God's Own Children

A new mother stayed with her parents for several days after the birth of her first child. One afternoon she remarked to her mother that it was surprising the baby had dark hair, since both her husband and she were fair. The grandmother said, “Well, your daddy has black hair.” To which the daughter replied, “But Mama, that doesn’t matter, because I’m adopted.” With an embarrassed smile, the mother said the most wonderful words her daughter had ever heard: “I always forget.”

So, let me ask you all here today, “How many of you out in the pews today are adopted?” I, myself, am. Not only once but twice. Now before you go on wondering how bad I must have been to be adopted twice, these are two entirely different types of adoption. After being abandoned by my biological parents, my sister and I were adopted by our grandparents. My second adoption happened not long after the first. I don’t remember the date, but I do remember the occasion. Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Ridgecrest CA. It was a Sunday morning and I was 8 years old. Pastor Paul Neipp Sr. met my mother and I at the baptismal font. I bent over the font as Pastor Neipp poured water over my head three times in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. At that moment, God the Father adopted me as His own dear child.

So, let me ask that question again: “How many of you are adopted?” There we are, that’s more like it! All who have been baptized are chosen and loved by our gracious Father in heaven. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

Are we special? Is that why God has chosen us? Well, I can speak for myself, there is absolutely nothing special in me. I am what I like to refer to as a “stuck on stupid sinner”. Been a sinner since the moment I was conceived. There is nothing in me that made God look down at me and say, “You know what, this James guy is really something special. He is such a good guy. I think I’ll make him My child.” Nope, that surely didn’t happen.

The fact of the matter is you nor I are any better than the disciples in locked in the upper room for fear of the Jews. These were ordinary people just like you and I. Not one of these men was special. Nope, they were also sinners who have no leg to stand on in front of a holy and perfect God. There is no merit in them, they vie for who’s the top dog in the Kingdom of Heaven. They want to call down fire from heaven to destroy a town who closed their ears to the living Gospel of Jesus. And Peter also thought that he was being overly generous by only forgiving people up to seven times.

As if they are not good enough examples, we could compare ourselves with Abraham and Sarah who later doubted God’s promise of a child and agrees with Sarah to have an affair with Hagar, her maid servant, to father a child because they didn’t really believe that God would fulfill His promise. Or, Moses who murdered an Egyptian task master. Or, any of the Israelites who God had delivered with His mighty right hand from four hundred years of slavery in Egypt by showing His power over all creation and life and death itself. He rescued them from Pharaoh’s wrath by parting the Red Sea and drowning Pharaoh and all his army in the sea after Israel walked through on dry ground, to harden their hearts against God and grumble and complain and want to go back to the same slavery they were just rescued from. Only two men out of all the hundreds of thousands of that generation ever got to see and live in the Promised Land. Or, we may be a bit like King David who allowed his lust to get the best of him and had an affair with Bathsheba then tries to cover it up and finally had her husband Uriah murdered.

The fact is, no one is good enough to merit God’s love. You and I are included in Isaiah’s repentant lament, “We have all become like one who is unclean, all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and are iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of You [the Lord]” (64:6-7a).

But God in His unfathomable love for His creatures did something about our sinful condition. Having absolutely nothing in us worth saving because of our inherited sinful nature, God assumed human flesh and became man in Jesus to take care of our nature and external manifestations of that sinful nature.

The Eternal Son of God takes on our human flesh, yet without sin, and lives God’s will that we cannot. Ten simple commandments and not one of us can keep them. But Jesus did. Perfectly. He then compassionately sets His focus on the sacrificial death He would die to pay the ransom price for our slavery to sin and death. Jesus laid down His innocent, perfect life in exchange for our polluted lives of sin and shame. On the cross Christ shed His blood to pay for the sins of the entire world. He raises from the dead on that first Easter Sunday conquering death itself for you and for me.

“See what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (v.1). Luther says, “Here we have that forge and furnace, namely, that Christ loved us in this way and rendered obedience to the Father, who gave us His Son to redeem us through Him.” The “manner of love” is so deep and so pure that “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Pet. 1:18-19).

The manner of love didn’t stop there though. After Jesus was resurrected He commands His disciples to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

So Jesus gives to us the gift of baptism. And as St. Paul so eloquently states in Romans 6, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” And again, in Galatians 3, we read, “…for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” I just love that passage, it is so full of God’s love for you and me.

In baptism, though faith, we are crucified with Christ and raised with Him. Our sins are washed away through the blood and water from Jesus’ pierced side that floods every baptismal font, lake, river and stream. We are now clothed in Christ, “we have put on Christ”, and all of that work that Jesus did on the cross is now, by faith in Him, credited to our account. In other words, Jesus’ sinless and righteous life is imputed in us. Through faith, these baptismal waters used today to baptize _____ & _____, Jesus exchanges our polluted and unrighteous garments for His pure and holy garments of Himself. He did it for little ____ & ____ just a little while ago, just as He did it for you and for me. He took us and adopted us as His own dear children. And now, right this moment, ever since your baptism, and every moment of your life until God call you and I home, we are children of God, now and for all eternity.

And now, through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, we have His righteousness, His love, and His protection. We are in this beautiful illustration by Jesus, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out My hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

This fact and promise is for you, and for me and for all of God’s dearly beloved children.

In His name and for His eternal glory. Amen.

Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s works, vol. 30: The Catholic Epistles. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds.) (Vol. 30, p. 265). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.