Philippians 2:15

Philippians 2:15

Sons of God.

I. Sons of God. Let us inquire into the nature of the relationship. (1) The sons of God are here clearly distinguished from the world. It is a title in whose honour all then living, man as man, had not a right to share. But how does this square with the doctrine of the universal fatherhood, with the right which we claim for every human spirit to say, "My Father," with the assertion which we maintain that in regeneration a relation to God is not for the first time created, but renewed, and in a higher and more glorious form restored? I think we shall see our way through the difficulty if we recognise that children and sons are not coordinate here. The one is a higher power of the other; the one is the base out of which the other is to be evolved. The children, those made in the Father's likeness, alone can become sons, children of His Spirit; but before the child grows into the son there must have been a spiritual unfolding of the Father's likeness, which makes the children sons indeed. Man universally may be a child of the great Father; but he may be a sensual child, a rebellious child, a sullen, envious child, a prodigal child; and to such God accords not the name of sons. Children He still calls them; a Father's duties He still amply fulfils; a Father's tenderness He feels; a Father's sorrows He knows: but sons they are not; they cannot be until the spirit of sonship is in them, until all the higher and heaven-born elements of their being conspire to make the relation of the child effectual to the gladdening of the Father's home, the doing of the Father's work, the blessing of the Father's heart. (2) And this is what regeneration means. It is the begetting of the spiritual sonship, the carrying up of the child's relation through all the higher powers and faculties of the human spirit, and yielding to God this child complete. And this needs a spiritual regeneration. Life must be kindled from the source of life and grow by communion with it.

II. The manifestation of sonship and its fruits. Christ first exalted goodness to the throne of the world. Force had been the Divine thing till then. It was to be the sheer force of goodness which should bear the Christian on to the spiritual conquest of mankind. There is nothing exclusive about sonship. "Holding forth the word of life." Why? That men may live also. The sons are to be magnets to draw the children to the Father, that they may be received as sons. This is the essential element of the light that they are to hold forth: the word of life, the word of sonship, the word of regeneration; they are to reveal the Father and the sons. One glimpse of a home to an exile is the sweetest attraction you can offer. That is the meaning of a Church: God's home; Christ's home for souls. And what a Church is on a large scale a home should be on a small one. This it is to be a light in the world, and to hold forth the word of life. God is calling for sons, that He may win more. Each son won home becomes a source of vital attraction and compels others. His house is filling fast. Each generation yields its elect spirits to people heaven; but there is room yet, will be room, till that great day of restitution, "the day of the manifestation of the sons of God."

J. B. Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 40.

References: Philippians 2:15. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 250; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 462; F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth,p. 316. Philippians 2:15 . Outline Sermons to Children,p. 251.