Re: [TruthTalk] Children of God?

[Bill Taylor]

Izzy wrote  >  So if you believe that there are no qualifications for being a child of God, please explain specifically what you think each of the above scriptures mean. Izzy   John 1:11He came to His [d]own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.    BT: The first clause in verse 11 -- "He came to His own" -- is a reference to the Jews. Out of all the peoples of the world, Jesus came to his own people -- he came to the Jews, but the Jews did not receive him. These were the people whose entire heritage was built upon the promise of his coming; yet when he came to them, they rejected him. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God" The Jews believed they had the "right" to be God's children based upon their lineage and chosen status (verse 13), but they had missed the fact that that right could only be established in Christ. And so it was only those Jews who received him, i.e., believed he was who he claimed to be, that actually had this "right to become children of God." Moreover, it is their heritage that makes "belief" so much more crucial in the ordo salutis for the Jews. This, I believe, is John's point vis-a-vis Romans 2. A Gentile may live his entire life (especially back then) and never have an occasion to hear the name of Jesus Christ, let alone respond to him in faith; hence the Gentile's absence of "belief" does not necessarily have to translate into a rejection of Christ. But the Jews grew up hearing about the coming of Messiah. Theirs was not a question of whether or not they would hear of him; theirs was one of whether they would reject him or receive/believe in him when he came. As with the Jew, so it is for the Gentile: to reject Christ is to lose your salvation. But where the Gentile is not necessarily rejecting Christ if he does not "believe" in him, this was not so for the Jews. To the Jew to not believe in Jesus was to not receive him, which was to reject him, which is to reject the right to become a child of God.    This passage is terribly misunderstood and misappropriated when it is torn out of its specifically Jewish context and made to be representative of all humanity. The Calvinists are as bad about doing this as you Arminians. They use verse 13 to bolster their doctrine of predestination -- in other words, people do not come to Christ by being born into a Christian family or by their free-will, but only by a sovereign act of God. And so, Izzy, if it makes you feel any better, their error is as grievous as yours :>) ________________________________________________   I John 3: 1See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. BT: The world does not know God. Hence the world does not know its ontological status in Christ; nor does it know us who do know and affirm that status. But their not knowing cannot negate the reality of who they are in Christ. The world believes a lie, Izzy. Our vocation as Christians is to confront that lie with the truth. _______________________________________________________ 9No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. BT: This verse has a very specific reference to the context of 1 John. It is my belief that the "anti-Christs" and "false teachers" of that letter were teaching that it is only the "spirit" of man that is saved, and that it therefore did not matter what a person does in the flesh, and this because the flesh is not saved anyway. This teaching then became for them a license to sin. John is stating that this is contrary to the truth. Those who claim to be born of God -- which was the claim of the "deceivers" -- cannot live as though sin does not matter; and this if, in fact, their claim is true and they have not rejected Christ in the process. He says that those who actually claim to be Christians and thus know that they are born of God "cannot sin," which means, I believe, that they cannot continue in a unrepentant, ongoing, continual pattern of sinful behavior, without the Spirit eventually bringing them to conviction and then to repentance.  ________________________________________________    10By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. BT: In the light of the previous verse this becomes pretty much self explanatory. Those who reject Christ, which is what the anti-Christs of 1 John had done, become what they would be without him: children of the devil. In the context of this letter and the church to whom it was addressed, the one who calls himself a Christian and practices righteousness and loves his neighbor, is of God. But the one who claims the name of Christ but does not practice righteousness and does not love his neighbor, is not of God; for he has rejected both the Son and the Father. Izzy, do you know if there is a way that you can set your email program so that it will allow others to change the font and color when responding to you? I think it must have something to do with your settings, as I do not have problems reformatting over anyone else. Bill