“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” – 1 John 3:1 

Scripture reading: 1 John 3:1-3; Romans 8:12-17

There is no greater way to express the intimacy of the fellowship that believers enjoy with God than in the reality of our adoption into His family.  As we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we are united to our Saviour and so become children of God.  As we truly bear the name of God, we have all the rights and privileges of being in God’s family.  These rights and privileges are essentially every promise of blessing contained in the Scriptures!  Every time you come across a promise of blessing in the Bible you can say, “it is mine by right of my union with Christ!”  John wants us to be so clear on God’s love that he begins these verses with the emphatic “Behold!”  We must think often of the beauty of God’s adopting love.

Being adopted into God’s family comes with some very obvious implications.  John reminds us in this, that believers are radically different from unbelievers.  As the world refuses to believe in Jesus, they do not have God as their Father.  In essence, the believer and the unbeliever have different homes!  The believer longs for fellowship with God and so longs to go to heaven to be with God.  We look forward to the coming of Jesus: to that day when our fellowship with Him will be complete and we will finally be at home with our heavenly Father.  Make sure to live out this day with this hope clearly before you.

Suggestions for prayer

Pray that the Lord would enable you to understand more and more of His adopting love.  Pray for a keenness of heart to live each day as a pilgrim on this earth longing for the consummation of our salvation.

Rev. Brian Murray is the associate pastor at Grace ARP Church and the Director of Gillespie Academy in Woodstock, Ontario. He has been ordained in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church since 2003 and he and his wife Melissa have four children. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. This devotional is made available by the Nearer To God Devotional team, who also make available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.