Paul continually tells Christians to rejoice and be filled with joy. It is interesting that Paul continually speaks of the great joy of
being a Christian in spite of the fact that he suffered greatly during his ministry. We know that Paul suffered shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonment, and eventually execution because of his faith—yet even from his prison cell he writes of the unimaginable joy of being a Christian. How did Paul remain so optimistic in the face of such tragedy?
Perhaps the question is better stated: What did Paul know that we don’t know? I think Paul knew—really knew---that he was a child of God. I think Paul grasped, deeply and profoundly, the meaning of his inheritance. It is one thing to regard oneself as a child of God, in some obscure and ephemeral sense, but it is another thing entirely to truly believe and grasp the meaning of being a child of God.
While it is impossible to fully understand the full implications of being a child of God, at the risk of doing such an honor an injustice, let’s think about being a child of God in the simplest way and compare it to other positions or titles we might hold.
For example, would you rather be the President of the United States or a child of God? Just pragmatically speaking? Not spiritually. Just as a self-interested, pragmatic question. Which is better? Bill Gates or a child of God? Pretty interesting way to look at who you are.
Of course, it is not necessarily an either-or question. You could be the president and a child of God. Or Bill Gates and a child of God. But the obviously most desirable position, the title of first importance would be to be a child of God. Hands down.
In fact, so much so that whatever else you happened to be would be inconsequential. For example, “I am a child of the Lord of the Universe and….” And what? What else could possibly matter? What else could hold any rational person’s attent
ion? “I am a son of the Living God…and…oh, yeah, I am an engineer.” So what? Or, “I am the son of God…and a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.” Who cares about the Fortune 500 company!? You are the child of God! Wow.
Imagine, if we took being children of God literally, and a person told you, “Oh, I am the daughter of God, and I also won the Pulitzer Prize.” Would you care about the Pulitzer Prize? Would you even hear her mention it? If you did hear it, wouldn’t y
ou wonder, “Why in the world does she mention something as insignificant as that? It is like saying, “Oh, I have $20 billion dollars in the gold bricks, and I also have $10 in my wallet.” Who cares about the $10 in your wallet!?
Indeed, if we realized we were children of God—real, actual children of God—nothing else would matter. Fill in the blank with anything after the mention of your being a child of God and it means nothing. “I am a child of God and the president of Exxon.” “I am a child of God and a pretty big movie star.” Anything, compared with being a child of God, pales in such comparison as to be irrelevant.
I think that is why Paul was so filled with joy no matter what his circumstances. I think that helps explain why Paul wrote, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).
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