^ J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Life, 64.
I JOHN III. I 271
V 2. The purpose of the Father's love is not only to Ccall us children but to make us morally and spiritually true children, to bring us into right relations with Himself. We might have been told that He is our Father by creation, and that He hates nothing that He has made ; that He is " the Father of our spirits " especially, and would place a merciful limit to His contendings with us, lest the spirit should fail before Him. But we require something more than this. We desire a Father to look to, and love, and trust ; a Father to run to in danger, and take counsel with in doubt, to listen to us when no other friend will, and to help us when no other friend can. We cannot bear to think that God should be indifferent to us, as if we were " the seed of the stranger " ; but would fain feel that He loves us, as being His own children by adoption and grace. And, in Christ Jesus, we may feel this. , We were made children by Him who taught us to call God Father. " Y^e are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Our spiritual pedigree is traced easily. Faith makes us Christ's ; being Christ's, we are made sons ; being sons, we become heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
\ The words of the Apostle mean much more than that God is the Father of all men. Creation does not amount to parentage. All force and meaning would disappear from our text if we were to suppose that the power, the right, to become children of God, which is men's as the result of believing in Christ's name, was simply a re-statement of the doctrine of creation. We may use the fact that God has created us as the basis of our hope that men may become His children, but that does not identify creation with fatherhood. St. Paul said to the men of Athens, " In him we live, and move, and have our being ; as certain also of your own poets have said. For we are also his offspring." But these statements are immeasurably below the truth. Paul held, in common with John and Peter, that believers in Christ are the children of the heavenly Father.^
^ There is a Fatherhood of God, what the theologians call His creative Fatherhood, which includes all the race. There is still a higher. His redemptive Fatherhood, which includes all who come back home to the Father through Jesus. Man became a prodigal. He left his Father. He still remains a son creatively, but has cut himself off from the Father by sin. When he returns he becomes a son in a new higher sense also, a redeemed son.
^ A. JIackcnnal, The Eternal Son of God, 36.
272 THE LOVE THAT CONFERS SONSHIP
The Holy Sjiirit puts the child spirit into his heart, and he instinctively calls God Father again.^
^ I know of no satisfactory account of the Divine Fatherhood, Dr. Candlish wrote a book on the subject which I read thirty years ago or more ; it did not satisfy me at the time, but I think there were some good things in it. I have often preached about it and have a theory ; but I do not remember that there is any- thing to indicate my position in what I have published. The main points seem to me to be these : —
(1) Our ideal relation to God is that of sons ; this comes from our creation in Christ.
(2) Sonship involves community of life — life derived from life. But the life of God has essentially an ethical quality ; it is a holy life.
(3) Ethical quality cannot be simply given ; it must be freely appropriated. We were created to be sons ; but to be sons really and in fact we must freely receive and realize in character the holiness of God.
(4) There is a potency of sonship in every man, and ideally every man is a son ; but it is only as a man becomes like God that he actually becomes a son. This, in the case of all who know Christ, is effected initially by receiving Christ ; when He is freely accepted as the Eoot and Lord of life the principle of sonship is in us.
This approaches the Divine Fatherhood from the human side ; but I think that it is in this way that we can best approach it.^
^ Some time ago a woman died in an institution on Blackwell's Island, who was found, afterwards, to have been a descendant of an English earl. Her birthright entitled her to a high position, but she had led a dissipated life and died a pauper's death. With a name and a nature which unite us to God, shall we live like homeless waifs and die like paupers ? '
3. In calling us children, God confers a new status, a high privilege, upon us. His desire is not merely to bring us into a true spiritual relation and condition, but to give us new rank, dignity and honour. It is the rank given by God to the children of the new kingdom, and this kingdom was inaugurated by the coming of Jesus Christ. From that there follow two or three important facts. The first is that the saints of the old dispensa-