Today we enter into the home stretch of this 8-part series on our Identity in Christ. First, we looked at a few of the false identities men tend to latch onto: Social Groups, Hobbies, and Romantic Relationships. We then shifted gears to look at how God defines us: We are “in Christ” and we are “Saints.”
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You Are a Child of God
You know what’s absolutely amazing? The God of the universe, Creator of Earth, the One who holds everything together, has adopted you as His child. But don’t just take my word for it:
To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God
(John 1:12).All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God (Romans 8:14).
You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26).
Think about that for a second and just try to comprehend what it means. If you’re a parent, consider how much you love your kids. As much as you love them, though, it’s with an imperfect, human love. God loves you even more than you love your kids, because He loves you with His holy, unconditional, and righteous God-love.
Jesus tells us an amazing story of God the Father’s love in the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11–32). In the story, a rebellious son demands his inheritance from his father immediately. Culturally, this was the same as telling his father, “You’re dead to me now.” But rather than yelling at his son or punishing him, the father gives his son the money, lets him leave, and waits in anticipation for his return. Every day the father looks off into the distance, hoping to see his son returning. When the son finally does return, the father doesn’t even give his boy a chance to grovel. He runs to him with open arms and tackle-hugs him at full speed! No matter how much the boy rejected or disobeyed His dad, there was nothing he could have done to make his father stop loving him.
Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt
Do you realize this is actually a story about God’s love for you? No matter how much you’ve messed up, He will always be standing there with His arms wide open—just like the father in the story—waiting for you to come home to Him. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been. None of it will make any difference in how much He loves you.
No matter how much you’ve messed up,
God will always be standing there
with His arms wide open
waiting for you to come home to Him.
I didn’t understand the depth of a love like this until my daughter was born. I can say without a doubt that there is nothing my girl could ever do to make me stop loving her. No matter how many times she hits me as a toddler, yells at me as a teenager, or disowns me as an adult, I will always be there waiting for her with open arms. I simply cannot fathom living my life apart from my favorite little girl no matter what she does. Honestly. I’m even getting a bit choked up now just typing these words and thinking about how much I love her. But as much as she means to me as my daughter, you mean even more to God as His adopted son.
You Have Full Access to God
As a child of God, you have full access to God whenever you want. You can come before God and ask Him to help you with our struggles, give you His strength to make it through a difficult circumstance, or give you His wisdom in a specific situation. You can come before Him and ask Him anything, because you have full access:
All of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us (Ephesians 2:18).
Not only that, the Father actually wants us to come before Him with our needs and desires. He honestly cares about whatever is on your mind:
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you (1 Peter 5:7).
Think of it this way. How hard is it to be granted an audience with the president of the United States? Apparently, there isn’t even a clear path laid out for the average citizen to meet the president. The closest I could find was a page on the presidential website allowing you to enter your name into a drawing and hopefully win an invitation to a dinner with him—but it expired four years ago. That leaves me the option of performing some amazing act of heroism that will gain me national attention, or winning the Super Bowl (I think those guys usually get a White House invitation).
But what if the president was my dad? Do the president’s kids need to enter a contest to win dinner with their daddy? No way. They can walk into the Oval Office and hang out with him pretty much whenever they want. As a child of God, you’ve got that same level of access to Him.
Trusting that you have Christ living inside of you, that you are a saint, and that you have full access to God as His adopted son will free you from needing to strive to measure up or attain perfection in your own power. You can rest in the knowledge that you are accepted and loved exactly as you are, because you are family. Likewise, the things of this world—success, failure, riches, fame—suddenly seem insignificant compared to your position as a child of God. This becomes the biggest thing in your life.
It becomes your identity.
As one of my favorite authors, John Lynch, puts it:
He lives in you! You are in Him! How much closer do you want to be than that? Every moment of every day, fused with you, there He is. He never moves. Never covers His ears when you sin, never puts up a newspaper, never turns His back. He’s not over on the other side of your sin, waiting for you to get it together so you can finally be close. It’s incredible! Don’t you think? That’s why they call it “Good News!”
Come back next week for Part 8: How Does Understanding My Identity Help Me with Porn?
This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.
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