Imagine a young boy ambling happily about his house when something startling happens, stopping him in his tracks. His eyes widen, his face contorts with intense emotion, and what he shouts shocks everyone in the room.

“Wow!” exclaims one observer. “He really is his father’s son!” The comment references the boy, but really it’s about the dad. Though the boy is his own person, what he does makes people think of his dad. His father’s influence is an obvious, essential, and unmistakable part of who he is.

In this commonplace occurrence, we’re given a glimpse of the extraordinary way in which God has chosen to know and love His people, and to be known and loved by His people. We are sons and daughters of God most high, remade in His unique Son to increasingly bear His altogether-lovely likeness.

The Holy Spirit’s description of the church as God’s children is one of Scripture’s most stunning vistas. It reveals breathtaking dimensions of God’s holy love, luminous truths that warm our hearts toward the triune God and light our path to walk in a way that radiates His glory. In Ephesians 5, Paul summarizes this spectacular dynamic of the Christian life with a simply worded call to action: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.” This command is typical of an enticing understatedness found throughout God’s written Word.

The Holy Spirit uses simple words and concepts to incite the sanctified curiosity of God’s children. As we faithfully seek our Father through these humble, treasure-bearing words, He rewards us with a deeper knowledge of Him and ourselves in relationship to Him. Paul’s command lacks Sinai’s thunder and lightning; he doesn’t call us to tremble as ancient Israel did before the mountain made untouchable by God’s holy, consuming presence. Even so, it’s not as if God’s commands lack searing intensity in the new covenant era. New Testament warnings against apostasy as well as exhortations to faithful worship remind believers that our God is, as ever, a consuming fire (Heb. 6; 12:29). The covenant of grace, in both its administrations, bespeaks a God of blazing holiness—a God whose righteous wrath is the terror of rebellious nations, and a God whose willingness to forgive sinners provokes profound fear (Ps. 2; 130:4).

After all, what universe-altering deed must a relentlessly righteous God have done such that He could acquit the guilty? The answer, of course, comes in the person and work of Jesus the Christ.

God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we would be the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21). Through Christ’s work, God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Is there anything more fearfully wonderful than a relentlessly righteous God being faithful and just in forgiving our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness? Actually, yes! It’s that God making the salvation of His people not only a matter of judicial pardon, but also of paternal affection (Eph. 1:5; 2:8-10). God adopts those whom He acquits!

Children inevitably adopt the characteristics of those who rear them; so, too, with the children of God. As you imagined the scenario that opened this article, did you immediately assume that the boy’s reactions were unflattering to his dad? How cynical! (Or is it my assumption that is cynical?) But family resemblance sometimes works the other way, too. And in God’s household, bearing the family likeness is always a good and beautiful thing.

Through the means of grace, the Holy Spirit works the character of our Father deeper and deeper into our being. We have already been remade in our union to Christ, who bears His father’s image in perfection. When life’s traumas come, grace-tuned instincts increasingly take over and our first thoughts fly to our facial expressions and find oral form in our words. If our reactions are full of the fruit of the Spirit, they may well shock those observing us—especially if the observers knew us before Christ remade us!

Can you imagine a more heartening, beautiful thing to be said of you than, with reference to the true and living God: “Wow, you really are your Father’s child!” Yet, as such observations are made, they’re more about your heavenly Father than they are about you. It is by His grace, for His glory, as His child, that you bear His character. Is this not a fearfully wonderful God? Is He not an indescribably good Father? How blessed it is to be the children of God!

Rut Etheridge | Chaplain at Geneva College