Question 38:
What is adoption?
Answer:
Adoption is an act of God's free grace, by which we are received into the
company of God's children and have a right to all the privileges of his sons.
Day 1: Adopted
Freely by Grace (Overview)
1
John 3:1
The
second benefit of our effectual calling that we will look at this week is
adoption. Unlike justification, we all easily grasp the idea of adoption with
familiar earthly examples. We all know a
number of people who were adopted or have adopted children themselves. In fact, we have two in our fellowship who
have been adopted: Mr. Brown and Mrs. Davis.
Each of their adoptions was under different circumstances. Perhaps we can draw from their experience
this week to give us earthly pictures of how Father God has treated us in our
adoption.
None
of our suggested scripture verses give us the Greek for adoption, so I thought
it would be a good source of background at the beginning of the week to look at
Galatians 3:26-4:7. (This brief
commentary in Galatians is extra. Use it
only as background or you may use it as a fourth day with your family.) Paul in this letter, especially beginning in
Chapter 3 is giving the Galatians some doctrinal history stressing the promises
that go back to Abraham to the “Seed” Christ Himself (3:15-18). Paul then gives doctrine on how the law and
faith work together to make manifest the promises of God (3:19-25). Beginning in verse 3:26, we see how we are
all adopted into the family of God by faith in Christ Jesus (the same way by
which we are justified). Then Paul shows
us the equal standing of each member of the family. All family members share a common equality:
same ethnicity, nationality, same socio-economic standing (i.e. all six members
of my family have the same standing). From a human perspective we see all these
differences of life. However, God’s
family differs in that we are all born of the same spiritual Seed which
supersedes these other relationships and distinctions (Luke 14:26). Paul goes on to give two strong examples for
the people of his day of child verses adult and slave verses free that we will
not go into.
We
do want to draw out the Greek for adoption in verse 4:5. Huiothesia gives us the simple meaning of adoption or adoption of
sons. Implied in the word is the fact
that sons become heirs where daughters do not in Greek and Hebrew culture. Daughters simply benefit from the inheritance
of their husbands, however, Paul has already made the distinction in 3:28
“there is neither male or female” in Christ, we are all children (or all the
Bride Rev. 21:2). The last word
contained here we need to consider is “Abba, Father” given in verse 4:6. These words almost always appear together in
the Greek Abba being Aramaic then Father (pater)
being a translation in Greek. Abba
meaning Father is an endearing term though which we would render as Daddy. This is the nature of our relationship with
the Almighty Awesome God of the Universe!
Now
to the real text of today’s lesson (1 John 3:1). It is no mystery that the theme of John’s
letters are the love of the Father to His people through His Son Jesus Christ
and the reciprocal love that true children of God will show to their Heavenly
Father. So throughout John’s letters, we
see these various tests to gauge the genuineness of our love for the
Father. In fact, the last verses of
Chapter 2 begin this section by giving us a test of spiritual sonship which is
“everyone who practices righteousness” (2:29).
Then in the verses following our text (4-9) John puts definition to
“everyone who practices righteousness.”
Simply, we cannot practice sin and be righteous. Those born of His Seed will have the nature
of the Son who “destroyed the works
of the devil.” Verse 9 makes it clear, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for
His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”
In 1 John 3:1, we want to stress three key ideas of our
adoption into the Family of God: its source, our name, and our identity. First John implores us to “behold (eido, imperative mood: perceive, pay
attention to, observe, inspect, examine, know) what manner of love (agape) God has bestowed upon us.” God’s motivation of adoption of us is simply
His great “manner of love” for us.
Manner is the Greek potapos
and speaks to what sort or quality of a thing.
God has done the unthinkable. He
has by His eternal love adopted us out of a family of neglect, abuse,
destruction, and death and placed us into His eternal Family of provision,
prosperity, rest, and life. No wonder
the songwriter penned “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!”
You see the source of our adoption as our catechism says
is an act of God’s free grace. It is all
of God. Logically, no child chooses his
parents rather they choose to have children or they choose to adopt. It is something that the “Father has bestowed
upon us.” Bestowed in the Greek is didomi which means to give (a gift),
supply, grant, etc. Our adoption is
given in the same context as our justification.
God adopted us in His foreknowledge (Eph. 1:5) “according to His good
pleasure.” At the same time, He adopted
us in full knowledge that we would be prodigal sons and must be redeemed (Rom.
