On Sonship (Part VI)

The last few weeks we’ve been discussing the implications of sonship on our walk with Christ. If you’re interested, you can check out the previous posts in the series here:

On Sonship (Part I)

On Sonship (Part II)

On Sonship (Part III)

On Sonship (Part IV)

On Sonship (Part V)

God gives us spiritual parents.

One of the things that I love about God is how incredibly practical He is.  Even though He is willing to give us Himself as a father, he knows that we were designed to live in relationship with other beings with skin.  God stoops down to our level, changes us with His fathering heart, and even goes one step farther: He sends spiritual parents in our lives.

A spiritual parent is a human being who knows Christ as their Lord and is tasked with bringing you as an individual into your full sonship in God.  Paul said to the Corinthians that though they had many teachers in Christ, they had one father—himself (1 Corinthians 4:15).  He had become a father to the whole Corinthian church through being the first to bring the Gospel to Corinth.  Paul had a special relationship because of that act that always gave him permission to speak into their messy situations.  In an ideal setting, the person who led you to Jesus should be one of your primary spiritual parents.  Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

When a person comes to Christ, if the person that lead them to Jesus is either absent or non-existent (meaning the person came to know Jesus by simply reading the Bible, finding a tract, etc.) then a spiritual adoption must occur.  When this happens, spiritually mature, well-fathered believers can and should reach out to new believers and assume the fathering role in their Christian walk.  While this is not the best scenario for spiritual parenting, it will work in a pinch.

The goal of these spiritual parents is to raise these spiritual sons and daughters into their new Kingdom identity.  The spiritual parent is tasked with loving with the Father’s love and being a physical representative of the Heavenly Father in the new believer’s life.  Spiritual parents also will become channels of wisdom passed down from other believers (2 Timothy 2:1-2).  They will also bring discipline and correction to those areas that are in need of it. Most who think they are spiritual parents believe it is done primarily through teaching.  In reality, sonship is taught through life lived together, love shared, and wisdom passed on in life as situations arise. Spiritual parents are constantly “re-presenting” God as Father, so that the lies we naturally believe about God are dispelled.

It’s through this process of mirroring God the Father, teaching new sons how to experience sonship, and being a tangible fathering force that these spiritual parents reproduce spiritual sons.  In the end the sons and daughters they raise will raise spiritual children of their own, because they’ve been well fathered.  This process, continued for many generations of disciples, would pass on and expand the circle of family and sonship that God designed to rest on all of humanity.

God raises sons and daughters through natural parents, Himself, and spiritual parents.  And now that we understand how God raises His children, we have to turn our attention to combatting the orphan mentality in us and in others.  We’ll begin looking at that next week….

Photo Credit: Hug by popofatticus