Security and Sonship

DEFENSE

This presses the concept of sonship beyond its limits and fails to do justice to other things the biblical text indicates.

First, the concept of Christian sonship involves a metaphor. We are not children of God the way we are children of our earthly parents. Furthermore, Scripture uses this metaphor in more than one way, as illustrated by the fact that it uses two different images to describe how we become God’s children—being born again (John 3:3; cf. Titus 3:5) and being adopted (Rom. 8:23; Gal. 4:5). Consequently, we must be on our guard against pressing the metaphor beyond its limits by transferring ideas from our earthly understanding of sonship in a way that violates things Scripture says.

Second, even if we press the details of the metaphor, the challenge is based on a false assumption, because it is possible to cease to be some- one’s son. In real life, fathers do disown and disinherit children. If a child can be adopted, he can also be disowned, and cultures around the world have ways of terminating legal ties between parents and children.

Third, even if the biological relationship between a parent and child cannot be undone, sons can die. This suggests the possibility of us becoming God’s spiritual children and then spiritually dying through mortal sin (see Day 302).

Fourth, this understanding is used by our Lord in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). In this parable, the relevant character begins as a son of his father, experiencing the life of the family. Then he turns his back on the father and leaves the family, falling into a life of grave sin. Later, he repents, returns, and is accepted back by the father, who declares that his son “was dead, and is alive” (v. 32). The parable thus reveals that we can begin as sons of the Father, spiritually die through sin, and then come back to the Father and be restored to spiritual life.