During the Chinese New Year holiday I returned to my hometown with my family, particularly my youngest child, Sean, who was only seven years of age. It was the second time my parents and other relatives had seen Sean since he was one month old. Some said he looked like me; others said he was like my wife, still others said he was more like my second daughter when she was his age. Whatever they said, I just kept smiling without saying a word. Yet, from the deep inside of me, who do I want my youngest child grow to be like?

As I read the book of 1 John 3, the apostle John wrote to his Christians fellows that they should become like Jesus as they matured. “Dear friend, now we are children of
God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (v. 2). Just as Sean is my child he should look like me or my wife, so the children of God should be like God or his Son Jesus Christ. Here “we shall be like him” does not refer to physical likeness, instead the likeness of Christ is the way of how a child of God demonstrates his or her life as the Son of God did as he lived on earth.

There is another story told in Greek Mythology concerning sonship. As Aegeus came to the crown of Athens, on the way to a city in southern Greece, he had a child with Aethra, he told his wife, “If the child you conceived was a boy and he wanted to claim me to be his father, he should be sent to me with the sword and the pair of shoes that I placed in a hollow covered with a great stone. The child whose name was Theseus indeed was a boy and grew up strong far beyond other so that his mother told me what should do to claim to be the son of the Athenian king, Aegeus.

To claim to be the son of Aegeus, Theseus ought to demonstrate his strength and bravery. To become a child of God a person does not have to show his might or strength. Instead the love of God and others should remain in that person. For God is love, his children should be overflowing with love. To exhibit the love of God his children should lay down their lives for others as Jesus laid down for mankind (1 John 3: 16).