Father is a powerful word.

For Christians, there is an extra layer of meaning attached to the word Father.

It’s the word Jesus taught us to use when we pray. “Our Father in heaven...”

And when one of Jesus’ first followers, John, reflected on this, he said...

1 John 3:1 NIV

See what great love the Father has lavished on 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.

This is...

The Love of Adoption

God doesn’t hold back in showing us his love!

He has lavished his great love on us in making us his children.

This is an incredible thought! For three reasons...

1) Only Jesus is the Son of God

He is the One and Only Son of God (John 3:16). That speaks of his unique place in God’s heart, his unique relationship with God.

When Jesus was baptised the Father spoke from heaven and said, “You are my Son, whom I love. With you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

Which makes it all the more amazing that we should be called children of God! It’s all because of his great love that he has lavished on us.

Even more incredible when you think that...

2) We are rebellious children

We were created to be part of God’s family, to be children of God. But our first parents, Adam & Eve, chose to rebel against God and go their own way. And as their children we have followed in the family tradition, turning from God’s ways and plotting our own course.

Because of that, we rightly deserve to be disciplined and punished by God for our rebellion.

And yet he has lavished his incredible love on us, because now...

3) We can be called children of God!

And we can call God “Our Father.” We have been adopted into his family. He has chosen and called us to be his children, such is the strength of his great love.

We heard earlier about the love that Adam & Krystal have for Joseph along with their other sons, and about the great joy they felt when Joseph began calling them mummy and daddy!

God’s love is so much greater than any parents’. And our joy in calling him Father is so much deeper than anything we might feel towards our earthly fathers.

For many people today, God is a kind of distant authority figure. Always grumpy, telling us what we can’t do and threatening us when we do it anyway.

But the God of the Bible, the God revealed in the Jesus Christ, is the God of lavish love who so unites us with himself that he invites us to call him Father, and calls us his children.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”

But how does it happen? How is it possible for someone to become part of God’s family, to share in his love and be adopted as his child?

John wrote elsewhere of Jesus...

John 1:12 NIV

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

The Means of Adoption

Jesus is the key to our adoption into God’s family. He is the means of our adoption to become children of God.

Paul writes about it in one of his letters...

Galatians 4:4–5 NIV

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

God sent his Son to redeem us that we might receive adoption to sonship.

The key word is “redeem.”

You probably only use the word redeem when you’re redeeming a gift voucher or a discount code!

But the idea of redemption had a very different meaning to Paul’s first century audience, where slavery was a sorry reality.

One way out of slavery was to be redeemed - someone would pay a price (a ransom) to set you free, give you liberty from your enslavement.

The process of a child being adopted is a long and laborious one! It comes at great cost. Obviously the care system costs the Government an incredible amount of money, and there will be some financial costs to adoptive parents, not to mention the emotional investment!

But for us to become children of God we needed to be redeemed, to be set free from our slavery to sin. No amount of money could ever pay for that!

But Paul said that God sent his Son to redeem us that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Jesus came, then, to redeem us by paying a price to set us free from our slavery...

Mark 10:45 NIV

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

…and to give us the right to become children of God.

So it is through faith in Christ we receive our adoption.

By believing that Jesus is that redeemer, the one who paid the ransom price to set us free, we can know the freedom of belonging to God’s family forever.

This is...

The Hope of Adoption

We can know the security of belonging to God as his children and all that entails!

Galatians 4:6–7 NIV

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Wow! It’s not just that we’ve been set free from our slavery, where we had nothing at all to call our own. We’ve now been adopted into this family, by this incredible Father, who writes us into his will!

Romans 8:17 NIV

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

We have an equal share in all that rightly belongs to Jesus, because we are now co-heirs with him.

That means that everyone who puts their faith and trust in Jesus as their Saviour and Redeemer has the incredible hope of living in perfect relationship with God, enjoying his lavish love for all eternity.

What love! What hope! What joy!

Every earthly adoption beautifully pictures this heavenly adoption.

Every time a child comes home for good, it reminds us that through Jesus we also can come home for good.

Because of that, I’m hoping for two things:

1. That many more of us will consider adoption and fostering, so that the lavish love of God can be put on display in our homes and families in powerful ways, and so that there can be a home for every child who needs one.

After this morning, will you seriously consider whether you could open your home and your family to a child who currently has neither of those things? Could you share your love with vulnerable children just as God has shown his lavish love to us?

Take some prayer coasters home with you to remind you to think and pray about this further.

That’s my first hope. My second is...

2. That having heard about the love of God in sending his Son to redeem you and set you free, that you will receive his love by faith and become a child of God this morning.

After this morning, will you put your faith in Jesus as your Redeemer, Saviour and Lord?

That means admitting that you’ve been a rebellious child and asking God to forgive you. It means believing that he is able to forgive you because Jesus has paid the price for your sin in full when he died on the cross. It means calling God your Father just has he now calls you his child!

1 John 3:1 NIV

See what great love the Father has lavished on 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.

You will not find a greater love anywhere on earth!