Galatians 4:4-7
“God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
“God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
This is totally embedded into who we are as Christ followers, redeemed, sons, daughters, heirs, and the one that gets me the most is the fact that we are no longer slaves, but children of God! Adopted, with an intimacy that enables us to cry out Abba – a relationship that calls out, runs after us through grace, a relationship that marks our identity as sons and daughters – as beloved.
Forgiveness, then plays a very integral part of our identity and in a way informs us of how to treat those around us. Because knowing our brokenness and our complete necessity for this forgiveness may provoke us to share the same undeserved forgiveness and grace with people we pass paths with every day.
Becoming foundation for the kind of people we are as followers of Christ, in other words forming our identity towards a posture of “freely received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8) which were the words Jesus spoke to the group of twelve guys who followed him around called the disciples before sending them out.
From the base of our belovedness, from the fact that you are a son and you are a daughter, think about the role forgiveness plays in your life. I would want to encourage us to think of ways that we can extend forgiveness to someone today, someone who you may not be the most comfortable with or someone you do life with very closely, a sibling, parent, or best friend because it may be a bit harder with them.