THE ROAD TO SONSHIP

…as they relate to “the children of the resurrection” Luke 20: 27-38

“To the general assembly and church of the first born” Hen. 12:23

“God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” Gal. 6:14

The Road to Sonship…

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3: 1-3

Sonship is the hope of all creation. It has been the purpose of God for all ages(Eph. 3: 11-21). The purposes of God are not always immediately clear and mystery enfolds many of His ways. But He, by His Spirit, “reveals the deep things of God” to His circumstances of the walk, to Him the walk and the circumstances are but a means to an end-the ultimate, predestined purpose, which He progressively and patiently places, by revelation into our mind and heart. (1 John 2: 7). We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.

Like the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter twelve, there are times when the sufferings of the way are almost more than we can bear and we cry to God heal our body, resolve our marriage issues, rescue our children, solve our financial crises, destroy our enemies-make everything right so we can get back on the way and “do His work”; momentarily forgetting that all of our ways are in His capable hands and the path that leads to sonship is a path of suffering, the way of the Cross. “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14: 22). “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” Phil. 1: 29. 1 Peter 4: 12-14.

“Before I was afflicted, I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word…It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes…Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding, that I many learn Thy commandments…I know, O Lord, that Thy judgements are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” Psalms 119: 67, 71, 73, 75.

“Know also in your mind and heart that, as a man disciplines and instructs his son, so the Lord your God disciplines and instructs you.” Deut. 8: 5 (Amplified)

He never promised us a smooth, rose-strewn path without flesh-piercing briars, precipitous grades, enemies, slander, temptations, sorrow, sickness, disappointments-and sudden storms. (1 Peter 4: 12, 13). It is these tests and trials, at times painful and severe, that God uses as tools to conform us and change us into the image of His Son. Even the Lord Jesus “learned obedience by the things He suffered”; should we not do the same. Heb. 5: 8; 1 Peter 2: 21.

“Let us make man in Our image, our likeness” (Gen. 1: 26): a work in progress.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works (Eph. 2: 10):an ongoing achievement.

An ongoing work, verily, but after His work in us is finished, the eternal reality is that “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And we are complete in Him.” (Col. 2: 9, 10). In the meanwhile we walk that lonely narrow road.

He has preplanned every tear we shed, every sleepless and weary night when we toss and turn, every ache and pain that racks our body, every lonely moment, every cruel rejection, misunderstanding, and tribulation. Suffering comes to us whether we like it or not, and each son of His will have his or hers’ specially suited for their individual need.

“Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, their God is hewing out the pillars of His temple.”

Sorrow and suffering is not the vindictive working of Satan but rather is the holy handiwork of God. (See: Heb. 12: 5-12; Job 5: 16-18; Prov. 3: 11-13). And at the head of the Way that leads to sonship stands He who is THE WAY, God’s Son by Whom were all things created; He that is before all things, the head of the body, the church; the beginning, the first born from the dead: and He says, “If any man would follow Me let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.”

“Following Him” is not some insignificant decision, it demands total commitment; and when you move into this holy paradigm associates on the way begin to mysteriously fade away, and you find yourself alone, except for the Lord Jesus, Who had already said reassuringly, that He will never leave us nor forsake us. John 14: 16-19; Heb. 13: 5; Ps. 27: 10; Is. 49: 15-16. The eternal oath and promise of His presence is all we really need, and there will be times when His companionship is all you will really have-as an elect son/daughter of God could we possibly do any better than that?

Job is the classic example of the righteous suffering. Did he suffer because he sinned? No, he was suffering because God wanted to bring him to sonship. In John chapter 9 we read of a blind man from birth. The disciples asked the Lord, “Who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus said, “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

In 2 Corinthians 10:10; 11: 6; 12: 7-10 (Amplified), it says of Paul…”they say, his letters are mighty and impressive and forceful and telling but his personality and bodily presence are weak, and his speech and delivery are utterly contemptible-of no account. But even if (I am) unskilled in speaking, yet (I am) (not unskilled) in knowledge-I know what I am talking about; we made this evident to you in all things.”

Paul states further; “And to keep me from being puffed up there was given me a thorn (a splinter) in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to rack and buffet and harass me, to keep me from being excessively exalted. Three times I called upon the Lord and besought (Him) about this and begged that it might depart from me; by He said to me, “My grace-My favour and loving kindness and mercy-are enough, (that is, sufficient against any danger and to enable you to bear the troubles manfully); for My strength and power are made perfect-fulfilled and completed and show themselves most effective-in your weakness.” (2 Cor. 12: 7-10) Amplified.

“Most gladly therefore will I take pleasure in afflictions, in distresses, in persecutions, that the power of Christ may rest upon me, for when I am weak then am I strong.”

Paul was God’s chosen vessel, hand crafted and formed from the beginning for a crucial work and purpose at a time when the gospel of grace, the gospel of the kingdom, and the birth and fostering of the young church needed an anointed and gifted leader. God needed someone special. He chose Paul. As it turned out Paul was not a perfect physical specimen, and “his speech and bodily presence were utterly contemptible,” but the anointing, calling and election of God rested upon him. He was God’s choice, and that is what mattered. He also (besides all the persecutions, imprisonments, beatings, stonings, hunger and thirst), was afflicted by a “thorn in the flesh”, which he asked the Lord, with fasting and prayer, to remove on three different occasions-but the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for thee, My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Was Paul afflicted because he sinned? No, he suffered “that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” (1 Peter 4: 1, 2).

Suffering, in the will of God, brings our lives into sharper focus. We begin to see with renewed understanding all the passing vanities, the worthless trinkets and the tinsel, and the short-lived luxuries that this earthly life in all its phoniness and false promises has to offer. Our vision of what’s important becomes more acute and discerning, and the narrow road to sonship is more clearly defined, culminating in the coming glorious manifestation of the sons of God.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father.”

