Family Resemblance

This week we discover how Romans 8, Matthew 7, and John 15 answer the same question: What does a true child of God look like?—one who has been adopted by the Father, transformed by the Spirit, and bears the family resemblance by abiding in Christ.

https://youtu.be/42oTzqvZIfs

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Family Resemblance

Good Morning. Our nephew, Steph’s brother’s son, came to visit with us this week. We haven’t seen him in probably 12 years. And one of the things you notice about family you haven’t seen for a long time is how kids grow to resemble their parents, and more than in looks. A two-year-old doesn’t talk like his father, but if you give him a few years, somehow he’s got the same laugh and, “unique vocabulary” of his parents. Nobody sat him down for family lessons on words or behavior. It just happened, slowly, the longer he lives in that house.

Children don’t start out resembling their parents behavior, they grow into it.

Now keep that thought in your mind as we listen to today’s lessons. At first glance they may seem unrelated. In Romans, Paul is talking about adoption, one of my favorite preaching topics. In Matthew, Jesus is warning us about false prophets and bad trees. One passage is warm and comforting. The other is unsettling. One reminds us that those in Christ are God’s children. The other warns that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” belongs to Him.

But I think they are asking the same question. What does a child of God look like? Jesus begins with a warning. “Beware of false prophets.” When we hear that, we might think of celebrity preachers falling into scandals. But Jesus moves somewhere very personal. “You will recognize them by their fruits.”

Fruit, meaning not just what they say, but how they treat people, how they handle pressure, what comes out when life squeezes them.

Then He says something that is very hard to hear:

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. 

He doesn’t say, “Those who have never been to church.” He doesn’t say, “Those who don’t read their Bible or pray enough.”

He says there are people who know the right vocabulary. They call Him Lord. They may even be sincere. But words alone are not enough.

So naturally the question becomes, If saying “Lord” isn’t enough, then what marks someone as His? Here is where Paul helps us. Romans doesn’t begin with fruit. Romans begins with family. Paul says,

You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father!

Adoption was/is a legal act. It’s not based on feelings. I belong to God not because I feel HOLY this morning, but because God brought me into His family and into his home. God didn’t simply forgive us and tell us to go on our way. He gave us His name, His Spirit, and made us heirs with Christ.

When a child is adopted into a family, they shouldn’t spend the rest of their lives wondering whether they’ve earned the family name. They’re family, through thick and thin. Through Christ we’ve gone from being enemies to children. From outsiders to heirs. From fear to “Abba, Father.”

Now here’s where Romans and Matthew come together. Children begin to act like/mimic their parents. Not overnight. But inevitably. That’s true physically. And in the biblical sense, it’s also true spiritually. Jesus says good trees bear good fruit. Paul says God’s children are led by God’s Spirit. Those aren’t two different ideas. They’re the same truth seen from different sides. Jesus looks at the outside. Paul explains what’s happening on the inside. The fruit doesn’t make the tree alive, but a living tree produces fruit. 

Paul reminds us where the Christian life begins. It begins with what God has done. Not with what we’ve done. The order matters. 

It begins with God adopting us. He sends his Spirit. And then, day by day, he continues to change our hearts and minds from the inside out, making us more and more like Christ. Then the fruit begins to grow.

That doesn’t mean the fruit is optional. Far from it. That’s Jesus’ point. Healthy trees bear fruit because that’s what healthy trees do. Apple trees don’t wake up every spring trying to become apple trees. They simply produce what they are. And you see it in your life, especially when it squeezes us.

You want to see what this looks like when life squeezes us? Look at Jeremiah in the Old Testament lesson. Here is a man whose fruit was flowing out of him almost unwillingly. He was done. He was sick of the mocking, sick of the rejection, sick of being ridiculed and beaten up for preaching what God told him to preach, and finally said, “I’m done. I’m never gonna preach in God’s name anymore!” But then comes one of the great lines in Scripture in v. 9

Sometimes I think, I won’t mention His message. I won’t speak as his messenger anymore. But then His message becomes like a fire locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. I grow weary of trying to hold it in;

He couldn’t keep it in because the life of God had taken hold of him.

What was inside him eventually came out. That’s fruit flowing from what God has made him. When you read all of chapter 20, it’s clear Jeremiah wasn’t trying to manufacture faithfulness. God’s Word had become part of who he was. That’s exactly what Jesus means by fruit. Eventually the inside becomes visible. Jesus sums up putting together adoption and fruit in John 15 when He says:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

The idea of a grape vine and its branches, if you’re not as familiar with that image, is the same as a tree trunk and its branches. Branches can only survive and produce anything if they’re connected to the trunk, the source.

Notice what He doesn’t say? “Go out and produce fruit,” He says,

Abide in Me.      Stay connected to Me.       Draw your life from Me.

So how will we abide in Christ this week? There’s the easy church answer of prayer, and reading the Bible, but practically, what do we do to resemble Jesus.

Maybe taking 30 seconds before we respond to an annoying text or email, asking for Christ’s patience? Breathing a prayer at a stoplight instead of grumbling at the car in front of us? The more we abide in Christ, through His Word, and in prayer, the more His life begins to shape ours. Maybe the best compliment a Christian could receive is not that people find us religious. But that when they spend time us, people catch a glimpse of Christ and see in us the Family Resemblance.