Whose Child Are You?

With John, you are either in or you are out.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters. - 1 John 3:1-10

We are either good or bad, children of God or children of the devil, nothing in between.

I am not sure we would all agree with that, though it may be hard not to see one another that way.  If we sin, we do so because we follow the devil and his ways, not God.

As John puts it, we know whose kid you are by your actions.  If you sin, you are the devil's child. But if you don't sin, you are God's child.  So, if we want people to see us as righteous as God is righteous, we don't sin.

But what if we don't sin for a long time and then we sin?  Are we then the Devil's child?

John's all or nothing approach leads one to think there is no redemption in Jesus, but there is.  We can sin and come back, abandoning the devil and his ways for God.  Jesus taught us that, but I think John wants to shame us into staying the course.

Once we choose to follow Christ, we need to be aware of how we are perceived by others.  If they se us sinning, they will see we are not true to our faith.

So, let us stay the course and be true to God.

Easier said than done, I presume, since all of us falter, all of us are sinners.

Maybe that is the point.  From the very beginning, we chose to follow the wrong path, but through Christ, we can choose to change.

That is the Good News of the Gospel.  It is never too late to come home.

More to come...