The title of this post says it all.  The idea of sonship has been something that has big in my life for the last couple of years and a significant part of my own restoration and walk with the Father.  Since my walk really began, a significant passion that has burned in my heart is in men’s ministry.  Like myself, I have known and still know so many many men that do not understand who they truly are and who they have been created to be.  Many, if not most, are still very much rooted in their false-self, whether they know it or not.  I was deeply rooted in my false-self and did not know at all who I truly was and who I was created to be and what I have already been called because of the finished works of Jesus Christ, should I accept.  That is my identity as a son.

The definition of sonship as provided by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “The relationship of son to father.”  I have learned a great deal in this recently, especially with my walk in the teachings of John Eldredge, Morgan Snyder, and others through the ministry of Ransomed Heart.  Sonship. So what does this truly mean.  For one thing, we know the doctrinal teaching of Jesus as the Son of God and that in Sonship, Jesus always was the Son of God as a part of the God’s triune nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In Peterson’s translation, The Message in John 16:28, Jesus says, “I left the Father and arrived in the world; now I leave the world and travel to the Father.”  Jesus was always the Son.  The secret makes Jesus unstoppable is the abiding place of a son to a father.

So there, you have that Jesus is the Son.  What about us?  Paul writes in Ephesians 1:5 that from the very beginning the Father “…predestined us to adoption as sons though Jesus Christ to Himself”.  Romans 8:15 says that “…the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.'”  That’s just the surface, but that tells a lot about who we are, but a lot about who we all to often to claim to be.  We are sons of the Father in Christ.  Our identity is rooted in that.  As Morgan Snyder stated, “Our greatest identity is son.”  That’s who we are and that’s who we were created to be.  Sons and children of the God the Father.

Talking especially to men here.  We have serious problem that has developed.  We have lost this identity.  We don’t know God as Father and don’t know ourselves as sons.  All too often this condition is rooted in a form of fatherlessness and wounds we’ve suffered.  I have learned that this identity is the primary place that we’re assaulted by the enemy, by the world, and by our false-self.   The primary place where we establish our view of our Heavenly Father is based on our experiences with our earthly father, good or bad.  We have all been wounded in some way.  In that, we don’t truly get to know the Father as Abba or Pappa.  George McDonald wrote that it’s better to not know the Father than to know Him wrong.

What is the answer to this loss of our identity?  There is only one answer and always been one answer.  Jesus Christ.  “The Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).  This is part of what was lost.  Our identity as sons.  Our true heart and true nature as we were originally created to be. That’s what has been lost in so many and you can see it all over the place.  That’s why fatherlessness is so high across our society.  A prime reason why so many marriages fail has a lot to do with men who have just lost who they are are and don’t know how lead their marriage and family from the abiding place as a son to the Father.  They have lost their identity.

God has invited us to leave that fatherless place in us to be Fathered by Him.  He has called us into sonship through Jesus Christ.  We need men to understand this and learn to live from this.  When you find this place and find this identity and begin to live from sonship, WOW!!!  The changes that begin to unfold are amazing.  It’s not without challenges and it takes time to truly learn to live in this, but you have to start somewhere.  And when you fall, you rise again.  As the saying goes from Robin Hood, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.”

You have been called son.  God has predestined that to each us.  We have to make the choice to fight for that identity and live as sons.