Salvation as Sonship: Being Sons of the Father in Heaven

By Jennifer Anne Cox

There is more than one way to understand the wonder of salvation. One powerful metaphor for salvation is that of sonship. Humans were originally created to be sons of God but lost their position because of sin. But God sent his eternal Son into the world to make the way for humans to again be his sons. Christ Jesus, the only begotten Son of God graciously shares with believers his relationship with God the Father. Being a son of God through Christ is both an incredible privilege and a serious responsibility. Sonship as Salvation explores both the privilege and responsibility of sonship. It considers sonship by looking at the life of Christ and then exploring the implications for Christians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Anne Cox
• Release date: Dec 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463398623

Jennifer Anne Cox

Jennifer Anne Cox has a PhD in theology and is the author of several theological books. Dr Cox seeks to provide theological resources that will help the church to understand the Bible and to put Christ at the centre of all things.

Book preview

Salvation as Sonship

Being Sons of the Father in Heaven

Jennifer Anne Cox

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer Anne Cox

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Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2016 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1

The Fatherhood of God

Sonship Lost

Israel as Son of God

Jesus, the Eternal Son, Gives Us What He Has by Becoming What We Are

Adoption

False Ideas about Sonship

The Difference between Slavery and Sonship

Part 2

Sons Are Loved by the Father

Sonship Involves Suffering

Sonship Is a Relationship of Mutual Identity

Sonship Is a Relationship of Obedience

Sonship Is a Relationship of Dependence

Sonship and Prayer

Sonship Is a Relationship of Intimacy

Sonship Is a Relationship of Imitation

Sonship Is a Relationship of Mutual Glory

The Son Is the Heir of the Father

The Holy Spirit Is the Spirit of Sonship

Sons are Part of God’s Family

Conclusion

About the Author

Introduction

What is salvation?

What is salvation? If you asked this question of an Australian Christian what would he or she answer? I have not conducted a survey, but I believe that the most popular answer would involve justification by faith. Justification by faith is the dominant understanding of salvation in the western world. This is the doctrine that Luther rediscovered and that started off the Reformation in the sixteenth century. For Luther it was the central doctrine of the New Testament, the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls. For Calvin it was the hinge on which all true religion turns (Institutes of the Christian Religion III.xi.1).

Justification by faith is usually taught in churches as a legal metaphor. We owe a huge debt to God because of our sin. Christ is the one who has been punished in our place and who has paid our debt to God. A Christian is one who trusts in the fact that Jesus has taken the punishment for sin upon himself. Consequently, the believer no longer owes a debt to God due to sin. While there is some scholarly discussion regarding the nuances of justification that are misunderstood in popular preaching, the fundamentals of Christ taking our place and believers consequently receiving favour from God only through faith are certainly correct.

Perhaps the most significant issue with the popular understanding of salvation as justification by faith is that it is disconnected from sanctification. In part, this is the result of the emphasis on the legal aspects of the metaphor. The logic is that someone needs to be punished for my sin and Jesus has been, so legally God no longer needs to punish me. This does not necessarily lead to relationship with God on a practical level. People who have faith in Christ do not necessarily grow in godliness or Christian maturity since they think only in terms of being justified. This legal understanding of salvation often fails to produce the fruit of personal piety and a Spirit-directed walk with God.

It is not my goal here to redefine justification or to disparage it. Others have carefully examined this doctrine and can provide a deeper understanding than the popular view. What I am trying to do is to explain salvation in terms of a different, but very important, New Testament metaphor. The New Testament uses a number of different metaphors for salvation since what God has done in Christ cannot be narrowed down to merely one metaphor. The particular metaphor I have chosen to write about here is sonship and adoption. I believe that a firm grasp on this metaphor will help Christians to integrate status before God and behaviour, that is, to join together privilege and responsibility. Indeed, it will also direct us to a deeper relationship with God our Father and with fellow Christians as our brothers and sisters. Additionally, thinking about salvation in terms of sonship and adoption will help Christians to see salvation in a trinitarian fashion, and in particular to accept the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.

The Metaphor of Sonship

The Bible is a wonderful book full of wonderful promises from God to his people. Like the love of God (Eph 3:18–19), the Bible is deep and high, wide and long. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom 11:33). How blessed are those who ponder the word of God (Ps 1). Included among the wonderful ideas found in the Bible is the truth that those who trust in Christ as Saviour and Lord are adopted by God as his children.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom 8:14–17).

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father! (Gal 4:4–6).

[God] predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (Eph 1:5).

God is in a class of his own; there is no other like him (Exod 15:11; 2 Sam 7:22). Therefore, human language is inadequate to speak of God and we need to use metaphors and analogies. When the Bible says that a human may be a son of God because of Christ, it is using an analogy. This relationship is not precisely the same as the relationship of a human father and human son. Human fathers and mothers physically produce children together. Yet God does not physically father humans. He is the Creator of all, but that is a different kind of fatherhood. Generally a father and son have common DNA and yet God has no DNA. The fact that the Fatherhood of God is different to that of a human father does not make the idea of humans being sons of God meaningless. However, it does mean that we must not assume that the patterns which operated in our own family of origin apply to our relationship with God. Just because we understand the words son and adoption in a natural sense does not mean that we can automatically understand the biblical concepts.

Yet God has not left us without instruction; he has revealed himself to humanity and provided revelation about how we may know him. Consequently, by examining the Bible we can learn what sonship and adoption mean in terms of human relationship to the God who created every one of us. This is precisely what I hope to tease out as I work my way through the chapters that follow.

A Few Clarifying Comments

Before I begin to explore the topic I need to make a few comments about age and gender. The expression children of God certainly appears in the biblical text, but the wrong impression can be gained by using this in place of sons. When we use the word children it may conjure up pictures of small children sitting on Daddy’s lap. However, the biblical metaphor of sonship is not about small children in the lap of a father, but adult sons with the privileges and responsibilities of the father’s representatives and heirs. This is the first reason why I will mainly refer to sons and sonship throughout instead of children.

A second misconception is that it is sexist to speak of sonship instead of saying that we are children of God or even sons and daughters. Some clarification is thus necessary regarding my use of the term son. The Old Testament ascribes inheritance only to sons and not daughters (with rare exceptions—Num 27:1–11). This makes sense in terms of keeping the inheritance of each tribe secure. It could not be passed to another tribe through a daughter’s marriage. In this Old Testament sense, sons may be heirs but daughters are not heirs. Since Christians are said to be heirs of God through Christ, the metaphor is that of sonship, not sonship and daughterhood. This is not a matter of biblical sexism and should not be construed that way. It is no more sexist than to include men within the Bride of Christ.

The structure of this study will centre on Jesus Christ as the one who is eternally Son of God.