Adoption
Adoption
Redemption is a largely negative concept. It concentrates on the plight from which we have been delivered and on the price which had to be paid. True, to be redeemed from sin by Christ’s blood is to be redeemed “for God” (Rev. 5:9). But this positive aspect of our salvation is emphasized rather in the notion of our adoption to be his children. Paul brings the two together as virtually inseparable when he writes:
When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons;… So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. (Gal. 4:4–7)
Redeemed from slavery and adopted into sonship—that is the glorious double privilege of those who put their trust in Christ. Our relationship to God as his children is an essential part of his covenant promise.
Already this fact of “belonging to God” was plain in Old Testament days. The covenant formula, used each time the covenant was renewed, was “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” Moreover, this adoption of Israel to be the people of God immediately followed their redemption. Again and again God had to remind them of this, saying “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exod. 20:2). He had redeemed them. They were his. He spelled it out very clearly to them during the period between their redemption from Egypt and the renewal of the covenant at Sinai:
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exod. 19:4–6)
Often this covenant, by which God’s redeemed people became his own possession, his special treasure, was likened to a marriage covenant. Yahweh was the husband of his people. He had delighted in his bride’s early love and devotion in the wilderness (Jer. 2:2; 31:32). But in Canaan she went after her “lovers,” the baals of the local shrines. She became an adulteress, even a prostitute. She broke the covenant.
The marriage metaphor is continued and expanded in the New Testament. The apostle Paul described how “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” but he added elsewhere how anxious he was, even to the extent of feeling divine “jealousy,” lest this bride should be led astray from “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (Eph. 5:25; 2 Cor. 11:2–3).
The relation between God and his people in New Testament days is expressed more often in terms of the father and his family, however, than of the husband and his wife. It is a development of the Old Testament conviction that Israel was God’s “firstborn son” (for example, Exod. 4:22). Jesus regularly taught his disciples to regard God as their heavenly Father and themselves as his beloved children, to pray to him as their Father, to trust his fatherly care to supply their material needs and to become concerned for their Father’s name, kingdom and will.
One of the greatest privileges of being God’s children is to have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. The personal and abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is a distinctive blessing, distinctive both of the Christian era itself (Jer. 31:33) and of the individual Christian. It is because we are sons that “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal. 4:6). Paul enlarges on this:
Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. (Rom. 8:14–16)
So the life of God’s children may be described as “life in the Spirit.” It is a life lived under the direction and by the power of the Holy Spirit. He bears witness with our spirit that we are indeed God’s children. As the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” in our knowledge of Christ (Eph. 1:17), he also opens the eyes of our hearts to know him better. And he is the Holy Spirit, seeking to lead us into holiness, to make us like Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). He subdues the power of our flesh (or fallen nature) and causes to ripen in our character his fruit of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:16–23).
The children of God together form his family, the church, enjoying a direct continuity with God’s people in Old Testament days. This fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ transcends all racial and social barriers. It is hard for us to imagine how great was “the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile. But Christ broke it down, and Paul devoted much of his Ephesian letter to the theme that Jews and Gentiles share in Christ on equal terms, being fellow citizens of God’s kingdom and fellow members of God’s family (Eph. 2:11–19).
Another great contemporary rift in society existed between those who were slaves and those who were free. In the Roman empire slaves had no rights before the law; all the privileges belonged to the free. But when Paul led to Christ a runaway slave called Onesimus, he sent him back to his master Philemon, begging him to welcome him “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philem. 16).The social effects of the gospel were explosive.
To sum up this unity, this equality, of all the members of God’s family, Paul wrote:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:28)
The people of God are “holy” people, that is, distinct or separate people, set apart from the rest of humankind to belong to God. Therefore they are called to be what they are, to manifest in their character and conduct the holiness of their status or position. They are “called to be holy,” that is, called to be different from the secular world, and not to be conformed to its outlook or standards. “You must not do as they do,” God had said to Israel in the wilderness, referring both to the Egyptians and to the Canaanites (Lev. 18:1–5). Similarly, “do no be like them,” Jesus said during the Sermon on the Mount, referring both to the Gentiles and to the Pharisees.
Instead, the Christian is to follow Christ. And his absolute ethical standards are set forth without compromise in both the Gospels and the Epistles, just as God’s standards were set before Israel in the Law and the Prophets.
It must not be thought, however, that Christ’s call to his people to be “holy” or “different” provides any excuse for withdrawal from the world into a pietistic isolation. On the contrary, the very same people whom Christ has “chosen out of the world” he sends back “into the world” as his representatives, to give themselves to other people in humble service and witness (John 15:19; 17:15–19).
Further, as they remain in the world for Christ, seeking to serve the world’s needs but refusing to become assimilated to the world’s standards, they will experience the world’s opposition. The world will hate them for their very difference, Christ warned, and persecute them too (John 15:18–25; 17:14). So they will suffer. Indeed, to suffer unjustly and to forbear revenge is another part of the calling of Christians. For Christ left us an example of this, that we should follow in his footsteps (1 Pet. 2:18–23).
But suffering leads to glory. It was so for Christ. It is so for the followers of Christ. Peter commands us to rejoice both in our share of Christ’s sufferings and in our anticipated share in the glory which is to be revealed (1 Pet. 4:13; 5:1, 10).The apostle Paul said the same thing:
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Rom. 8:17)
These are some of the implications of our “adoption” into God’s family. As children of our Father God, we are the dwelling place of his Spirit, united in brotherhood to all other Christian people, the ambassadors of Christ in the world, serving and suffering for his cause, and Christ’s fellow heirs as well.
For to be a son is to be an heir. Suffering is the pledge of glory. This leads us straight to the third stage in God’s unfolding plan of salvation, namely “glorification.”