Conversion viii / Adoption
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
(I Jn.3:1-2)
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.
(Heb.2:10-11)
He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
(Eph.1:5)
One of the most extraordinary claims of the Bible is that when we become Christians we are adopted into the family of God. We’re so used to it that we might almost forget how breath-taking a privilege it is. As we’ve seen several times in this series, the glory of what it means often comes into sharp relief when we consider not only what we are saved to, but also what we are saved from. Perhaps most stark is Jesus’ own designation of the religious leaders as children of the devil (Jn.8:42-47); but only slightly less disturbing is Paul’s language in Eph.2:2-3, where in describing the Ephesians’ reality before becoming Christians, he writes literally of how they followed ‘the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh (sinful nature) and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath’ (emphasis added). The NIV’s translation obscures the fact that Adoption is a central theme in the letter, and the familial contrast very intentional (see 1:5, 1:14, where inheritance is linked to adoption, 1:17, 2:18-19, 3:6, 3:14-15, 4:6, 4:14, 5:1, 5:8). Against this background, the idea that we are now adopted into the family of God is staggering.
Justification speaks to the legal status we enjoy before God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness (see study 4). Whilst Adoption also has a legal aspect, it speaks much more directly and intimately to the question of our relational acceptance on the basis of Christ’s own sonship. On this basis God – who we can now call ‘our Father’ (Jn.20:17) – bestows on us all the privileges, blessings and responsibilities of family life. These legal and relational undercurrents can help us to understand an important reality in our Christian experience. The legal status of our adoption does not change, irrespective of the relational dynamics at play in any given moment. This is the grounds of our assurance even when we ‘feel’ far from our Father for whatever reason.
One of the highest privileges of adoption is our access to God in prayer. As we are now identified with Jesus, our Brother, we are able to come before His Father as our Father. Jesus consistently approached God as His Father (Matt.11:25; 26:39, Jn.17:1 etc., in fact the only exception is His cry of dereliction, Matt.27:46). We would never dare such presumption without explicit mandate from Christ. Even then, the invitation to such intimacy threatens irreverence. We keep our balance by remembering that He remains ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name’ (Matt.6:9). Our Father remains our Lord.
The Fatherhood of God is also understood by Jesus to be the context of our spiritual disciplines, and the grounds of our freedom from worry (see Matt.6); and likely of our receiving the Holy Spirit with a view to our growing more like our Brother in the family likeness (Lk.11:13; Rom.8:14; Phil.2:15). This sense of growing to be like our Father is a key idea linked with our being children of God (Eph.5:1, I Pet.1:14-16). It lies in the background to Heb.12:4-11, which alerts us to the fact that the love of our Father means He is not willing to leave our sin unchallenged. As Judge, God no longer sees, or remembers our sin as something for which we need to be judged. He ‘blots out our transgressions … and remembers our sins no more’ (Is.43:25). But as Father, He continues to see them as something which hinders our pursuit of the ‘family-likeness’. In Hebrews this is celebrated as confirming God’s love for us, and that liberates us so that ‘we can share in His holiness’ (II Cor.6:18-7:1).
Few other aspects of our salvation speak to our hearts and redeem our emotional life so deeply as the idea of adoption.
Questions
If prayer is so critically linked to adoption, what does this mean for those who aren’t Christians? Should we encourage people who aren’t Christians to pray e.g. the Lord’s Prayer?
If we are supposed to reflect the life and character of our God, should Christians be expected to adopt as part of our discipleship?
Based on this study, and from your own knowledge of the Bible, how would cast the doctrine of adoption in explicitly Trinitarian terms? What would the benefits of doing that be?
Read Rom.8:12-17
What does Paul mean by living ‘according to the flesh’? Why does living like that lead to death (8:13)?
How do you ‘put to death the misdeeds of the body (8:13)? What is the role of the Spirit in this? How would help a new Christian to do this?
What is the difference between ‘slavery’ and ‘sonship’ (8:14-15)? Should people who aren’t Christians speak of God as their Father?
Do you think it is sexist and inappropriate to speak of our adoption to ‘sonship’ in the way Paul does here (8:15)?
How does the Spirit testify with our spirit that we are God’s children (8:16)? What would it ‘feel ‘ like? How would you experience this?
Why is it so important? How would you counsel a Christian who was struggling to think of themselves as part of God’s family?
Why does Paul link our being heirs, with suffering (8:17, see also 8:18)? What do you think we are heirs of… what is our inheritance?
Memory Passage:
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
Gal.4:4-7
For further reflection:
A key reality for us to consider in our adoption is the concept of inheritance. We’ve already touched on it as we worked through Rom.8 (:17, see also 8:23), but it is a regular theme where the Bible speaks to the issue of our adoption (see e.g. Gal.4:5-7; Eph.1:5-14, though it isn’t limited to such passages e.g. I Pet.1:3-4; Titus 3:7). This takes us deep into the territory of God’s Sovereignty, and of His relationship to both this Creation and the New. His design in adoption transcends the lifespan of this passing age. It was before the creation of this world that ‘he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ’ (Eph.1:4-5); and it isn’t until our resurrection into the New Creation that our adoption is complete (Rom.8:23, after all, we cannot fully reflect the family likeness until our bodies are redeemed). This link with the New Creation might well explain the connection between ‘adoption’ and ‘inheritance’.
Inheritance of course is a massive deal in throughout the Old Testament (e.g. Num.34:2; Dt.1:38; Josh.1:6; Ps.16:5-6; Acts 7:5 etc.). It is important that we don’t mix up God’s inheritance in His people, and His people’s inheritance in and from God. It is tricky to figure out exactly what the Church’s inheritance is. Is it, as the Levites experienced, the Lord Himself (Rev.1:6-7. Christ is THE Heir, and we only inherit in Him, so Matt.21:38, Heb.1:2)? …or salvation (Heb.1:14)? … or as some Bible Scholars from previous generations have thought, does it include an allocation of New Creation land (hence Matt.5:5; Rom.4:13)? Paul relentlessly talks of our inheriting the Kingdom of God (I Cor.6:9-10, 15:50; Gal.5:21; Eph.5:5; see also Jas.2:5, and following Jesus, e.g. Matt.25:34). So it might be best to speak of our inheritance as the sum total of our entire experience of salvation, stretching into the Age to come, and that that can never perish, spoil or fade, and that we are to treasure so deeply that we will suffer and lose all if only we can grasp it (Rom.8:18; II Cor.4:17).
