Episode 24
Day 24: Lavished Love: Living as God’s Children
In episode 24 of In Light of the Cross, we pray and reflect on God’s fatherly love through 1 John 3:1–3, marveling that sinners are called—not just servants—but children of God.
We talk about the “now and not yet” of our identity, using the caterpillar-to-butterfly picture to show both continuity and radical transformation in what we’ll become when Christ appears. We discuss how this future hope shapes the present, moving us toward purity and a love that reflects God’s own—free, generous, and without strings.
Turning to Romans 8, we see God’s love most clearly in the cross: He did not spare His Son, so we can trust He’s “for us” and committed to our ultimate good, playing the long game beyond our timelines and problems.
00:00 Welcome and Setup
00:20 Prayerful Focus
00:52 Reading 1 John 3
01:39 Lavished Love and Identity
02:55 Caterpillar to Butterfly Hope
04:31 Hope That Purifies
05:30 Gods Love Without Strings
08:00 Fatherly Love and Long Game
09:07 Romans 8 Cross Shaped Love
10:51 Application When Life Hurts 12:54 Closing Lords Prayer
Transcript
Welcome back.
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:This is episode 24 of the podcast.
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:In Light of the Cross, The last couple
days we've been talking about the
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:beautiful concept that God calls us, his
own sons and daughters, trying to flesh
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:out a little bit of what that means today.
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:We're gonna do that one more
time with a little bit different
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:angle that I think is wonderful
and challenging at the same time.
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:Let's begin with a word of prayer.
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:Ask God to reveal what he wants you
to know and what he wants you to do.
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:Ask him to put away other
things from your mind.
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:engage with him through prayer
for the next 30 seconds.
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:So Nathan.
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:Today we want to talk about
the love of God, especially as
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:it relates to his fatherhood.
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:There's a passage I
wanted us to start with.
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:Would you mind reading First John
three verses one through three?
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:Yeah.
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:It says, see what great love the
father has lavished on us, that we
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:should be called Children of God.
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:And that is what we are.
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:The reason the world does not know
us is that it does not know him.
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:Dear friends, now we are the children of
God and what we will be has not yet been
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:made known, but we know that when Christ
appears we shall be like him, for we shall
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:see him as he is all who have this hope in
him, purify themselves just as he is pure.
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:This is one of my favorite passages.
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:Number one, just that whole idea of
behold, look at this manner of love
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:that we, you and I, sinners like us,
should be called children of God.
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:Not just servants of God, not just
followers of Christ, but children of God.
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:What love he says.
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:And indeed, it's hard to get
your mind around that, isn't it?
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:Yeah.
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:It's a thought worth.
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:Meditating on for the rest of our lives.
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:Yeah, indeed.
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:I mean, my, my goodness.
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:See what wonderful love the
father has lavished on us.
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:Right.
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:I love that lavished word so good.
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:I do too.
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:Yeah.
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:Yeah.
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:More than is necessary by far.
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:Just lavished.
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:Yeah.
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:So gracious and generous.
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:Yeah.
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:And then the second part of that, he
says, now we are the children of God.
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:Well, what we will be, and so
just like we talked about last
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:time, there's two aspects of this.
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:Time-wise at least.
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:There's when God makes it happen
and there's, when we experience it
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:now, we are the children of God.
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:In his mind it's already settled and done.
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:It will happen, but we
don't experience that yet.
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:As we talked about last
time, what we will be.
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:Has not yet been revealed to us.
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:I like to think of caterpillars
and butterflies in this context.
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:I'm not sure if John knew about
Caterpillars and butterflies.
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:Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
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:But anyway, we do, and you can imagine
the caterpillars getting together and
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:talking about how they're gonna have
life after death, their caterpillar
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:life is gonna go on forever.
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:And of course that's not
what's gonna happen, right?
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:If someone could convey to them,
okay, you're not gonna live as
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:caterpillars, you're gonna live as a
creature who can fly, and they'd be.
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:What's fly?
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:You know you're gonna have wings.
