Part Of God’s Family

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.
–Ephesians 1:4-5

Why did the incarnation happen? Why did God send His Son to earth? One reason, Paul said, was in order to redeem us, but there is a second reason he gave in Galatians 4:5: “That we might receive the adoption as sons.” God did this in order to place us into His family as sons and daughters. Once we become a part of God’s family, we have the same rights and privileges as God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Do you know what that means? When you become a part of God’s family, first of all, you have the same position with God that Jesus has–that is, in God’s eyes, you are sinless. He views you just as He does His Son because you are in Jesus.

Second, you have the same privileges as Jesus. That means you can ask God for anything. Now, God will not necessarily answer our every prayer request with a positive reply, but we can ask Him for anything. In 1 John 5:14 the apostle said, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” We have the same privileges.

Third, you have the same power that operated in Jesus’s life. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in your life, giving you power over temptation, over stress, over worry, and ultimately over the grave. That is what it means to be a part of God’s family.

Radio commentator Paul Harvey used to tell the story of a man who was sitting at home alone on a cold winter’s night. As snow began to fall, the man heard a thumping sound against the living room window. He went outside and found a shivering flock of birds beating in vain against the glass. Touched, the man bundled up and trudged through the fresh snow to open the barn for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights and sprinkled a trail of crumbs to direct them inside, but the birds continued to flail helplessly in the snow. The man tried catching the birds, he tried shooing them into the barn, but nothing worked. He realized that he, a huge alien creature, had terrified them. The birds could not understand that he actually desired to help them. “If only I could become a bird,” he thought, “then I would not frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety.”

A man becoming a bird is incomprehensible, but it pales in comparison to God becoming a man. Why did He do it? “That He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5). God be praised for what He has done for us through Jesus.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Simply Christmas” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2016.

Story paraphrased from Paul Harvey, “The Man And The Birds,” Christian Heritage Fellowship, https://christianheritagefellowship.com/paul-harvey-and-the-man-and-the-birds/.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org