Characteristics that Define the Father's Children
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And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.
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. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Pray
Today’s Sermon is titled Characteristics of the Father’s Children, and my challenge to us is to Live Like a Child of the Father!
Instead of beginning at verse 28 of chapter 2, we will actually begin with what jumps off the page at us - the Father’s love.
And as we look through today’s text, we will look at it through the lens of being a child of the Father and how our characteristics and actions will change as we experiencing the Father’s love. And I would challenge you to have a pen and paper ready to write down at least one take away for yourself this week that will remind you of what the Lord spoke to you today.
So, based on 1 John 3:1, the Father’s children are:
Loved
Loved
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.
Unfortunately, in many of the translations today we do not get the same sense, or emphasis, of the phrase that begins chapter 3. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us”.
This is a sort of pause in John’s letter, a parenthetical side thought that seems to capture John’s attention as he considers his last phrase in verse 29, “born of him.”. It’s almost a burst of praise, a doxology from the Apostle - SEE, BEHOLD, PAY ATTENTION to the love that the Father has lavished on us!
John breaks from his line of thinking and redirects our attention to remember the love of God (one of his favorite themes!). So, let’s do that together this morning.
What manner of love is the Father’s love?
What manner of love is the Father’s love?
Lexham Survey of Theology God’s Love
His love is his divine disposition to be for his creatures and to act on behalf of their good, even at great cost to himself.
The Father’s love is great, massive, sacrificial, limitless, affectionate, compassionate, free, covenantal, loyal, faithful, demonstrative, and the list could continue on and on - but you will never fully define it because it is incomprehensible!
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
God holds nothing back when it comes to love. He doesn’t just say He loves us, He demonstrates it! Rom 5:8 tells us that;
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And Paul tells us in Eph 3:17-19 that his prayer for us is that we would be rooted and established in the love of God!
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so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
The Father’s love gives life, meaning, direction, and joy to His children!
Lexham Survey of Theology (God’s Love)
God’s love is a communicable attribute in that it is to be imitated by humanity. As recipients of divine love, believers return love—albeit in a limited human fashion—both to God and to others.
By his own actions, God teaches the world to love actively and sacrificially,..
So, the Father’s love, although incomprehensible, to the extent that we are able to comprehend it we are to replicate it! We are to extend it to others! Especially those within our family!
Transition (Father’s Day)
So Fathers, what manner of love are you expressing to your children?
We need to be able to see the love of the Father and to use it as a guide for us to love and lead our families in the same way! He is our example!
The Scripture is clear that a Father needs to be careful and attentive to being sure his family is loved - and secure in his love! It is not a good thing for our children to be embittered, or provoked to anger, whenever they think of us!
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
As Father’s, we are to display a level of righteous integrity to our family that will communicate to our children that we are safe, and they are secure in our love. That nothing they ever do will remove them from our loving protection!
This is exactly what God the Father does for His children. As it says in Romans 8:38-39;
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
See, our world is experiencing the disastrous effects of absent Fathers, and the wounds created by this reality! It breaks my heart for children all over the world who do not have the love of an earthly father to help them to feel secure and loved.
I am so blessed and proud of the men we have in this Church who are excellent providers and protectors of their family! I see you leading and loving your families, and it blesses me very much!
We need Father’s who will express and lavish love upon their children in our culture! We don’t need apathetic and distant fathers who are only concerned with building an empire for themselves, but fathers who will follow the example of God the Father and sacrificially lead and love their family!
When we do this as fathers, we reflect the love of God the Father to our family, and that will produce children who feel secure and loved! And when children feel this way, they will be able to make wise decisions from a place of security!
One of the main reasons for the identity crisis in our world today (in my opinion) is because there has been a departure from good, Godly, manhood! The type that embraces and operates within the expectations of God’s Word to love, teach, protect, provide for, lead, and serve our family!
We need men who have the heart of the Father for their family. We need men to stand up in this day and lead their family right into the loving embrace of the true Father of all of us - God Himself! This culture needs Godly men who will reject the worlds standards of manhood and embrace the standards set out for us from the Word of God!
Let’s set the example in our community of what a loving father looks like. Let’s be men who protect our families, who will go on the offensive whenever someone or something threatens to destroy our children! Let’s be men who take up the call to be prayer warriors and for our family!
Do we have that type of man in this place today?
C’mon, is there a man in this place today, ready to love and lead his family as God instructs him to?
Well then, I submit to you today that if you accept this challenge you must learn how to embrace sonship!
The main problem (in my opinion) is not that we cannot grasp the love of the Father, it is more so that we have a problem embracing and living out Biblical sonship!
There are many who if asked will say that they know that God loves them, but are walking around with an orphaned spirit that refuses to live as though they are loved and accepted in Him.
For the remainder of this message I will be speaking of the need for us to embrace sonship, which I believe to be John’s main point in this passage. Now, when I say sonship, please do not think that this is only referring to males. Sonship is inclusive of male and female, and it means to operate as a child of the Father.
