Sonship rights are all the rights and privileges we received when we gave our lives to Jesus Christ and made him Lord over them. They are so numerous that we couldn’t possibly name them all, and the Good News is that God has given us sonship rights because of our faith and love for Him. We couldn’t and didn’t do anything to earn them. Ephesians 1:6(KJV) tells us that through His grace and power, He has “made us accepted in the beloved.”  Ephesians 1:7(NLT) says that our Heavenly Father “is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.” Through the sacrifice and resurrection of His beloved Son, God has highly favored us. We can walk this earth and come into the presence of our God with no sense of guilt, sin, or condemnation, and this is all because we have received the blessing of His amazing grace.

Romans 10:9-10(NLT) says, “9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.” Through His grace, God gives salvation to all who do as this passage says. Salvation is His gift to us, so it isn’t something we can earn. We could work from sunup to sundown for the next ten million years and still not do enough to earn the salvation that our God freely offers. Again, He freely gives this gift, and it is one that we desperately need.

We didn’t get here on our own. Many individuals believe along those lines, but it isn’t true. We’re inhabitants on earth because this is what our Heavenly Father wanted and made happen. God created humanity, and Genesis 1:26-27 says that He did so in His own image. The psalmist said in Psalm 139:14(NKJV), “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.” Our Heavenly Father crafted our being from His glorious love, power, and brilliance, yet, He does not force us to believe this. He doesn’t force us to love and honor Him or to even acknowledge His existence. Because He’s given us free-will, we get to choose whether we will obey God and His Word. If we do, our obedience proves that we love Him and are indeed His children.

1John 5:3-6(NLT) says, “3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. 5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” Our obedience to God is an act of our faith in Him, and this faith positions us with the authority and power to defeat this evil world. A refusal to be obedient to God is a sin against Him, and this is not the way to an abundant existence. If we would take the time to study His Word and talk to Him often, we would see that there’s no other response to God than to be truly thankful for the work of salvation that He’s completed through Christ. The depth of this thankfulness is realized when we understand the offense that sin is to Him and how damaging it is to our lives.

Sin causes broken fellowship and communion with God because it demonstrates that we are not believing what He says in His Word. It means we’re behaving like Adam and Eve when they rebelled against Him and listened to satan instead of listening to God. Our Heavenly Father is perfect beyond perfection. He’s righteous beyond righteousness and magnificent beyond magnificence. He never does anything wrong and everything He does is right, perfect, and true. Psalm 138:2 tells us that God has magnified His Word above His name. This conveys His allegiance to the truth of what He speaks, and it tells us how important it is to Him that we believe what He says.

Everything about faith is based on believing what God says over and above what anybody else says. This is extremely important to our Father. So, when we start believing and seeking the opinions and assumptions of others, or we start coming up with our own doctrine instead of going to His Word to find out what He says, we are sinning against Him. We’re trying to disregard God’s sovereignty and that’s not going to work out for us. So, sin is bad business because it injures our relationship with the Father. The Good News is that because of the work of Jesus Christ, God has made a way forward for us when we do sin.

1John 1:8-9(NLT) says, “8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” This is all because of God’s grace. He’s redeemed and sanctified us through our beloved Savior. Because we have been born again of God’s Spirit, 1Corinthians 1:30 teaches us that God has united us with Christ and placed His Spirit within us. We are His children lock, stock, and barrel, and this is who He wanted us to be all along. When we sin, it is because we have forgotten the goodness of God who has cleansed us from all unrighteousness, but because of His grace, we can repent. We can seek His forgiveness and continue enjoying the victory that Christ won for us over sin.

Romans 6:23(NLT) tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our Savior, Jesus Christ bore all our sins on the cross. On our own, there was no way for us to ever be holy enough to come into God’s presence, but through His grace, He sent His only begotten Son and did what we could never do. He saved us, made us holy, gave us His righteousness, and now we’re united with God—friends with Him—because of what He accomplished through our Great Redeemer. We simply must study and trust God’s Word. We must believe in what He has done for us through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, so that we can reach out with faith to grab all He has in store for our lives. ■

Holy Bible, New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

“God’s Grace”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2024. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.