The passage that we are using to discuss identity is Matthew 3:17 which says, “¹⁷ And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” As we discussed in the last post, we can know that God sees us in the same way that he sees Jesus. Because of what Christ has done for us, we are now God’s sons and daughters. Contrary to popular belief, we are not initially born into the family of God. Being a son or daughter of God is only possible because of what Christ did on the cross. The Bible is emphatic that we are born into sin and that our sin separates us from God. Because of what Jesus did we now have the ability to accept the gift of righteousness that he made available through Jesus.

We should never take for granted the fact that we are God’s sons and daughters. This means that God is our Father and thinking about him this way is absolutely essential as we try to conceive of the way that he feels about us. Only those who know Jesus personally have been born into the family of God and are his sons and daughters. We must always remember that our sonship and daughtership was given to us only at the cost of the blood of the perfect Son of God. As God conferred upon Jesus the identity of his beloved Son, so we should walk in the confidence that he has now conferred upon us the identity of sons and daughters.

It’s amazing to me that God now chooses to deal with us as his kids. There is no longer any hostility between us and God. He still will discipline us as any good father would but we’ll never be kicked out of the family. What an amazing privilege?!

We’ll discuss the next element of identity in the 4th part of this series.