I have two brothers, and the three of us now live in three different states.  Whenever my brothers and I are able to get together, the conversation inevitably turns to telling stories from our childhood.  We reminisce and laugh about the many dumb things we did as kids - things that weren't necessarily funny then (and if you ask our mother, aren't any funnier thirty years later).

I remember the time our parents were out for the evening and we spent the time lighting firecrackers in the house and throwing them out the front door.  I remember the time I thought I could spin the car around on the snow covered driveway and wound up stuck in the middle of my father's perfectly manicured lawn.  I remember shooting each other with BB guns; dumping ice water on each other in the shower; hiding in the closet to scare each other; broken rules; violated curfews; smashed windows; visits to the principal's office; and wrecked cars (my brother David to this day does not know how the oil pan got torn off the bottom of the engine in his car - that's his story and he's sticking to it).

As I think back to what I like to call "The Adventures of the Stephenson Brothers," I am reminded that no matter what we did, no matter how we disappointed or frustrated our parents, we never stopped being their children.  That's because we were their children by birth, not behavior.  The relationship that results from a birth could not be nullified or terminated by anything we did.

Oh, there were times we wished we were not their children.  Punishments were handed out.  Spankings were given.  Privileges were withheld.  And I'm sure there were many times they were embarrassed to admit we belonged to them.  But even then, although the family fellowship may have been disrupted, the family relationship was intact.

So it is with us and our Heavenly Father.  Even when a born again Christian sins, he is still a child of God because he is born of God. That relationship is permanent and eternal.  The Christian has been given, (not "earned") eternal life and shall never perish, so says God in John 3:15-16. Jesus suffered and died for ALL of our sins, paid the debt in full, rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds. Either He paid for all our sins -- past, present and future -- or He did not. God said He did.

This truth does not give us license to sin any more than knowing I'm my parents' child by birth gave me license to violate curfew just one more time.  But it does give us peace and security to know that even when we fail and disappoint the Father, He still calls us His children.