Children of God

A man was giving a talk, and he had a very interesting point that I decided to share in a blog post. He read the following three Scripture passages, and he said that these are the only three passages in all four Gospels where Jesus gives the criteria for how to be a son or daughter of God and gives a description for what such a thing would look like. Read them below:

           

Matthew 5:9 – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Matthew 5:44-45 – “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Luke 6:35 – “But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”

You can probably see a common thread between them. In all of them, the description of how to be a child of God is primarily based on how one relates to those we don’t like. In the last two this is most explicit: we are expected to love our enemies and even pray for those who wrong us. In Matthew 5:9, Jesus elevates those who build peace, which, if one thinks about it, also involves coming together with one’s enemies. This love is not just to those who are different, but specifically for those one is in conflict with.

When I’ve read these verses before, I already noticed this call to love our enemies, but the interesting insight presented to me that I felt like sharing is that such a love is the way in which Jesus described sons and daughters of God. The man who was talking said that these were the only instances in which Jesus described what the children of God would look like, and in each the main feature is how one relates to those with whom one is in conflict.

The Luke verse does mention another theme, lending, which I doubt is completely unrelated to conflict. At least some readings I was doing seem to indicate that because in Palestinian society at the time there was a big gulf between the rich and the poor with the latter indebted pretty seriously to the former,  lending is not completely separate from conflict. Also, Jesus in the Luke verse also introduces a reward, unlike the other two, which may correspond more directly with the lending. I.e. proper lending conduct may have caused a great reward primarily, and the loving one’s enemies may relate more with being a child of God. This would make sense of the obvious parallels between the second and third verse, which could suggest that they are different accounts of the same statement. If they are from the say statement, Matthew 5:44-45 removes both lending and a reward, and only includes loving enemies and being a child of God, signaling that the four ideas may be paired into these two pairs.  

Growing up my father often pointed out the elevation of the peacemakers in the Beatitudes: they are the only ones given the title son or daughter of God, which is a significant jump to the others (not to say the others are significant themselves, but to be the very child of God is a more powerful thing). As a matter of fact, peacemakers are the only ones (in Matthew’s version at least) who become something or are given a title. All others receive something in return (comfort, fulfillment, the kingdom of heaven, seeing God, etc.).

The new insight that he presented was that these are the only times when Jesus describes what a child of God would look like. I have no reason to doubt this, unless someone comes up with another verse where Jesus describes a child of God (if one finds one, be sure to reply in the comments as I would be rather interested). How one treats those one doesn’t like then is of supreme importance in determining whether one is of God or not. This reminds me of the famous hymn with the title and line: “And they will know that we are Christians by our love.”