I have two wonderful children, Esther and Joshua, who have become responsible young adults: the ultimate goal of every father. Of course no parent is happy if his child remains immature; so he teaches, trains, and disciplines the child until he reaches adulthood. A mature adult ‘child’ reflects well on a parent! Likewise, God’s ultimate desire is to have many glorious “sons” (Heb. 2:10). [Note: In biblical terminology, “son” is gender-neutral.]
Paul makes a distinction between a child and a son: “sonship” represents growth into the fullness of what our heavenly Father has birthed in us. While sonship is inherent in birth, it must be developed until it is the realization of those possibilities—growing up and attaining full stature (Eph.4:14).
A child has God’s nature. But a son has God’s character. When Paul speaks of being conformed to Jesus’ image, he uses the word “son”—not “child” (Ro. 8:29). When Jesus was 30 (the age at which a Jewish man could enter the priesthood), His Father affirmed Him: “this is my beloved SON in whom I am well pleased” (Mat. 17:5).
When Christ’s work of “bringing man sons to glory” is accomplished, the great climax of the new creation will be “the revealing of the sons of God” (Ro. 8:19). Are you ready to be revealed?
Greg,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting statistic--Matthew's use of the Greek word for "Son" far exceeds any of the other books of the New Testament. Of the 386 times it is found in the NT Matthew uses it over 90 times!
Aside from that stat is something that seems to go along with the idea of "sonship" from that word, and that is that "revelation" is closely aligned with it. There is a kind of "unveiling" that occurs inwardly before it can occur outwardly. As you pointed out the word most often used for "son" accents the shared nature with the father (the one who generates the son). But for the son to understand the purpose for his relationship to the father in the first place there has to be awakened within him a sense of identity with the father and oall of the father's values. Until he reaches that awakening he cannot be trusted fully with the father's business relationships and/or the family interests. But when the child IS awakened to these things and embraces them as his own he is then recognized publicly as a "son" of his father--an equal partner in the family business and no less an authority to make decisions than his father.
Hmmm...! and Wow! Maybe it is not as much "Are we ready to be revealed" as it is "can we believe God wants to take us there?"
Stan