Perspective: Living as Children of God

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Living as Children of God

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.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Luke 6:35-36 (NRSV)

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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 on the unrighteous...  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:44-45,48 (NRSV)

I wanna be in the Light as You are in the Light

I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens

Oh, Lord be my Light and be my salvation

'Cause all I want is to be in the Light

From "In the Light" by DC Talk

As you might already know, in the Bible there are four accounts of Jesus' life and ministry, which are known as Gospels.  Scholars generally agree that the Gospel attributed to St. Mark was the first to be written.  In the decades that followed the writing of this account, two other Gospels attributed to St. Matthew and St. Luke were written.  The two latter writers likely based their Gospels on Mark's, also including content from additional sources.  It is believed that one source used by both writers was a collection of Jesus' teachings.¹

A significant portion of Matthew's Gospel is Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount.²  In Luke's Gospel there is a shorter sermon known as the Sermon on the Plain.³  These two sermons are very similar in content but contain some subtle differences.

One noteworthy part of both sermons is Jesus' exhortation for us to love our enemies, to pray for those who mistreat us, and to do good for those who cannot or will not do good for us.  Jesus notes that loving people who are lovable and doing good things for people who can reciprocate is totally unremarkable, as everybody in the world already does such things.  Instead, He calls us to live according to a higher standard, to live as children of God by loving all people, even those we might consider our enemies.⁴  Between the two sermons are subtle differences in how Jesus describes God and in what He says it means to live as children of God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seeks to correct the notion that there are certain people we should love and certain people we should hate.  He begins His teaching by saying, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'" and then proceeds to deconstruct the whole idea.  Jesus teaches us that God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."  He concludes that to live as children of God is to "be perfect... as your heavenly Father is perfect."

To "be perfect" sounds like a tall order to fill, in not an utter impossibility.  Consider how often we hear someone say that nobody is perfect.  The word Jesus uses is the Greek word teleios, which connotes more of a sense of completeness or maturity than a sense of flawlessness.⁵  To "be perfect" as Jesus prescribes is to love without judging who may or may not be worthy of love, in the same way that God blesses all people with sunshine and rain without first sorting between the worthy and the unworthy.  Earlier in the sermon, Jesus says that people who work for peace "will be called children of God."⁶

In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus seems to be primarily concerned with mercy.  One dictionary defines mercy as "kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly" or "kindness or help given to people who are in a very bad or desperate situation."⁷  The word Jesus uses is derived from the Greek word oiktos which can be translated as "pity."⁸  He describes mercy as loving our enemies, doing good for other people, and lending without expecting repayment.  He describes God as "kind to the ungrateful and the wicked."  To live as children of God then is to "be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

According to one Gospel writer, Jesus says that to live as children of God is to be perfect by loving others without discrimination between those we like and those we dislike.  According to another, Jesus says that to live as children of God is to be merciful like God, doing good for those who do not deserve it and for those who cannot repay it.  Perhaps becoming perfect in love is our ultimate goal, and perhaps one way we move toward that goal is through practicing mercy, performing one act of undeserved kindness at a time.


Notes:

1. Adam Hamilton.  Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.  2014, Harper One.  p. 97
2. Matthew 5-7
3. Luke 6:20-49
4. See Matthew 5:43-48 and Luke 6:27-36.  Quotations from these passages are taken from the NRSV.
5. Blue Letter Bible: "teleios"
6. Matthew 5:9 (NRSV)
7. Mirriam-Webster: "mercy"
8. Blue Letter Bible: "oiktirmōn" and "oiktirō"

The Sermon on the Mount was painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in 1877.