Is our true origin and heritage based on material conditions and genetics? Or is it pure, eternal, and spiritual? We find insight on this in First John, where we read, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God” (3:2). This divine fact, that right now we all are the very sons and daughters of God, Spirit, provides the basis for healing. It reforms, reconciles, and renews. It means that here and now we, as God’s image and likeness, are already perfect. We’re already whole. We’re already complete. And as the beloved children of our loving Father, we are heirs only to His kingdom and the good it includes.
This understanding of our true genesis and identity removes material limitations. Our pure, spiritual heritage is untouched by matter, because it has its basis in pure, divine Spirit, uncontaminated and unrestricted by material claims. Jeremiah, sharing God’s message, writes, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee” (1:5). This is a statement of our undefiled relationship to our heavenly Father, indicating that wholly apart from mortal stages of experience, we are created by God, ordained by Him. God’s divine conception of each one of us, His beloved child, is as His immortal idea. God foreknows us as His perfect and whole offspring.
Mary Baker Eddy writes: “With God, knowledge is necessarily foreknowledge; and foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, in an infinite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must foreordain; else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yet which He cannot avert” (Unity of Good, p. 19). All that God knows of our genesis is wholeness and perfection. And because God knows this to be our inheritance, it is indeed ours, and it is good. If something is not known by God, good, it is not part of our heritage.
