The Meaning of Being “Sons of God” (Rewritten)

To think clearly about Christian faith — and to stay true to what Scripture actually teaches — we need to be careful with phrases like “sons of God,” “children of God,” and “the Fatherhood of God.” These terms are often used loosely today, but the Bible uses them with precision.

Strictly speaking, there is only one being who is truly and literally the Son of God: Jesus Christ. He alone is Son by nature. His relationship to God is eternal, grounded in the divine nature itself, not created in time. That is why Scripture calls Him “the only begotten Son.” God is never described as the Creator of Jesus, but always as His Father. Christ’s sonship is unique and completely unshared.

1 John 3:4-12 - The Children of God and the Children of the Devil

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ii. 29-v. 12. GOD IS LOVE.

c. ii. 29-iii. 24.The Evidence of Sonship: Deeds of Righteousness before God.

• The Children of God and the Children of the Devil (ii. 29-iii. 12).
• Love and Hate: Life and Death (iii. 13-24).

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4 Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness: and sin is lawlessness

4. "Every one that doeth sin," despite his philosophic theories and the intensity of his fancied illumination and superior knowledge, "doeth also lawlessness." Sin cannot be concealed by fine sounding phrases, such as an innocent misstep, a pardonable error. Every voluntary violation of the known law of God is a realization of sin in its completeness (Greek — "the" sin).

"Sin is lawlessness." These are convertible terms, and with equal truth the sentence may be read backwards. Sin is a wilful collision of a finite will with the highest authority in the universe. A failure to fulfil the law which man was created to keep, on which his happiness is suspended, is more than a disaster, it is a sin. Duty is threefold, to God, to men and to self. Hence there are three forms of sin. In each form there may be the doing of what is forbidden, which is a sin of commission, and the failure to do what is required, which is the sin of omission. In the last analysis sin may be traced to selfishness. See James i. 14, 15, for the first form of sin as selfishness, and James iv. 17 for the second form, a selfish failure in duty to others, which is emphasized by Christ in His description of the final judgment. (Matt. xxv. 31-46.) Sin reaches its climax when, having heard of the mission of Christ, the sinner sets Him at naught in His purpose "to take away sins." This He does, says Bede, "by forgiving sins, by helping us to keep from committing sins, and by reason of our moral inability to sin wilfully (Gen. xxix. 9) against one whom we love with the whole heart. Deliverance from punishment is the least part of Christ's work of taking away sins. He takes away the disposition to sin from every one who by faith claims His full heritage of divine grace. "He came to remove all sins, even as He was Himself sinless." (Bishop Westcott.) This explains how sin is utterly incompatible with fellowship with Him. It implies a rebuke of the Gnostic teachers, for the practice of sin, and it proved their professed knowledge of Christ to be unreal and hypocritical.

1 John 2:12-14 - John's Reasons for Writing

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b. ii. 12-28. What Walking in the Light excludes: the Things and Persons to be avoided.

•     Three-fold Statement of Reasons for Writing (ii. 12-14).

•     Things to be avoided: the World and Its Ways (ii. 15-17).

•     Persons to be avoided: Antichrists (B. 18-26).

•     [Transitional.] The Place of Safety: Christ (ii. 27, 28).

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12 I write unto you, [my] little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake

12. "Little children." This is a title of endearment addressed to all St. John's readers, and not to children in age.

"Your sins are forgiven." The Greek perfect tense implies not repeated forgiveness up to the present hour, but rather the unbroken continuance of a conscious freedom from guilt as the result of pardon.

"His name's sake." The antecedent to "His" is Christ, the thought of whom has been present in the mind of John since the last mention of His name in verse 2, and the last reference to Him in verse 6. His name implies all that is contained in His personality, His sinless example, atoning death, glorious resurrection and mediatorial intercession at the right hand of the Father. They who believe in His name not only assent to Christian truths, but also wholly cast themselves upon His atoning merit for the assured possession of eternal life. The declaration of the purpose of the Gospel in John xx. 31 is, "that believing ye may have life through His name." This corresponds very closely with the purpose of this Epistle, "that ye also may have fellowship with us," i. e., divine fellowship implies divine life.

The Devil, Demons, and Angels

QUESTION: (1) Is there more than one devil? (2) What is his origin? (3) Is there more than one archangel? (4) What does the name Gabriel signify? (5) What is a demon? (6) His origin? (7) Are the kingdoms of this world delivered to the devil as he claims (Luke 4:6)?

ANSWER: (1) The Greek diablos (devil), - Hebrew (Satan) denotes the one prince of demons. But in Paul's epistles to Timothy and Titus it is plural and translated in the R. V., "slanderers." Demons are fallen angels subject to the devil. In sixty-two places in the N. T. the R. V. simply transfers this word instead of incorrectly translating it "devils," as in the old version. This is a great improvement. (2) An apostatized being of a high angelic order. (3) It seems to be plural in Daniel 10:13, "Lo, Michael, one of the chief princes," etc. Seven is their number in Rev. 8:2 "And I saw the seven angels that stand before God." (4) God's hero, or the man  of  God. (6) Created by God. (7) No. The devil lied. He has usurped about all the political control of all nations; it was not given by God. This usurpation of so-called popular governments in modern times is easy when good men are too busy or too lazy to vote. When a city allows the saloon, the brothel, and the gambling hell to rule, it has as good a government as it deserves. Let every one when tempted remember that every promise of good which the devil makes is a false promise. It is our business to become sharp-sighted enough to detect his falsehoods and not to put our feet  into his trap for the sake of nibbling his poisoned bait.

