The same principle discussed in the last lesson applies to being children of God under the New Covenant.  God’s children will walk in the steps of God.  He returns good for evil in causing His sun to shine on the evil as well as the good (Matt. 5:43-45).  Those who do good to those who are evil, walk in the spiritual steps in which God walks, and are thus true children of God.  Returning good for evil makes it possible “…that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven (Matt. 5:44, 45).  When we walk in this kind of love, we are “followers of God, as dear children” (Eph. 5:1, 2).  If we do not love our enemies we are not God’s children.  Jesus was a true child of God in that he watched to see what his Father did, and then did the same thing (John 5:19, 20).  If we walk in the steps of Christ, and do only what we see Christ doing, we will be walking in the steps of God and be his children also.  This is not talking about the physical steps of the Nazarene that walked the dusty roads of Jerusalem.  This is walking in the spiritual steps of Jesus, some of which were humility (Phil. 2:5-8), meekness (Matt. 11:28-30), growing in wisdom and in favor with God (Luke 2:52), sanctifying oneself (John 17:19), suffering for having done right (1 Pet. 2:18-23), etc. .

Though God’s children can see the spiritual kingdom and the world of that kingdom, they can lose their spiritual sight, after they have been born. He told the Christians in Galatia etc., “But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (2 Pet. 1:9).  Some Christians were so blind they did not see even the first principles (Heb. 5:11, 12).  The Laodiceans had lost their spiritual sight and did not know it (Rev. 3:17). God will take His sight back again if a man is not careful how he hears (Luke 8:18).  This spiritual birth is a birth strictly by and from God (John 1:10-13).  These souls “. . . were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).  This is not to say Calvinism is true. Unless man does his part, God will not give birth to him.  There is an essential qualification before one can even have power to become a child of God (John 1:12).  We will study more on that later.