You have collected a number of names over the course of your life. Some were given to you by people who saw you clearly. Others were given by people who saw you at your worst moment and decided that was the whole picture. Some names you gave to yourself, based on your own reading of your failures, your limitations, the gap between who you wanted to be and who you have managed to become so far.
Those names have weight. Even the ones you never believed entirely. Even the ones you pushed back against. They have shaped the way you think about yourself in the quiet moments when no one is watching.
There is another name. And it carries more authority than any of those.
The Language of Lavish Love
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1
The word lavished is not restrained. It is the language of excess, of generosity that goes past the point of calculation. John is not describing a moderate affection. He is describing the kind of love that gives more than was asked for, more than was expected, more than could have been anticipated.
And out of that love, a name: children of God. Not admirers of God. Not servants of God. Not people who are trying their best to be acceptable to God. Children.
What the Name Carries
A name given by a father carries things that a label assigned by circumstances cannot. It carries belonging. It carries lineage. It carries the full weight of the one who gave it.
To be called a child of God is to be placed inside a family that was not formed by behaviour. You did not qualify for this name. It was not awarded on the basis of your performance or your consistency or your theological understanding. It was given, the way all true family membership is given, not earned.
That means it cannot be revoked on the same basis. What God did not give on the basis of your performance, he does not take back on the basis of your failure.
The Name the World Does Not Recognise
John adds something important immediately after the opening declaration: The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1 John 3:1
This is a significant note. The name God has given you is not always legible to the world around you. The world has its own criteria for belonging, its own system of naming, its own hierarchy of value. By those criteria, the child of God is not always recognisable as anything exceptional.
But the name does not depend on the recognition of the world. It was not assigned by the world and it is not maintained by the world. Its authority comes from the one who spoke it, and his authority does not require the agreement of the world.
Living From the Name
There is a difference between knowing a name and living from it. You may be able to state, accurately, that you are a child of God. You may have said it in church and written it in a journal and believed it in the moments when life is going well. But there is a quieter, more persistent version of yourself that still reaches for the other names when pressure comes.
When you fail, the old names feel more true. When you are rejected, the labels others placed on you in your worst moments seem more accurate than the one God has spoken over you.
Living from the name means returning to it in those moments. Not as a spiritual exercise, but as an act of theological honesty. The name God has given you is not a comforting fiction. It is a statement of actual reality. The Father has called you his child. That is what you are.
The Practice of Remembering
John writes see what great love. The instruction to see is not passive. It is a direction to your attention, an invitation to look at something that is already there but that is easy to miss when you are distracted by the other names.
The practice of living from your identity in Christ begins with the habit of looking at what God has said and letting it have the first word in the room where you are defining yourself.
The names the world has given you are loud. The name the Father has given you is quiet and permanent and true.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1
When God calls you his child, he is not being generous with the truth. He is stating it.
