Children of God

One of the readings offered for today speaks to a current debate among Christians as to what exactly constitutes a child of God. Here it is word for word:

"For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him." (Rom. 8.14-17)

The implication here is that while everyone may be created in the Image of God not everyone is called a Child of God. To be a Child of God one has to be led in their daily life by the Spirit. To be a Child of God, one has to be adopted.

We can get further illumination from St. John the Evangelist, where he writes, "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God." (John 1.12-13)

Here we have two things that stand out. The Child of God is made, not born. The Child of God is given power by God to become a Child of God, adopted by the Holy Spirit. Two things, really, are needed. First, we need to believe in His Name, That means we trust in God's power to do that very thing and trust that God has shown us the way by which we live and that this revelation was given to us by not only the Law and the Prophets but fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ (read the entire prologue to John's Gospel, John 1.1-18). Second, we need to be led by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit that ever flows from God and gives us this power to believe and to be the Children of God.

Simple, yet profound. Easy, yet easily the most difficult thing we can do. Why is it difficult? Because it entails giving up our autonomy to the Holy Spirit. It means shifting our allegiance from ourselves to God Most High, the God who chose to make a friend of Abraham and through Abraham's descendants gave us the most precious gift of all, our new nature and eternal union with God through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Believe, and open up to the Holy Spirit. Come, O Holy Spirit, come.