God’s Children, Born for Life and Love John 13:31–35 

Dear children of God, born for life and love, grace, mercy, and peace be with you, from God our Father, and our Lord and Brother, Jesus Christ.

Following up on our Sunday School Reading, we’re going to talk about being God’s children, born for life and love. 

When God made our first parents, Adam and Eve, He made them for life, not for death; and for love, not for sin. 

Life goes with love, sin goes with death. God wants love for us because He wants life for us; and conversely, He wants life for us so that we’ll experience and rejoice in His love forever.

When we talk about being a child of God, there’s that broad sense of the term, that everyone is a child of God, whether they know it or not, because He made us all – He’s our Father and Creator.

This can be a very one-sided relationship, with God knowing that He’s our Father, and loving us, but us not recognizing nor wanting Him and His love for us.

This leads to another meaning or sense of being a child of God – having a personal relationship with God, a relationship of faith and love, Him loving and forgiving us, and us loving and trusting Him.

And this is the sense of child of God we mean when we talk about how important it is to be God’s child, His loving, believing child.

We can live as a child of God, or as a child of the world.

Living as a child of the world means a really short life, 80, 90, 100 years at most.

Being a faithful child of God means living far beyond our few years on earth – living and loving eternally.

As we said God, made us to live, and to have His love forever. 

This is why Paul can say in Romans 8, that when we believe in Jesus, nothing can ever separate us from God’s love -  neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Because Jesus died for our sins and rose for our salvation, because in Baptism, through the gift of faith, He has personally become our God and Savior, and we have become dear children in His family, now, not even death can keep us from God’s wonderful love for us, but will just lead to living eternally in heavenly love.

God has raised His Son, so someday He will raise us in glory, to have and experience His love forever, and to share it forever. 

The devil, because he does not love God, nor anything God has made, nor anyone God has redeemed, but knows only sin and hate, wants to keep to us from God’s healing, comforting, empowering, forgiving, saving love. 

The devil wants to keep us from God’s love now, and certainly from God’s love in eternity.

He can’t bear to think of you being loved and happy forever. He wants you to be miserable and unloved, now and always, just as he is miserable and filled with bitterness and hate forever.

Do not live in hatred and sin, as if the devil is your father, as if you are brothers and sisters of fallen angels, as if the demons are your family, or as if you’re a child of this corrupt and fallen world, as if this is your inheritance instead of Heaven. 

Your Heavenly Father has saved you from this fate worse than death, from an eternal fellowship with the evil powers that hate you passionately because you belong God.

Jesus has rescued us from an eternal fellowship of evil that is horrible and hateful beyond anything we can imagine. 

But there’s something else that surpasses our imagination, the amazing love of Christ for us, and for all, a love more powerful than any evil or obstacle.

In words similar to what we heard in Romans 8, Paul says in Ephesians 3, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

There’s nothing better to be filled with than the Spirit and the love of God.

Last Sunday we celebrated Mother’s Day; soon we’ll celebrate Father’s Day. What a joy it is to have a mother and father who we know will always love us and be there for us as long as they’re able to be in this life.

And what a gift to have loving sisters and brothers, and a loving husband or wife, and loving grandparents, and great-grandparents, and loving aunts and uncles and cousins.

What a blessing it is to have and be a part of, the loving family of God, our dear family here at St. John, to have fellowship with, and to comfort and support us in faith.

In all these ways, God provides the gift of love to us as His dear children. 

But greatest is the love He gives us through His Son; the love that is perfect and powerful to heal and forgive us, to give us peace and joy, to save us now and to glorify us in Heaven, to make us a part of His royal family forever.

God is our dear and eternal Father; we are His dear and eternal children. How supremely important it is, both now and in eternity, to be His loving children.

May we rejoice to love, serve and obey Him always. And let us rejoice to love and serve our brothers and sisters in Christ, now and always. 

And let us rejoice to love and serve all God’s created children, to bear witness to His love and salvation for the world through His Son, that others might repent and believe and be baptized, and become, along with us, the dearly loved and eternally blessed children of God.

And as the beloved, baptized children of God, we rejoice to live in His peace which passes understanding and guards our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, who loves us dearly and forever. Amen.