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:What are wings?
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:You're gonna have these beautiful colors.
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:What are colors, you know, and patterns
they would not be able to understand
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:because their whole life is formed around,
dominated by their caterpillar mind.
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:Whatever Caterpillar mind is
like, and in the same way.
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:What we are, there's a continuity
between our present body and our future
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:resurrected body, our glorious body,
but it's also more of a contrast.
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:There's continuity, but
also radical discontinuity.
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:Paul talked about in acorn
versus an elk, for example.
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:But I like the caterpillar and butterfly
because what we will be goes beyond
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:what we can understand right now.
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:That's why it hasn't been revealed to us.
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:We wouldn't get it.
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:And maybe if we did, it would
pop us up with pride too much.
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:Who knows?
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:But that's the promise.
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:So we are that.
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:Now, we're not worms, we're caterpillars.
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:We don't know what our future's gonna
look like 'cause it goes beyond us
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:the future is going to be something
more glorious than we can understand.
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:And then that last part, he says,
everyone who has this hope in them in
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:other words, everyone who puts this
in the front of their minds as their
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:goal and what they're excited about
purifies themself just as he is pure.
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:they don't have to be told.
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:Don't sin, don't do this.
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:They have a desire to be pure before
God who has done all this, and also
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:who is the image of what they will be.
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:Yeah.
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:There's there's a way in which
future things impact the present.
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:I mean, if you wanna go on vacation, then
you do planning and you save your money
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:or whatever, you know, there's a future
reality that impacts the present and he's
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:saying, look, we have a foretaste of this.
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:We know that we're children of God.
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:Our spirit testifies with the
spirit that we are children of God.
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:Just like that passage we read yesterday.
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:and in light of that, because of the great
love that God has lavished on us now,
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:there is a way that we live in the present
that, eagerly desires that future state.
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:Right.
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:Exactly.
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:And I like how John wraps us all up in
that phrase, behold, what manner of love?
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:Because I don't think we can
really get to the bottom of
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:understanding our God's love for us.
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:I recall in Paul's prayers very often
saying, Ephesians three, he says, I pray
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:that you would understand the depth and
the breadth of the love of God, and to
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:know this love that goes beyond knowledge.
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:So he resorts to paradox here.
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:What a, Foundational thing that we
grow in our understanding of God's
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:love for us expressed on the cross.
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:So it's good I think, to reflect
on that and just how that
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:love is totally committed to.
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:Our good God needs nothing from us.
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:There is nothing that we can give him.
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:That he doesn't necessarily have himself
other than just whatever joy he gets
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:out of our free trust and obedience.
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:He doesn't need our worship,
he doesn't need our offerings,
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:he doesn't need our gifts.
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:He is the one who formed all
things and created all things.
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:This is simply an act of love.
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:His love is totally free.
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:In our interactions with other
people, they're not always free
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:because we want something from them.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:Not always, but normally we want
them to treat us in a certain way.
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:Sometimes they do a certain thing for us.
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:Uh, even in the best human relationships,
there is that element that, okay, if this
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:is totally one sided 24 7, I'm probably
gonna bow out of this relationship.
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:Right?
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:Mm-hmm.
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:but God has no needs like that.
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:And so he's able to offer
us a totally free love.
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:I wonder if that's what John means by
purifying ourselves just as he's pure.
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:Oh, yeah.
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:I mean, I'm sure that there are multiple
layers of meaning here, but that the,
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:the purity of God's love without strings
attached, that there's a way, 'cause he's
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:connecting it all in, in this letter.
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:Connecting our love for others
and embedding that in the
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:love of God for us, right?
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:And so there's a purity of God's love
for us that is free and generous, lavish.
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:and part of that, if this rule of love is
kind of the whole summary of the law and
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:the prophets, if, if loving God and loving
others are the first and second most,
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:important laws then that love that the
way that we love others, ought to approach
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:the purity of love that God has for us.
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:Right?
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:Or as Paul says in Romans, if
you love, you fulfill the law.
