How great is the 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 he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (NIV)(1 John 3:1-2)
When I read these verses my mind immediately thinks of the praise song "You Are My King" which some people call "Amazing Love". If you recall the song, it reads:
I'm forgiven because You were forsaken
I'm accepted, You were condemned
I'm alive and well, Your Spirit is within me
because You died and rose again
Amazing Love, how can it be
that You, my King would die for me
Amazing Love, I know it's true
It's my joy to honor You
In all I do I honor You
Here's another devotional from Dr. Robert M. McMillan from the book of 1 John that expounds on this amazing love that brings us into the family of God and makes us God's children.
Amazing Love
John exclaims "See what love the Father has given to us in order that we should be called the born ones of God." Te scriptures find a healthy area of comparison between the procedures leading to natural birth and those leading to spiritual birth. The production of children bears a direct relationship to love. Our new birth in Christ is the product of God's love exclusively. To become the born ones of God implies the impartation of part of God's own self into our being. The apostle Paul declared that the impartation of natural birth is part of Adam himself and that thus, by natural generation, I am bent toward sin. However, the apostle further declares that to be a child of God I must lose this Adamic impartation and receive a direct seed from God Himself. This is accomplished for me by the miracle of Christ's death and resurrection. Thus we read, "If any man be IN CHRIST he is a new creation..."
John goes on to declare that since Jesus, in the flesh, was rejected as the Son of God so we too, who are born of God, will be rejected in the minds of unbelievers. The rejection is not as to our person or our work but to our claim that we are of God. Too often this idea of rejection has been equated with being unpopular in society because we are Christians. Nothing is further from the truth. Jesus was wanted for His work but He was rejected for His claim to be God. It is doubtless true that Jesus, If He had dropped this statement, would have had no earthly difficulty. So it is with believers. We are acceptable for what we are but the world rejects our claim that what we are is because we are the children of God by the miracle of regeneration.
We do not know what we shall be but because of our relationship to God in Christ and by this Divine impartation to our nature we shall be similar to Christ. This is a purifying thought.
Singing His Praises,
Joey Culpepper