Children of God

Catholics are true sons and daughters of a loving Father, baptized into God’s family and able to share in his divine life.

Even though God created all men and continually loves them and provides for their needs, not all people are children of God.

While Jesus is naturally the Son of God, Christians become true sons and daughters of God by the sanctifying grace of Baptism. They are permanently marked as God’s own.

It is only by being baptized that a person becomes a new creation with the same nature as their Creator. Then they are able to attain real union with God and are eligible to inherit the gift of Eternal Life with Him in Heaven.

As holy children of God, Catholics live out their faith while trying to grow in holiness by learning the ways of God, obeying his Commandments, and following his will.

Unlike the works of a slave trying to earn salvation, the deeds of a child of God are the joyful works of a child demonstrating love for their Father, united with his Son, and with help from the Holy Spirit.

What Christ was by nature, we become by grace:

You belong:

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.
1 John 3: 1-3

Baptized into God’s family:

Becoming God’s adopted son’s and daughters:

Not every person is a child of God:

We are born without doing anything ourselves, the passivity of being born precedes the activity of what we ourselves do. It is also the same at the level of being Christian: no one can become Christian solely by one’s own will, being Christian is also a gift that comes before our own action: we must be reborn in a new birth. St John says: “to all who received Him… He gave power to become children of God”. This is the meaning of the Sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is this new birth that precedes our own action. With our faith we can go to meet Christ, but He alone can make us Christian and give to our will and to this desire of ours the response, dignity and power to become children of God, which we ourselves do not possess.
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 8 January 2012

The reflection of God’s own beloved Son:

Called to become like Jesus:

The Symbol of the faith confesses the greatness of God’s gifts to man in his work of creation, and even more in redemption and sanctification. What faith confesses, the sacraments communicate: by the sacraments of rebirth, Christians have become “children of God,” “partakers of the divine nature.” Coming to see in the faith their new dignity, Christians are called to lead henceforth a life “worthy of the gospel of Christ.” They are made capable of doing so by the grace of Christ and the gifts of his Spirit, which they receive through the sacraments and through prayer.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1692

Taking on a new identity:

The root of our courage: