Last week we looked at the love of God, what it is and how it looks like. Today I want us to look at who we become when we experience God’s love or what the love of God gives to us.
God’s love gives us an identity.
See what great love the Father has lavished on 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. 1 John 3:1
We have a new identity in the love of God. And our identity is that we are now children of God. Because God’s love gives us a new identity the people who don’t know Him or His love don’t know us either. But we know who we are in Him.
We are adopted into God’s family.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household. Ephesians 2:19
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. Romans 8:15-16
Before we couldn’t address God as our father, we were alienated and estranged from God because of sin. But when the love of God becomes our reality we now have the right to be His children. We also have the right to call him father because we belong in the family.
John 1:12 puts it so perfectly, But for all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. We are given a right to become God’s children and to call God our father when we believe and receive His love for us.
We have an inheritance through His love.
And since we are his children we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:17
We are able to share in God’s glory. This is our inheritance.
And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. Galatians 3:29
Which is this promise we are heirs to?
It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. Romans 4:13
God’s promise to Abraham and his offspring was that the world would be an inheritance. Now through adoption, we are now part of. So our inheritance is the world. God’s promise was that He was going to bless him and make him great and this is our promise too.
Paul calls it the glorious inheritance. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. Ephesians 1:18
Freedom becomes our inheritance.
Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:7
Freedom becomes our inheritance when we receive the love of God into our lives.
Romans 8:21 says, that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
KJV says… into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
We have a glorious freedom as children of God. Freedom is our glorious inheritance in the saints.
We have a glorious freedom from corruption and death that is in this world. When we receive God’s love we enter into freedom from everything in life that brings corruption and death. What wonderful news this is!
When the world looks at the children of God they should see us walking in such liberty that they begin to desire to share in that liberty. This is what we bring to the world, the hope of a life of freedom. But when we don’t know and haven’t experienced the love of God for ourselves. We will not have the freedom that is our inheritance through His love.
We are set free from the love of this world.
We no longer struggle to let go of the world when we know we are loved by God. So many believers struggle to let go of this world to follow God. But John tells us we stop loving the world when we have the father’s love.
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world. The love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life- is not from the Father but is of the world. 1 John 2:15-16
We can’t follow God and follow this world. We also can’t love God and love this world. We have to be free from this world to walk with God. and it’s only the love of the father in us that sets us free from the love of this world. Until His love for us becomes our reality we will not be able to stop running after and desiring the things of the world.
We can love others as we are loved.
We don’t know unconditional love until we experience God’s love for us. We can’t give people what we don’t have.
So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. John 13:34
Jesus knew we could not love unless we had a template of what love looks like and He gave us a template. We are to love people just as He loves us. We now can love people because we have received God’s power to love unconditionally.
Love is the sign we have passed from death to life. For we that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 1 John 3:14
The difference between us and the world is love. Love tells people we have received the life of God in us through His love. And we can love others unto life just as we have been loved.
We show we are God’s children by our love. My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other, it shows we have been given a new life. we are now God’s children, and we know him. 1 John 4:7 CEV
When we love people we love God through them. But if we say we love God and don’t love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don’t love the people we see? 1 john 4:20
So go and live a life that shows God has loved you!
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