How great the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. (1 John 3:1)
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. (1 John 5:1-2)
These teachings from the apostle who may have been closest to Jesus instruct us well about our relationship to the Father and our relationships to other believers.
Firstly, by accepting Christ we are taken in an intimate way directly into the family of God. It seems clear too, that those who reject the Creator God are left out of that family. To be in God's family is a position of extreme privilege! It is because of our proper understanding of that position that we strive to follow his commands.
Secondly, each and every person who is a child of God is expected to love all other children of God in the same way that members of a human family are expected to have love for other members in that family. This idea may be foreign to some in this day, because not every family of today is held together by an authoritative and loving father. Nevertheless, we need to keep this concept in mind as we interact with each other in our larger Christian family.
