THE CALL TO SONSHIP

Ephesians 1: 3-11; Galatians 4: 26; Luke 15: 11-24

The great call of God in the present day is to sonship in Christ Jesus, and to the present enjoyment of it in association with Jesus, God’s beloved Son. “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. “Because ye are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father”. “Having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has taken us into favour in the Beloved”.

To this we have been called by the gospel, Rom 8: 30. This is what is characteristic of Paul’s gospel. God revealed His Son in him that he might announce Him as glad tidings, Gal 1: 16. So in Acts 9: 20 we read that “Straightway in the synagogues he preached Jesus that he is the Son of God”, Acts 9: 20. Not that He was the Son of God, but that as man in glory He is the Son of God. The object of the gospel is not merely to relieve men of all the evil which sin has brought upon them, but to bring believers to the intelligent and conscious enjoyment of their relation to God as sons, that God the Father may get a true response to His love, that we may serve Him as only sons can serve Him.

And let us not forget that this marvellous grace bestowed upon us is “according to the good pleasure of his will”. It springs from His love, and is for the gratification of His love, for His joy. In Luke 15, when the son was brought into the father’s house in the full estate of a son, the father said, “Let us eat and be merry”. The father’s joy was supreme. We can hardly realise that God finds joy in taking up such as we were and blessing us in His beloved Son. Yet when we remember that God is love, we can understand that it must be so. It greatly increases our joy when we think of God finding His joy in all the activity of His grace toward us.

It is all based upon the work of redemption, in which God has been glorified in the removal of sin by the death of Christ. So that God’s will can now be established in Christ risen and glorified. To understand sonship we must see it in Christ Jesus. In Him, God’s well-beloved Son, God’s thought for man is fully expressed; man is with God in the full estate and glory of the Son of God, loved by the Father, and blessed according to that love, and responding to it with the affections of a son. The light of all this has come to us in the gospel of the glory of Christ.

The effect of this light should be to exercise us greatly as to how far we have reached in the Spirit that which God has called us to. Although we cannot fully reach the complete thought of God as to sonship until we are conformed to Christ in glory, yet in spirit we can reach the present consciousness of association with Christ in the place God has given us before Him in His Son. We can reach the house of God according to the thought in Luke 15 now. We shall reach it actually according to John 14 when the Lord comes, but this involves a journey—what we speak of as the journey of the soul. For when God first met with us in His grace, we were in the far-off country, and hence have to travel from thence to the place of nearness in the Father’s house, and that journey is not accomplished in a day. Some may take longer than others, and some even do not seem to reach it until they come to their death-beds, but this should not be so. Nevertheless there is a journey to travel step by step. “While he was yet a long way off, his father saw him ... and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses”.

The light that we receive in the gospel should lead us to move in the direction of God’s calling, and if we are willing and obedient He will lead us in spirit to His house, and the journey need not take a very long time.

I will now endeavour to shew what is involved in sonship, that we may seek to have not the word only, but the thing itself, and that in power. I will speak of seven thoughts which I believe are involved in sonship:

(1) All hangs upon the knowledge of God revealed as Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father is a name of affection—it expresses the love of God, what God is to His beloved Son; it is a perfect and unchanging love. As taken into favour in the Beloved we come to share in the same love which rests on Him. “As he is, so are we in this world”, 1 John 4: 17.

(2) This love begets response. A son is one who is capable of response. “Because ye are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father”, Gal 4: 6. Love delights in response. “Abba, Father”, is the response to the love of God known as Father. Having received the Spirit of His Son, and Christ being formed in us, we are capable of rendering the same kind of response that Christ does. The Spirit makes us conscious that we are loved as Christ is loved, and thus produces the response, Abba, Father.

(3) Another great thought connected with sonship is liberty. It is only in sonship that liberty is fully known. Sonship is presented in contrast to the state of a slave. “Now the bondman [or slave] abides not in the house for ever: the son abides for ever. If therefore the Son shall set you free, ye shall be really free”, John 8: 35, 36. “So then ye are no longer strangers and foreigners, but ye are ... of the household of God”, Eph 2: 19. A son with a father gives the idea of liberty; he is perfectly at home and happy, and enjoys the freedom of the house. Our place in God’s house is that of sons, not servants. Yet how many of God’s children take the place of servants, put themselves under the law, and thus under bondage. The prodigal when in the distant country would seek the place of a slave, but when he met his father he dropped that idea, and in the grace of his father got the full place of a son, because nothing less would satisfy the father’s heart.

