21
are His children, and that He knows all their needs (Matt. 6:32). The child of God is to
pray and to live his whole life in relation to his Father, remembering that the Father has
promised each child His kingdom.
John Cotton makes plain in expounding 1 John 3 that the significance of adoption
affects the following relationships:
1.
Our relationship to God (1 John 3:1a). God`s adopted children learn that the only
place in the universe where true security can be found is in the household of the
heavenly Father. Jesus taught His disciples this truth in many ways. He urged them to
think about God`s fatherly love by comparing it to the love of a human father: If ye
then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall
your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (Matt. 7:11).
The comparison is between the imperfect fatherhood of earthly fathers, who are
evil (i.e., they have fallen natures and show flaws, failures, and sins) and the perfect
fatherhood of God. God`s fatherhood is flawless, despite our shortcomings that
incline us to confess what Cotton says, Surely I am not a child of God, because I
find much pride in my heart, and much rebellion and corruption in my spirit. Surely if
I were born of Christ, I should be like him. But what says St. John here? We are the
sons of God even now, though there is much unbelief in our hearts, and much
weakness and many corruptions within us.
73
Despite all this, Jesus will show us that
our heavenly Father`s love is expansive and glorious beyond imagination.
2.
Our relationship to the world. The believer`s adoption by God the Father also affects
his relationship to the world. First John 3:1b tells us that this relationship is a troubled
one: Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. On the one
hand, the believer shares with Jesus the unspeakable love of the Father, but on the
other hand, he shares with Jesus the hostility, estrangement, and even hatred of the
world.
This reaction of the world is one evidence of the believer`s adoption into God`s
family, for the world did not know Jesus either; He came unto his own and his own
received him not (John 1:11). He was in the world He created, but the world knew