From Discipleship to Sonship

"From Sonship to Discipleship" by Elder E.D. McCutcheon (SEE HERE) promotes the standard and now popular theological motto in which Hardshells affirm that one becomes a son or child of God first, and then possibly becomes a disciple. This teaching affirms that many who are not disciples of Lord God, or of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, being even disciples of false gods and lords, are nevertheless "regenerated" and "born again" and therefore sons of God. This is all promoted as being against the common Christian view that some discipleship precedes conversion or regeneration.

In the future, the Lord willing, I will show the falsity of this idea in the context of writing a series of articles on the new testament teaching regarding "the adoption of sons." Hardshells, like many others, are as much in error in understanding biblical adoption as they are in understanding regeneration and new birth.

In a mini ordo salutis regarding the time period between becoming "children" (Grk. "teknon") by birth and becoming mature glorified, and perfected "sons" of God (what our English version erroneously calls "adoption") there is growth, which is the substance of discipleship.

We are predestined not to become simply "children" of God, babies, but to become "men" or "sons" of God, fully grown into the full stature of the measure of Christ, But, Hardshells do not realize that being predestined to sonship, with all that such entails, involves predestinating the children to grow and mature and reach the end for which they were born or created.

So, we are born to become children of God, and having become children of God, we then progress to full sonship, and to that time when we will be fully like our Father and have all his authority and blessing, which makes "adoption" (huiosethia or son placement) entirely future. More to come.