Children of Inheritance

When we are born, we inherit from our parents.  Be it genetic material or family traditions, every human being is a composite of inherited components that the person will carry with them. Additional to this is the inherited sin nature, that deep part of every human that is prone to sin.  This inheritance is perishable and ultimately leads to death and destruction.

Luckily, believers who, having put the sin nature to death by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, have become qualified by the blood of Christ to become heirs to something else, a new imperishable inheritance.  The New Testament puts forth a theology of inheritance that can be challenging to understand but is necessary to comprehend in order to claim the fullness of riches that we receive in Christ.

In Christ, by belief in Him and His work, we are made children of God ( Rom. 8:16-17; 1 John 3:1).  To be a child of God is dependent on one being born again of the Spirit (John 3).  It is the necessary requirement of inheritance: we must become heirs.  The natural implication of this is that in order for us to be heirs, we must be born of God.  To be born of God is dependent on the grace of God in Christ through faith. Thus, when we give ourselves fully to Christ Jesus in faith, we become heirs with Christ Jesus, adopted into the family of God.

This adoption is two-fold.  At first it is based on present blessings, as in, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who guides and compels us to continually deny ourselves and gifts us spiritual with every good thing necessary for perseverant and loving faith, i.e. sanctification.  This inheritance is now, received upon the moment of belief and confession in Christ.

The second, and more profound, sense of our adoption refers to our eternal inheritance, the gift of being in God's presence eternally.  As Paul writes in Colossians, the "Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1:12).  Or, as Peter writes, we are born again to an inheritance that is "imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us (1 Pet. 1:3-4)."  Our inheritance is thus something beyond temporal or corporeal trappings.  Our inheritance is perfect and eternal.  Additionally, our qualifications for eternal inheritance is based solely on the work of Christ.

Inheritance is received upon the death of the willing benefactor.  In the case of believers' inheritance, it is Christ who has died and blessed us witha  holy and eternal inheritance.  This being clearly true, there is another who dies in order to receive the inheritance of Christ: ourselves.  We need to die so as to live and be brought into the family of God and heirs with Christ of the inheritance.  Dying to self in order to be made alive to Christ is the requisite that qualifies us to inherit the blessings of God.  Let us the die to ourselves so as to receive the inheritance of Christ!