Sons of God

“ "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." ”

“ Do you earth fathers take pleasure in torturing your children with uncertainty about their place of abiding love in your human hearts? Neither does your Father in heaven leave his faith children of the spirit in doubtful uncertainty as to their position in the kingdom. If you receive God as your Father, then indeed and in truth are you the sons of God. ”

“ Instead of receiving the gospel to become the sons of God, my language would be—to receive the gospel that we may continue to be the sons of God. Are we not all sons of God when we are born into this world? Old Pharoah, King of Egypt, was just as much a son of God as Moses and Aaron were His sons, with this difference—he rejected the word of the Lord, the true light, and they received it. For "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. ”

“ Sons they are and no longer children, yet they groan as being still in bondage!— Plainly the apostle has no thought of working out an idea; with burning heart he is writing a letter: he gives, nevertheless, lines plentifully sufficient for us to work out his idea, and this is how it takes clear shape:—
We are the sons of God the moment we lift up our hearts, seeking to be sons—the moment we begin to cry Father. ”

“ The matter is clear, then, men and Gods are of the same race; Jesus is the Son of God, and so, too, are all men the offspring of God, and Jesus but the first born of many brethren. Eternal Intelligences are begotten of God, spirits, and hence are sons of God—a dignity that never leaves them. ”

“ The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. We do not know—anyway, I do not know—how things would have worked if the human race had never rebelled against God and joined the enemy. Perhaps every man would have been ‘in Christ’, would have shared the life of the Son of God, from the moment he was born. Perhaps the Bios or natural life would have been drawn up into the Zoe, the uncreated life, at once and as a matter of course. ”

“ Though the sons of God are but a few in one place and at one time, yet when they shall be all brought together it will appear that they are many. Christ is the first-born among many brethren. [4.] All the sons of God, now many soever they are, or however dispersed and divided, shall at length be brought together to glory. ”

“ The Eternal Son is the personal source of the adorable attributes of mercy and service which so abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God as they function throughout creation. All the divine nature, if not all the infinity of attributes, the Eternal Son unfailingly transmits to the Paradise Sons who go out from the eternal Isle to reveal his divine character to the universe of universes. ”

“ They are called the sons of God, who are endowed with his supernatural image, and admitted to the highest honours and privileges conferred upon creatures: thus the angels are called the sons of God, Job xxxviii. ”

“ Let not those then to whom He hath given power to become the sons of God, think it impossible to become the sons of God. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Do not imagine that it is too great a thing for you to become the sons of God ”

“ We are apt to have rather free and easy notions of the Divine fatherhood. To call God our Father, we must ourselves be sons; and it is only those who are led by the Spirit of God who are the sons of God.... Ask for great things, and small things will be given to you. ”

“ See also John 1:12. Sonship is now the present possession of the believer. Strange as it may be, inconceivable as it may seem, it is nevertheless true. The world may not think so (v. 1) , but God says so, and the Christian believing it, exclaims, "I'm the child of a King." Formerly we were slaves; now we are sons.
3. OUR SONSHIP WILL BE COMPLETED AT THE RESURRECTION AND COMING AGAIN OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Rom. 8:23—"Waiting for the adoption, to-wit, the redemption, of the body." Here in this world we are incognito; we are not recognized as sons of God. ”

“ But if you believe that Jesus is a perfect Son, all that you would wish your son to be to you, and millions of times more; and if you believe that that very thing is Christ’s glory; that his glory consists in being a perfect Son, perfectly obedient, having no will or wish but his Father’s; then will you, by thus seeing Christ in spirit and in truth, see how beautiful and noble it is to be good sons; and you will long to try to be good sons: and what you long for, and try for, you will surely be, in God’s good time ”

“ But though we cannot fully understand the sense in which our Lord is the Son of God, we yet believe that He is so in a manner analogous to that in which we are our fathers' sons—possessing the same nature as His Father, and having that nature communicated to Him as the only-begotten Son. ”

“ Hence he gathers that “we ought to remember that when we call God, our Father, we should act as sons of God, that as we have complacency in God being our Father, so He likewise may have complacency in our being His children. ”

“ There we ourselves shall be the sons of God, and God will be our Father. Think what is the relation of an affectionate son to a good and wise father. What submission with equality—what complete sympathy and community of interest—what intimate communication of thought and feeling! So, O Christian soul! shall it be between you and God. God will be your God, and you will be His child. {257} Thou shalt dwell in His home, and all that He hath shall be thine. "All things are yours, the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ”

“ Hence from the above we learn that though others might be the sons of God through Him, yet it needed His body, His fulfilment of the law, the sacrifice or offering up of that body in the atonement, before any of these others, who were also sons of God by birth in the spirit world, could attain to the position of sons of God as He was ”

“ God's Son can have no cares, and must remain forever in the peace of Heaven. In His Name, I give today to finding what my Father wills for me, accepting it as mine, and giving it to all my Father's Sons, along with me. ”