There was a time, as I read John 14: 12 that I presumed I simply would never understand this verse and so I moved on-which is what most Christians do with this verse. My natural mind convinced me that in no way could I ever do “greater things” that the Lord Jesus did while on earth, and that believing it would be tantamount to blasphemy. The natural mind does not understand sonship, nor God’s preplanning and predestining of His special company of sons/daughters whom He will put in charge of the earth, the universe, and the heavens. Much of it remains a mystery until our mind is renewed by revelation. “One moment of revelation is worth more than a life time of tradition.”

“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matter? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? I Cor. 6: 1-3; Ps. 8: 3; Dan. 7: 18, 22; Heb. 2: 6-8.

I came across some of George Hawtin’s discerning thoughts on this topic in one of his articles.

“There is something about sonship that has a deep root in the heart of all people. The families of earth anxiously await the arrival of a son. In ancient times it was thought a tragedy that any family should be without a son who would carry on the work and name of the father. This longing in the heart of all mankind had its origin in the heart of the eternal Father, who, upon bringing His only begotten Son in to the world, proclaimed, ‘This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” It must have been a wonderful night for the shepherds of Israel who heard the heavenly choir of angels proclaiming the coming of the Son of God. It was a grand moment in John’s life when he saw the heavens proclaiming, “this is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” God was delighted with His Son, His only Son. So delighted was He in His Son’s perfection that even before the worlds began He purposed to prepare a whole family of sons/daughters in His exact image and likeness and form of them one great body of sons/daughters which should rule the entire universe according to His divine will.

The languages of earth simply do not contain words that are able to express the vast importance of this family of God’s sons. There is not a doubt but that every one of us has failed to comprehend the universal purpose in bringing many sons to glory…We will have to see that sonship is God’s masterpiece, and that in the manifestation of the sons of God the eternal purposes of God find their complete fulfillment.” (end quote).

Sonship is indeed God’s masterpiece. Christ is the first begotten Son of God, the first born of an innumerable family of sons/daughters who are born of God. “Whom he did foreknow He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”(Rom. 8: 29). This man child company, spoken of in Revelation 12, the exact image of Jesus Christ, will be manifested to the glory of God, to do the “greater works” to which they are called, elected, and predestined from ages past.

“For it was an act worthy (of God) and fitting (to the divine nature) that He, for whose sake and by Whom all things have their existence, in bringing many sons into glory, should make the Pioneer of their salvation perfect (that is, should bring to maturity the human experience necessary for a perfect equipment for His office as High Priest), through suffering. For both He Who sanctifies-making men holy-and those who are sanctified all have one (Father). For this reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren…and again He says, My trust and assured reliance and confident hope shall be fixed in Him. And yet again, here I am, I and the children whom God has given Me.”( Heb. 2: 10, 11, 13) Amplified.

“Beloved, we are (even here and) now God’s children; it is not yet disclosed (made clear) what we shall be (hereafter), but we know that when He comes and is manifested we shall (as God’s children) resemble and be like Him, for we shall see Him just as He (really) is.” (1 John 3:2) Amplified

In John 17, Jesus declared to His Father that the work to which He was called He had finished and He, in effect, “passed the mantle” to “the men Thou gavest Me…as Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their works.”

The “greater works” that are yet ahead for the manifested sons to do are in the realm of “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2: 9, 10). These involve the restoration, restitution and renewal of all things, in both heaven and earth; the establishing of Kingdom rule by righteous judgement, changing and melting the hearts of rulers and nations, until every knee bows and every heart confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

The “sons” will not do these “greater things” as some separate entity or company. “All mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them…they are not of the world even as I am not of the world…that they all may be one; as Thou Father, art in Me and I in Thee that they also may be one in Us...and the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are One: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in One.” (John 17)

This is the “new” work, a spiritual work with eternal effect and consequences, joined as one in the power of the Spirit of God, no longer limited by the bounds of time and distance, and the inherent evil of the heart of man. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The life of each son is hid with Christ in God. All things done as manifested sons will be in the spiritual union of Father, Son and sons- “the Godhead bodily”. Jesus said, “I can do nothing of Myself…I seek not My own will but the will of the Father which sent me.”

To get a proper perspective of the spirit of sonship and the anointed role of sons of God (“Joint Heirs”) read John 5: 19-30. (Amplified). “So Jesus answered them by saying, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, the Son is able to do nothing of Himself (of His own accord); but He is able to do only what He sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does is what the Son does in the same way [in His turn]. The Father dearly loves the Son and discloses to (shows) Him everything that He Himself does. And He will disclose to Him (let Him see) greater things yet than these, so that you may marvel and be full of wonder and astonishment. Just as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life [makes them live on], even so the Son also gives life to whomever He wills and is pleased to give it.Even the Father judges no one, for He has given all judgment (the last judgment and the whole business of judging) entirely into the hands of the Son

….I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, the person whose ears are open to My words [who listens to My message] and believes and trusts in and clings to and relies on Him Who sent Me has (possesses now) eternal life. And he does not come into judgment [does not incur sentence of judgment, will not come under condemnation], but he has already passed over out of death into life…I am able to do nothing from Myself [independently, of My own accord–but only as I am taught by God and as I get His orders]. Even as I hear, I judge [I decide as I am bidden to decide. As the voice comes to Me, so I give a decision], and My judgment is right (just, righteous), because I do not seek or consult My own will [I have no desire to do what is pleasing to Myself, My own aim, My own purpose] but only the will and pleasure of the Father Who sent Me. If I alone testify in My behalf, My testimony is not valid and cannot be worth anything. There is Another Who testifies concerning Me and In know and am certain that His evidence on My behalf is true and valid.”