Sunday Devotional: 1 John 3:1

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, such that we should be called children of God; and we are. On account of this, the world does not know us, for it did not know him.

As Trinitarians, Christians believe that God is one being with three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these Persons is separate from one another, but they all share the one being of God. This is a hard concept for us to get our heads around because God is the only Trinitarian being in the entire universe. There is nothing to which we can compare God, and if we know our Scriptures, we understand that’s very appropriate. God is beyond our fathoming; all that we know about God has to come to us by means of revelation because there is no way we’d be able to figure God out for ourselves. In the pages of Scripture, God has chosen to present to us aspects of His nature, one of these being the fact that He is one being with three Persons. Aside from God revealing this to us, we would never know it.

This revelation is a gift to us, because each Person of the Trinity gives us insight into God’s character. In God the Son we see the teacher, the obedient servant, and the Savior. In God the Holy Spirit we see the councilor, the encourager, the guide, and the one who knits together the Body of Christ, the church. In God the Father, we see the one who loves his own with the unconditional love of a parent. He disciplines, and he gives gifts; he provides for their needs, and protects them from harm. This is by no means an exhaustive summary, but I think we can see these functions of each Person played out in Scripture.

First John 3:1 declares to us the love of the Father in the very fact that he has called us children of God. The fact that, as Christians, we are adopted by God and are his children is amazing, especially when you consider what we deserve. As sinful rebels, we deserve death, eternal punishment, and eternal separation from all that is good and holy. But not only did God the Son come to earth and pay the penalty for our sin, making us righteous in God’s sight, and not only did God the Holy Spirit draw us to faith in Christ that we might believe, and change our hearts so that we would believe, but God the Father then adopts us. He makes us His children. And not red-headed step children, either. In Romans 8:15-17, we read that we are heirs with Christ. God the Father has exalted us to the position where we share an inheritance with God the Son! I’m not sure we can comprehend this side of eternity what that means fully, but this is what it means to be adopted by God the Father.

May we give thanks to God always for the exceptional grace He has shown us in making us His children.

Have a great week!