“ It follows that the representative Man, through Whom these many sons are glorified, must Himself pass through like discipline, that, on behalf of God, He may become their Leader and the Captain of their salvation. It became God to endow the Son, in Whose Sonship men are adopted as sons of God, with inward fitness, through sufferings, to lead them on to their destined glory. Perhaps the verse contains an allusion to Moses or Joshua, the leaders of the Lord’s redeemed to the rich land and large. If so, the author is preparing his readers for what he has yet to say. ”

“ In speaking of sons, the Bible usually means the good children of God; yet it clearly teaches that prodigals are likewise sons. Earthly parents are our older brothers and sisters, honored and much beloved; but only God is the Father of our spirits. No one need fear that natural sonship to God makes it less imperative that we should become good sons. ”

“ The Creator or Sovereign Sons who preside over the destinies of the local universes stand in the place of both the Universal Father and the Eternal Son of Paradise. These Universe Sons receive, in the name of the Father, the adoration of worship and give ear to the pleas of their petitioning subjects throughout their respective creations. To the children of a local universe a Michael Son is, to all practical intents and purposes, God. He is the local universe personification of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. ”

“ Christ the Son of God, the natural and eternal Son of God, became the Son of man. To facilitate this, he hath taken on the burden of man's sin, the chastisement of our peace, and so of the glorious Son of God he became like the wretched and accursed sons of men, and therefore God hath proclaimed in the gospel, not only an immunity and freedom from wrath, to all that in the sense of their own misery cordially receive him as he is offered, but the unspeakable privilege of sonship and adoption for his sake, who became our elder brother, Gal. ”

“ Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.—Gal. ”

“ He deals, not with an abstraction, but with individual men, whom He makes His sons and prepares for their glory and honour by the discipline of sons. “For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” [29] Thus it is more true to say that God leads His sons to glory than to say that He bestows glory upon them. ”

“ The compellation is very tender-Son; intimating a fatherly care of him and concern for him. Christ owns true believers as his sons: a son, and yet sick of the palsy. Herein God deals with you as with sons. The cordial is very rich ”

“ And we do not say that there are two Sons or two Lords, because there is one God [Son?] according to substance, God the Word, the only begotten Son of the Father, and He who has been joined with Him is a participator in His deity and shares in the name and honor of the Son; and the Lord according to essence is God the Word, with whom that which is joined shares in honor. ”

“ They may be rude at, present, yet, you will find within them the true principles of "Mormonism," and, when our sons become men, they will be men of God, and be useful in accomplishing a good work upon the earth. ”

“ For [81] this is the first-born church, composed of many good children; these are “the first-born enrolled in heaven, who hold high festival with so many myriads of angels.” We, too, are first-born sons, who are reared by God, who are the genuine friends of the First-born, who first of all other men attained to the knowledge of God, who first were wrenched away from our sins, first severed from the devil. And now the more benevolent God is, the more impious men are; for He desires us from slaves to become sons, while they scorn to become sons. ”

“ Why, the very devils called Him the Son of God! In Mark we have the unclean spirit crying, "Jesus, thou Son of the most high God." Men say, "Oh, I believe Christ to be the Son of God, and because I believe it intellectually I shall be saved." ”

“ If there was One who did bind them all together, One in whom they were one, what an emphasis was there in that word, 'Our!' If this Son of Man were indeed the Son of God, what life, what reality there was in the word 'Father!' It was not that the prayer wanted its virtue till the name of Christ was openly, formally introduced into it. ”

“ O eternal Father of thy Son Jesus Christ by nature, and of us by grace; for thou hast created us to thy own Image; and when become by sin children of wrath, hast adopted us for sons of grace and heirs of eternal life, by the Blood of thy Son; and although heaven is the seat of thy majesty and glory, yet thou continually regardest us upon earth, and rulest us with fatherly care, charity, and providence. ”

“ The third verse explains that it is a revelation, not only in a Son, but in His Sonship. We learn what kind of Sonship is His, and how its glorious attributes qualify Him to be the perfect Revealer of God. Nevermore will a message be sent to men except in Jesus Christ. God, Who spake unto the fathers in divers manners, speaks to us in Him, Whose Sonship constitutes Him the effulgence of God’s glory, the image of His substance, the Upholder of the universe, and, lastly, the eternal Redeemer and King. ”

“ It seems to us astonishing that parents were ever capable of causing their children to pass through the fire to an idol, but what is this compared with what our pious fathers and mothers have believed concerning their children's sufferings in the eternal world, for the glory of that God who is the Father of the spirits of all flesh? ”

“ There is one only answer, Christ the Son of God, the Son of Man, staked all upon the Christian—His Spirit in the Christian,—all that story, wrought out in suffering and tears, and the shedding of His blood, His triumph over death, His ascension on high, to be told and retold and told again in the life of the Christian. ”

“ The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance. ”

“ The Father comes down to you as a personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere, when the last judgment is spoken of, Christ is called the son of man, because he is to judge the sons of men (and, being himself of the same nature, he is the more unexceptionable) ; and because his wonderful condescension to take upon him our nature, and to become the son of man, will be recompensed by this exaltation in that day, and an honour put upon the human nature. ”

“ Therefore the Lord always calls himself in the Gospel the Son of Man, out of an intimate love to us. We seldom read that he calls himself the Son of God, but always the Son of Man, from an affectionate humility and love. ”