Brian Onstead

Last month Pastor Tim Morrow had an excellent column on God’s acceptance of believers as his dearly loved children. He reminded us that God fully accepts believers into his family through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We do nothing to earn our way in or work our way up. 

As a father and grandfather freely loves his children apart from anything they do, so the father in heaven loves those who place their trust in Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead as the full payment for all their sins.

I wanted to piggy-back on this and talk about what happens when we fall into sin. What father wouldn’t love his sweet little child as he holds him or her in his arms? But what happens when that child grows into adolescence, rolls his eyes, talks back, rebels and disobeys? 

Some of us know of parents who have kicked their child out of their house when the disobedience has reached a certain level. Is this what God does to any of his children? Thankfully, the answer is a resounding no! 

In John 6:37 Jesus promises that the one who comes to him, he will in no way cast out. This not only refers to the one who initially comes to him asking him for salvation, but it also refers to never casting that one out in the future. 

Jesus goes on to declare that he will lose not one of those who come to him but will raise him up on the last day. Romans 8:30 lays out an unbreakable chain of redemption. This is the way it is stated in the Greek: “Those whom [God] predestined, these he also called, and those whom he called, these he also justified, and those whom he justified, these he also glorified.” 

We see here that the very ones who are predestined (God determining our destination before time became) are the very ones who are justified (declared righteous and completely pardoned). And the very ones who are justified are also the very ones who are glorified (the final state in heaven). If God has justified (forgiven, saved) someone, then he will also glorify them (bring them to heaven). 

In love, the Lord will discipline his children. As God says in Psalm 89, “If [the Christ’s] children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules … then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.”  God disciplines those whom he loves (Hebrews 12:6-8). This discipline is actually to keep us from the condemnation that those outside of Christ will face (1 Corinthians 11:32). Our father in heaven will discipline us, but he will never cast us out of his house. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:39, “nothing … will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

(Brian Onstead is a pastor at Trinity Bible Church in Powell.)