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:Yeah.
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:So, okay.
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:Another thing we see here in the
last few days is we talked about the
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:love of God for us as a father, is
that he is committed to our good.
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:And I don't think I've met a parent,
a mother or father yet who didn't
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:want the good as they understood
it, at least for their child.
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:And so God also desires our ultimate
good and he is committed to that.
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:Now, he defines that sometimes
differently than we might because he
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:defines that in terms of our ultimate
conformity to what we are created to be
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:an individual and perfect expression.
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:Of Jesus Christ reigning with
Christ in a unique way within
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:this world, the new creation.
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:And so he talks about being
conformed to the image of Jesus
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:Christ in Romans 8 28 and 29.
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:He is committed to the long game.
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:His love cannot be interpreted by whether
he's solving our problems the way that we
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:want and in the timeframe that we want.
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:Sometimes he does that and
it's a gracious act of God.
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:It's a token of his love, but
ultimately is seen in what he
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:has done for us on the cross.
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:So you had a passage there from Romans
a towards the end of the chapter.
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:I think you he had pulled
that up, right, Nathan?
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:Yeah.
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:This whole thing, called in
light of the cross, and so.
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:Really where we see God's love
most purely is on the cross.
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:Listen to what Paul says.
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:He says this at the end of the, uh,
Romans eight, he says, what, what then
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:shall we say in response to these things?
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:Now these things is referring to
the fact that we are children of God
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:and that our spirits testify with
his spirit, that we are children.
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:If you've been following this is the
past couple days, he says, what then
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:shall we say in response to these things?
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:If God is for us, who can be against us?
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:He who did not spare his own
son, but gave him up for us all.
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:How will he not also along with
him graciously give us all things.
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:God's love is seen most purely in
the fact that he gave his son for us.
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:That through Jesus we are able to
be restored into relationship with
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:him, uh, made into the kinds of
people he has, um, created us to be.
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:I love just the summary of what we've
been talking about, the love of God.
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:It's lavish.
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:It's so gracious and generous.
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:It's committed to our
freedom and our good.
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:And it's not just temporary,
but God's playing the long game.
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:He is.
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:He is forming us into
people of love by his love.
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:Yeah.
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:And that's a beautiful thing.
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:And so for all of us who hope in this
future, let us walk in light of that,
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:purifying ourselves just as he is pure.
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:Hmm.
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:Good thoughts.
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:so as a way of application, I want
to invite you to think about the ways
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:that you have thought about God's love
for you in the past and in particular,
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:how you've evaluated guy's presence
and help in your life based on how
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:he's maybe solved your problem.
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:I remember the title of a.
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:Young adult book
published some years back.
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:If God loves me, why
can't I open my locker?
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:that title stuck with me because very
often in our minds it's like, if God
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:loves me, why am I struggling in this
relation with my spouse or my children?
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:Why do I or someone I love have such
profound and painful health problems?
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:Why are we struggling so much financially?
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:If God loves me, why
isn't he fixing all this?
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:And the answer is that he's playing
the long game and using all those
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:things for our ultimate good.
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:He's not so much interested in just
being a cosmic vending machine.
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:He's a father.
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:And just like we often know much
better than our toddlers or even older
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:child, what's ultimately the right
thing for them and for their good.
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:So God does also, so I invite
you in the time of reflection.
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:To bring those things before your
thoughts, to pray through them,
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:to receive God's love in prayer.
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:Say, God, show me your love for me.
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:Show me how you might be using the
things in my life that I'm struggling
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:with for your ultimate purposes.
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:Thank you that you're playing the long
game and you're playing it for my good.
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:Not because you need me,
but because you love me.
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:Let's conclude by praying to our
loving, gracious, and generous.
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:Good Father, our father
in heaven, hallow it.
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:Be your name.
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:Your kingdom come, your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
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:Give us today our daily bread
and forgive us our debts as we
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:also have forgiven our debtors.
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:And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
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:Amen.
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:Amen.
