Knowing God: Chapter 19 (Part 2)

Knowing God:

Chapter 19: Sons of God (Part 2)

REVIEW

• ? What is adoption? Why is it important?
• Adoption
  • Justification - "is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge."
  • Adoption - "is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father."
  • Greek
    to place a son; signifies the place and condition of a son given to one it does not naturally belong
  • Galatians 3:26-29
    • You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
    • Matthew Henry
      Covenant of Grace - evangelical, spirit is of liberty and freedom; not liberty to sin, spirit of love

HOPE & ASSURANCE

• Hope

• Packer
  • "...our hope [is] not a possibility nor yet as a likelihood, but as a guranteed certainty, because it is a promised inheritance."
  • "To see, and know and love, and be loved by, the Father and the Son, in company with the rest of God's vast family, is the whole essence of the Christian hope."

• Richard Baxter (on the covenant with God)
  • English/Puritan Scholar in the 1600's

My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim:
But it's enough that Christ knows all;
And I shall be with him.

• Packer's Challenge - Does this satisfy you? Are you a Christian?
  

• Assurance
  
  • Packer
    "Our heavenly Father intends his children to know his love for them, and their own security in his family."
    

• Packer's Challenge - Do I, as a Christian, understand myself? Do I know I know my own real identity? My own real destiny?
  
  • Say it over and over...
    I am a child of God. God is my father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother too.
    
    

• Questions for your Heart
  
  • Do I understand my adoption?
    
  • Do I treat God as my Father in heaven, loving, honoring and obeying him, seeking and welcoming his fellowship, and trying in everything to please him, as a human parent would want his child to do?
    
  • Do I look forward daily to that great family occasion when the children of God will finally gather in heaven before the throne of God, their faither, and the Lamb, their brother and their Lord?
    
  • Have I felt the thrill of this hope?
    
  • Do I love my Christian brothers and sisters with whom I live day by day, in a way that I shall not be ashamed of when in heaven I think back over it?
    
  • Does the family likeness appear in me? If not, why not?
    

How Deep the Father's Love for us