— Steele's Answers pp. 245-247.

Was Judas Always a Devil?

QUESTION: Our minister thinks that Judas was always a devil. Is this true?

ANSWER: This theory implies the following difficulties: That Christ knowingly chose a devil, thus setting an example to his church to license bad men to preach; that Christ commissioned a devil to work miracles, even to raise the dead and to cast out devils, thus justifying the charge of his enemies that he cast out devils through a devil (Matt. 10:2-9). We should note that Jesus, speaking three years after the call of Judas, did not say he was a devil from the beginning, but is a devil now. A good man may backslide very far in three years. There was evidently a growth in badness in John 6:70, where he intimates that Judas is under the influence of the devil, just as he means that Peter is influenced by Satan when he calls him Satan (Matt. 16; 23). The growth of the spirit of greed six months afterwards reached its climax, in John 13:26, 27.

— Steele's Answers pp. 190, 191.

The Personal Devil

QUESTION: I cannot harmonize the existence of the personal devil with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Your difficulty arises from several erroneous conceptions: (1) That the moral government of God is an appropriate sphere for the exercise of physical omnipotence. Free agency excludes it, having no more relation to it than the eye has to a symphony and the ear has to a rainbow, and an earthquake has to the shaping of a geometrical demonstration. A free agent is the first cause of his own moral acts. God can prevent the evil choice of a free agent only by uncreating him. (2) The devil is one personality. The scriptures teach that there is a multitude of evil spirits. (3) That the evil one, or the combination of fallen spirits, is omnipotent is a great mistake. (4) That Satan is omnipresent, because temptation to sin is going on everywhere at the same moment. For aught that we know the tempters may outnumber the tempted, a legion (6,000) besieging one soul (Mark 5:1, 15), the name Satan or devil being conceptually applied to the whole number, because our minds in this way more easily and vividly wield the total of bad spirits. Davenport, the ablest theologian of all the New England Fathers, in his catechism thus answers the question, "What is the devil?"

The multitude of apostate angels which, by pride, and blasphemy against God, and malice against man, became liars and murderers, by tempting him to that sin.

Eliminating from your mind these errors there is no more difficulty in believing that evil spirits exist in the spiritual realm than that they exist in the physical realm. It is true that a man may be drawn away by his own lust; but this does not explain the temptations of Christ. He talked with wicked spirits, not with something impersonal.

— Steele's Answers pp. 165, 166.

The Danger of Soft Drinks

QUESTION: Is it proper for Christians to indulge in soft drinks, such as "pop, ginger ale," and root beer?

ANSWER:  While these drinks may not be intoxicating, they may easily lead the drinker, and others through his example, to form a taste for the so-called hard liquors. If you would avoid being burned by the devil's fire, don't play with his matches and kindling wood.

— Steele's Answers p. 146.

A Deeper Death?

QUESTION: Does the Bible teach that after we are wholly sanctified there is yet a deeper death?

ANSWER: This question has the odor of Plymouth and Keswick, and of Geneva, the home of Calvin. Many good people cling to the doleful doctrine that sin is necessary to this present life and that it must continue till physical death in the case of the normal Christian, and that a perfectly holy man is something abnormal. The Bible teaches that Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. Sin is the devil's masterpiece which the Lamb of God came into the world provisionally to destroy through the efficacy of faith in his blood. He has opened a fountain for sin and all uncleanness, not in the article of death or after our last heart-beat. Paul certainly contemplated a period of life after dying unto sin once for all, when, in answer to our question, in a slightly changed form, he quired thus: "We who died to sin, how shall we live any longer therein?" It is not a process, "are dying," but a completed act, "died." Strictly speaking, there are no degrees of death, although we hear men in the street using this phrase, "deader than Julius Caesar." Crucifixion, Paul's favorite word for the cessation of the self-centered life, is a decisive act admitting of no degrees, or "dying deeper down," "our old man was crucified" (aorist) subsequently explained by Paul's reference to his own experience in Gal. 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer that I live" (American Revision). He did not need to die deeper down. The fact that he kept his body under by holding in check his innocent animal appetites, like those of Jesus Christ, does not prove the need of a deeper death in the one case any more than in the other.

— Steele's Answers pp. 107, 108.

A Theme That Satan Hates

Satan, who seeks to plunder the Gospel of that element which gives it the highest efficiency in its warfare with his kingdom, blinds the eyes of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ shine unto them.

He succeeds so well with unbelievers that he applies the same method to believers, blinding their eyes to their highest Gospel privilege, the fullness of the Spirit, lest the light of this blessing should gladden their eyes, strengthen their hearts, and intensify their zeal against his kingdom. Says John Wesley, in a letter to a Christian woman respecting her preacher, in 1771: