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Fundamentals of Society-Building: The Children of God

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“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. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,” John the Apostle wrote, while addressing believers in Jesus Christ who were scattered all over the then world a little after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Believers were described as children and God was described as the Father! It is unimaginable, but it is true.

In the eBook, Proper Parenting by C.N.C. Ejiofor, the writer made a case that God as the creator has the ownership right to humans. This submission drives it further home to reflect what happens in the natural family where we have parents and children living in the bond created by God which is love.

This same apostle describes God as the personification of love. Now, God the owner, is binding everything in himself. This is one of the wonders of creation and it removes the basic foundations for any theory relating to evolution of the humans in nature. At first, God created the first man with a woman to accompany him. Then he pronounced them fruitful and capable of multiplication in order to populate the earth.

Adam and Eve, the first man and woman to occupy the earth became the first parents and the children they produced had no creed for their parents to follow, hence we found ugly stories of the first murder and the foremost run-away-from-home.

But things had to change with time, when the era of innocence was replaced with the era of conscience. Then God found it necessary to give blueprint for human behavior to be handed as a legacy to succeeding generations to populate the earth. Way away before the code of conduct incorporated in the Constitution of the one nation God chose to represent him on earth was established, God made direct commands to Abraham, confident that he will cause his offspring to live in line with the code. God said in Genesis 18:19, “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."

With this confidence, God expects humans to direct their children and their household after them to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just. This is the foundation on which human behavior and character is laid. Hence, children born to men can be brought up in the way that they receive the approval of God, being the children of God by extension.

Much later in human history, God gave an elaborate code of conduct to the nation of Israel and instructed parents to teach the codes relating to behaviors and characters to their children right from infancy. This training is to prepare the children to remain in the way of God after they have grown up to adulthood. That is why the wise man said to “train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).The way he should go being the way of God. God is the way as humans live and move in him.

This understanding is basic for all parents and parents-to-be, if children born to men must be children of God, as those children who do not live in the way of God, the way of doing things right, are said to be the children of the devil. Said John the Apostle in 1 John 3:7-8, “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning”.

Since the devil introduced wrong doing at the early times of creation, humans have inherited the nature of doing things the wrong way – natural bent. Hence, it takes more than the natural training canvassed in the eBook on parenting for children to eventually become the children of God. The coming of God to earth in the person of Jesus Christ provided a spiritual means of being the real children of God. Parents who introduce their children to faith in Jesus Christ by accepting the work he did to bring salvation to man stand the chance of having them gain approval as children of God at their early stage of development.

This is made clear by the same Apostle John in John 1:12 which says that those who receive Jesus Christ by faith get the right to become the children of God. Hence when children are nurtured in the way of God, they stand the chance of receiving the right of being God’s children early enough. They will have little chance of turning from it when they grow older in life.

This has been the mandate of every parent in bringing up their children and equally an apparent guarantee that they will succeed as long as they get it right from the outset in their role as parents. Real life experiences have testified to that. Can God count on you as a parent or parent-to-be?

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