Only the Son of God can teach us and lead us into this place in the house of God, but this He is always ready to do if we are subject and willing to be taught, but we must continue in His word. He makes us know that it is our privilege to share with Him His place in the house, and that it is the Father’s delight to have us there. Then we know what liberty is, we are at home and happy with God. But how slow we are in reaching it! The father ran; it does not say anything about the son running. God will never leave us till He brings us there. Many there are who have peace with God, know their sins forgiven, yet do not enjoy liberty, because in their spiritual intelligence and experience they have not reached the Father’s house, they are still on the road. If we stop short of that which God has called us to, we rob God of His joy in us. God delights in having sons, not slaves, before Him. How grievous it must be to God for His children to take the place of slaves, putting themselves under law, and thus at a distance and under bondage.

(4) In Galatians 4, we get in connection with sonship the thought of full growth, in contrast to a state of infancy. Saints under the legal dispensation could not advance beyond this state of childhood, they were limited by the system under which they lived. “So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the principles of the world; but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son ... that we might receive sonship”, Gal 4: 3-5. In Hebrews 6, too, the apostle, speaking of what saints had under the old covenant, says, “Wherefore, leaving the word of the beginning of the Christ, let us go on to what belongs to full growth”, Heb 6: 1. In Christianity we have the full revelation of God, and of His purpose for us in Christ, as Son of God, hence saints are no longer limited; we have what pertains to full growth, or a state of spiritual maturity. There is no excuse for our remaining in a condition of infancy. Nevertheless the great mass of saints to-day are, like the Hebrews, the Galatians, and those at Corinth, still in that condition. This is due to various causes, the teaching of men and the love of the world. How dishonouring this is to God and to Christ!

(5) Again, with sonship we get the thought of intelligence. A father can communicate all his mind to a grown-up son, which he could not do to a child—not because the father loves the one more than the other, but because the child lacks the capacity for understanding which would be found in a grown-up son.

All this shews that sonship involves much more than conversion or the reception of the elements of the gospel. In Ephesians 1: 8-11, the apostle speaks of God in His grace having abounded to us, in all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, &c. But he is writing to a company of saints among whom he had ministered for three years, and who evidently had arrived at a state of spiritual maturity, so that he could feed them with strong meat, unfolding to them the deep things of God. To other saints he could only administer milk and not strong meat. In chapter 4: 12, 13 he shews that the end of ministry is that we should no longer be babes, but that we all should arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man. And elsewhere he exhorts saints, saying, “In malice be babes; but in your minds be grown men”, 1 Cor 14: 20.

(6) The service of God can only be effectually carried out by sons. “Let my son go, that he may serve me”, Exod 4: 23. The priests who were ordained to minister to the Lord could only take up their service when they were twenty-five years old. The service must be intelligent service: we must worship in spirit and in truth. It is only as we know God revealed as Father, and are under the influence of His love, that we can worship acceptably. If the service is to be agreeable to God, it must be the response of hearts filled with His love, it must be rendered in affection as well as in intelligence. It is sons who can most fully answer to a Father’s love, hence it says that the Father seeks such to worship Him. God has not pleasure in the worship of servants, or slaves, but in that of sons. Yet how many of God’s people in the service of God take the place of servants. Our privilege is to have access to God as sons with boldness and liberty, and thus to worship Him. Even the levitical side of service is only carried out effectually in the affection of sons. A son would serve his father better than a servant; he would understand his will, and do it with more devotion. Thus Mark, who presents to us the perfect Servant, begins with the “glad tidings of Jesus Christ, Son of God”, Mark 1: 1.

(7) Then, lastly, there is a special hope connected with sonship. We are to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, that He may be the Firstborn among many brethren. And then we shall be with Him in the Father’s house, and manifested with Him, and like Him, that the world may know that the Father has loved us even as He has loved Christ, His well-beloved Son. Then, too, as sons we are heirs, and joint-heirs with Christ; we shall share the inheritance with Him who is the heir of all things. But the greatest part of the hope of sons is to be with Him in the Father’s house, and this is eternal.

I may add a word on the practical side of sonship. The Lord speaks of this in Matthew 5: 44-48 and in Luke 6: 35, 36. In these passages the word should be “sons” instead of “children”. The thought is that we should be manifestly known as the sons of God by exhibiting His character in our manners and ways before men. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who insult you and persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in the heavens”. “Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Highest; for he is good to the unthankful and wicked. Be ye therefore merciful, even as your Father also is merciful”.

May it be the exercise of every one who reads this paper to be led on by the teaching of the Spirit of God into the reality of sonship. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”, Rom 8: 14. Let us not be satisfied with having the term, but seek earnestly to arrive at that which God has called us to, not only for our own happiness but that we may give Him pleasure, whose love has sought to have us as sons before Him.

 

From Helps for the Poor of the Flock vol 21 (1916)