God Treats Us with Special Favor

Although God is completely sovereign and could treat us like slaves, God calls us His children, and Jesus calls us His friends. I have written here: “Now in Christ everything is by grace, not because we deserve it.”

That somber and oppressive picture Christ paints through the parable reminds us that this is how things stand judicially in the Kingdom of God, and that if God wanted to treat us that way, He certainly could. But then we should thank God that He treats us differently: through the grace we have in Christ Jesus, we can look forward to good things from our Heavenly Father, to preferential treatment, and to receiving information and teaching from Him, for He will share with us everything concerning His Kingdom, as John chapter 15, verse 15 says.

There are some verses that remind us of this wonderful picture, of this idea that in Christ Jesus we are now children, friends, trusted members of the Kingdom of God. One passage of Scripture says: “We are no longer strangers or outsiders.” Outsiders means something like newcomers, people who come from elsewhere and have to find a little corner out on the edge of the Kingdom of God. God calls us to be an integral part of His Kingdom, to approach the Throne of Grace with confidence, as we were saying.

I remember the words of Jesus Christ when He said: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly.” The Lord has not come to get something out of us and squeeze us dry; quite the opposite, He has come to give us life, to instill courage in us, to bring out all that is beautiful and noble in our existence.

There is a passage in Romans 8 that says: “He who gave up His Son for us, how will He not also give us all other things together with Him?” In other words, that passage in Romans 8 invites us to consider: if God gave the most precious, the most costly thing He has, how will He not also give us, after having given us something so great, the smaller things in our lives? Our daily bread, our sustenance, our health, the longings of our hearts. Compared with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, which the Father gave up, all of that is absolutely small.

The measure of God’s love is the giving of His Son; everything else is included in that. Everything else we ask the Father for is a detail, something very small compared with the greatness of His Son’s sacrifice.

We have already said that the Word of the Lord invites us to approach the Throne of Grace with confidence, not begging, not pleading with the Lord in a servile way, but asking the Lord for blessings with all the assurance of a child approaching a father who loves him or her and with whom the child has a good relationship.

Ephesians chapters 1 and 2 speak to us about the believer’s abundant inheritance. We remember those words, don’t we? “So then you are no longer strangers or outsiders, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” There in Ephesians 1 and 2, the apostle Paul says that he prays for the Ephesians to receive a special revelation, a spirit of wisdom, so that they may be able to understand how great the inheritance is, how overflowing God’s blessing is for those who have believed in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

It is as though Paul were saying that the blessing God has given us is so great, so incomprehensibly rich and abundant, that we cannot understand it on our own. Paul says that a special revelation, an extraordinary gift of faith, is required for us to be able to understand the breadth and extent, the depth of God’s blessing and the inheritance we have received through Christ Jesus.

And First Peter chapter 2, verse 9 onward, also says something very beautiful. It says: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired by God.” What a beautiful picture, so full of affirmation. We are a chosen people, a holy nation, a people acquired by God. In other words, you see those images: there is nothing there of that useless servant, that servant who has no worth, that servant who deserves no information or explanation from his Lord.

Although that is true in a judicial sense, as we were saying, the lived reality of our lives is that God treats us in a preferential way; we are royalty in God’s eyes. And Paul adds: “So that you may proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; you who once were not a people but now are the people of God, who once had not received mercy but now have received mercy.”

There we have the two sides of the coin of the believer’s identity. At one time we were not a people; in one sense, we really are now like that person who deserved no blessing but who has been taken in and brought into a spiritual citizenship. On the other hand, we have received mercy and are the people of God, and not just any people, but a people purchased with precious blood through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, all because of God’s goodness.

I say here that: “We should be deeply grateful and love God with all our hearts. We should serve Him with all enthusiasm and give Him our entire lives. When we have done everything, we should say: we are useless servants, because we have done exactly everything God asked us to do.”

Before concluding this series, it occurs to me that I would like to discuss with you one last passage found in Philemon, but we will leave it for our next meditation. It illustrates very vividly what we are saying about the believer’s dual identity: useless servant and also adopted child. And I believe this passage found in the epistle to Philemon will make clear the way God deals with us. My beloved brothers and sisters, may God bless you, and until our next meditation.