So what are the characteristics listed in this section of Scripture that define the Child of God?
As I list these out, they are not going to be in any specific order, but since we are discussing the Father’s love in chapter 3 verse 1, we have to understand that the only way to truly experience this love is to become His child. So, the Father’s children are:
Secure in Their Identity
Secure in Their Identity
In 1 John 3:1-2 we see a couple of key phrases that emphasize this point!
1 John 3:1–2 (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. Dear friends, now we are children of God,...
J.I. Packer says in his book called, Knowing God,
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.
If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
In order to fully embrace our sonship, we must first realize that this is a privilege that has been granted to us by grace through the love of the Father. Yes it is true that every human being is God’s child in the sense that God created us and we bear His image, it is not true however to say that all have sonship in the Father!
Without Christ as our personal Savior, we are not His children. We are not a part of His family. We are the children of the father of lies - Satan himself (as we’ll see later in this Sermon series).
We need to be born again! “Born of him” as it says in chapter 2 verse 29. See, Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Born again into a new family, because we were born into a world of sin and separate from God. So something needs to happen to get us reconciled to God again.
John 1:12-13 gives us the picture of what we must do to join God’s family, to become born again, and to become a child of the Father.
John 1:12–13 (NIV)
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Once we receive Jesus as our personal Savior, we are reconciled to God through Him! He adopts us into His eternal family!
I am about to speak of something now that is very near and dear to my heart - Adoption! It is so comforting, assuring, and amazing to consider that God would adopt us into His family - by His choice!
To illustrate this, let me just say that I have observed a few families that I am very close to, and adoption is one of the hardest, messiest, grueling ministries I’ve ever seen. But it is also one the best and most rewarding expressions of God’s love that I have ever seen too.
These children come out of some of the most difficult situations that you could imagine. They are left to be orphaned and without any sort of security in this world at all. Everyone has left, abandoned them, and everything they knew as normal has come to an end.
They need security. They need loved, but don’t always know how to receive that love. They are not exactly sure who is supposed to receive their allegiance, so there is confusion and mistrust that runs rampant in an adoptive, blended family.
All the rights and privileges of being a member of that family is theirs now, but some are not receiving the benefits of that inheritance because they are unwilling to surrender transfer of sonship!
It is one of the saddest things to witness, a child unable to embrace the care and love of an adoptive parent who desperately wants them to feel safe and secure in their love.
Although that is true of some, there are others who do embrace their sonship in their adopted family. They understand the love of their new parents and it makes all the difference in the world!
I watched the transformation of one child take place at the love that was extended to him by his caring and patient parents. I had him in my arms as he was having an emotional melt down because he was missing his parents who were on vacation, and when I played a video that his adopted father lovingly made for him before he left, I watched him interact with the loving expressions of his adopted daddy and in an instant it made him feel at peace and secure again!
All he needed was to spend time with his daddy, to experience his love again, to see him and hear his voice, and it gave him emotional stability again!
This is so critical to understand for us in a spiritual sense as well. See, we need to understand that the children who have the hardest time embracing their identity in their adopted family are the ones that are most fearful of losing their position within that family. They feel that at any moment everything will be taken from them and they will have to start all over again. Maybe that is how you are feeling today as a child of the Father.
Do you have a hard time saying, “I am a child of God and that is what I will always be!”. Have you embraced your identity? Have you been born of Him, born again into His loving family?
You can only be secure in your identity as a child of God in so far as you have received Him and are secure in His promise to never leave you or forsake you!
You have to embrace the role of sonship before you can truly experience and know the love of the Father that John is inviting us to behold!
Are you ready and willing to surrender and submit to the process of adoption into the Kingdom and family of God?
Again in 1 John 3:1 that the Father’s children are:
Knowledgeable of the Father
Knowledgeable of the Father
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.
There is a sharp contrast between the Father’s children and the world!
The world does not know the Father, and the world system despises the Children of God.
But God’s children are born of Him and know Him! They know His voice, His character, His Word, and have come to experience Him in ways the world will never understand.
The point is this: my children know what I like, they know how I think, and they know more about me than you do! Especially if you have never met me or spent time with me. That is the difference between the world and the Children of the God too, because they have never experienced the Father. So they know nothing about Him!
The only way to fully know God is through the study of His Word and good teaching of the doctrine’s within the Bible. These are paramount for a Child of God to come to know Him.
To know the Father intellectually is a blessing for sure, but it will never really make complete sense until you experience Him! Practice the Presence of God often throughout your day!
Jesus says that there is a personal connection with Him that allows us to hear Him and know Him in a deeper and more personal way. Check out what He says in John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
And if we look at Ps 23 which I just read at a funeral on Friday we can see that the Psalmist knows God by his experience of Him.
Psalm 23 (NIV)
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
When we experience the Father in our lives we realize that it isn’t just us who know of Him - but that it is Him who knows us! He intimately knows us, He sees us, He provides for us, He protects us, He heals us! Oh what a good good Father indeed!
As we go through life by faith, we need to grow in our knowledge of the the Father, by recognizing His intervention in our life and experiencing His loving provision for us!
The Father’s Children are also:
Confident and Unashamed
Confident and Unashamed
1 John 2:28 (NIV)
And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
God’s children understand that they will have to give account for the life they are living, so they take special care to remain in Him and follow His commands!
Confidence is a bi-product of faith and obedience! Heb 11:1 says:
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Believing that we stand forgiven in Christ, loved, and protected forever from the wrath of God in Him will keep us from living in sin!
We are unashamed because we know that we are remaining in Him! Remaining in Him is to say that we are abiding, drawing our strength from Him, and bearing fruit by His grace.
Jesus says in John 15:4;
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
The command to “remain in Him” is given to provide a sense of confidence for the Father’s children that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns we will be able to stand before Him unashamed and free of guilt!
Confidence also works to bring a sense of hopefulness to our hearts as we await the Savior!
So, The Father’s Children are:
Hopeful of What is to Come
Hopeful of What is to Come
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
In the 5 verses that we are discussing, John speaks of Christ returning twice! If we want to fully embrace our sonship, it is so important to remember that Christ is returning! That we will receive the inheritance of Heaven and be made completely new in Him!
Our present circumstances and hardships do not compare with what the Child of God will receive when our Savior returns! 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 says
2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (NIV)
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Watch how Jesus wants to communicate to His followers this confidence and hope they can have in Him:
John 14:3 (NIV)
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
He is coming! We are to be looking for that blessed Hope and the appearing of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Doing so, will help us to live a righteous and godly life!
C’mon, be honest. How many of us can relate to the fact that we knew right when our parents were going to be home and based our behavior on that information? I was much better behaved the closer it got to Dad coming home, because I knew if I wasn’t then I had no “confidence” as I stood before him and was going to become very much “ashamed” in his presence - so to speak!
By the way - isn’t it interesting that John says when we see Him as He is we will be made like Him! So, the closer we are to the Father, the more we see Him as He has revealed Himself and not as the God of our own making, the more we become like Him! This is a very important truth to consider.
So the more we anticipate the Return of Jesus full of hope, and become more like Him as we see Him as He is - it results in the Father’s Children being:
Righteous
Righteous
If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.
According to the Holman New Testament Commentary, the term;
“Does what is right” can also mean “practices righteousness.”.... Our righteousness must be motivated by our knowledge that he is righteous. Only when our good deeds are done in response to our desire to serve Jesus—only when our acts are an expression and outworking of our faith in him—is God pleased.
The Father’s children desire to operate within and from a new parameter - righteousness! But why does the child of God have this new-found desire to be righteous? Because of the love they have experienced through relationship with the Father.
Our so called “Righteousness” is not of ourselves, it is a bi-product of being in relationship with the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So, sonship has to include being right with God and living righteous lives in Him as we live by faith. It is based on faith in Christ, which flows out of love for God, and naturally leads to obedience through righteous living!
The Father chooses to love us! He is intentional about His expressions of love, and wants His children to operate from a place of righteousness because of the relationship of love they have with Him now!
Lastly, The Father’s Children are:
Purified
Purified
All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
How do we become purified? By remaining in Christ and continuing in the hope of His return!
By living righteously and embracing our sonship!
By remembering the Father’s love for us and being confident of our right standing in Him now because of Jesus Christ!
By rejecting the world’s ways and embracing the ways of the Father.
By allowing the love and the grace of the Father to instruct us according to Titus 2:11-14
Titus 2:11–14 (NIV)
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
He purifies those who come to Him and embrace His gift of love that has been made available to all who will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ!
Is that you today? Have you embraced your personal sonship in the Father?
Have you experienced the lavished love of God in your life?
Invitation to come forward
Are you here today feeling:
Are you here today feeling:
(un)Loved, unable to to believe that God is crazy about you? That nothing will ever seperately you from the Love of God?
Insecure in your Identity as an adopted, bona fide, child of Father God - battling an orphan spirit that is convincing you that your efforts are always falling short and that at any minute you are going to lose everything because the Father is angry with you and is going to reject you?
Are you Unknowledgeable of the Father? Unwilling to put in the effort to learn and grow in the knowledge and experience of God?
Do you feel Confident and Unashamed or are you carrying around the shame of past mistakes not believing that God could forgive and cleanse you?
Are you Hopeful of what is to come or does the reality of the Lord’s return terrify you?
Are you living a Righteous life that is rooted in the desire to be pure because He is pure and has purified you?
Please remember today that the only way the lavished love of the Father is truly felt and experienced is when we fully embrace our identity as sons and daughters of the Most High King - Father God .
Pray