5:6-11). We often note the special
nature of adopted children that their parents “chose” them where as with
biological children we get what is born to us out of no choice. However, most adoptions of infants and small
children are still out of ignorance of just how the child will turn out. God has chosen to adopt us before we were
born, however, in full foreknowledge
He has adopted us as rebellious teenagers so to speak. Parenthetically, there is also a future
aspect of our adoption when our redemption is fully manifest in the presence of
God (Rom. 8:23).
Secondly, we see that we bear the name of the
Father. We are called children of
God. The Greek for called is kaleo, which I believe that we have
looked at before meaning to call by name.
And the name by which we are called is children of God. Children here in the Greek is teknon which refers to any offspring
male or female though it is sometimes translated as sons, especially in the
Authorized Version. My children (for
better or worse) carry my name of
Lastly, we have an identity with the Son and not with
the world. We are as children of God to
be so distinct from the world that we seem strange to them. It is a sad testimony of the “church” over
these past years that they have purposely cloned themselves into the image of
the world in the name of being “seeker-friendly.” Our calling is to be in this world, but not
of it. John records Jesus’ prayer for
His disciples and all believers in John 17:6-26. A review of these verses clearly show that we
are saved out of the world by the Son, but remain in the world to bear witness
that Christ Jesus is loved of the Father (John. 17:23). And we see the sum of our identity in John
17:24-26 that we know His love and glory, but the world will not know Him. The world should consider us as
strangers. We should be distinct. As we witness to the world, we will see the
truly elect not shirk from identifying themselves as children of God.
Discuss the following with your family:
1.
Talk about
adoption, why families adopt, etc. Use
Mr. Brown and Mrs. Davis as resources, if necessary.
2.
Discuss how your
family has its own identity. R.C. Sproul
Jr. impressed this upon me at the conference in
3.
A suggested
family activity for the week could be for you to design a family coat of arms
that identifies your earthly and heavenly families.
Day 2: How Are
We Adopted into God’s Family
John
1:12
As
we know, the broader context of John’s Gospel is to portray Jesus as the
Eternal Son of God. The other Gospel
writers seem to be a far distance away from Christ Jesus because of the
historical narrative context, but John writes as if Jesus is his best friend
and indeed we must believe in an earthly sense that he was “the disciple whom
Jesus loved.” The local context has John
1:12-13 sandwiched between statements concerning Jesus rejection by His own
people (verses 9-10) and a statement of Jesus’ incarnation (verse 14). We must look at verses 12 and 13 together to
keep them in each in proper context.
First,
we see that we must receive Christ.
Receive is the Greek lambano
meaning to take upon one’s self, to receive what is offered. Paul said in Galatians 3:26, “For you are all sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus.” This relates to
the faith that is necessary to receive justification. The benefits of our salvation are truly hard
to separate from one another. God gives
us the whole package. The “as many”
(Greek hosos) tells us that all who
receive Christ will be adopted. John
goes on to say that those who receive Jesus are also those who “believe in His
name.” This qualifies the nature of those
who truly receive Him. The Greek for
name is onoma meaning not just one’s
proper name, but all that the name stands for.
So to believe (Greek pisteuo =
to be persuaded of or put confidence in) in His name means that we embrace Him
as the Son of God (Matthew 16:16), the only One who has called us out of
darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9), and the One who has called
us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:14-16).
To those who receive Him and believe on
His name will have the right to be called the children of God. Right is exousia
in the Greek meaning in this context the power of authority (influence) and of
right (privilege). It is truly a
privilege and high honor to bear the name of our Creator and to be called a
child (teknon) of God and further to
be counted among those who can with all honor refer to our Lord Christ Jesus as
brother. It is a privilege bestowed upon
us for we have done nothing to gain admission to God’s family, but at the same
time it comes with great authority to be called a child of God. We have the authority to talk to the Father
in prayer, to be ministers of His reconciliation, and we have the authority to
exercise the gifts of the Spirit to edify our fellow brethren. We must not forget that with authority and
privilege comes responsibility. We bear
God’s name and all of our words and attitudes and actions are a reflection upon
Him personally and our fellow brethren collectively. Will we bring honor or reproach to God and
His Church?
Verse
13 clarifies the precondition of our receiving and believing. Our new birth into God’s family is by no
action of man: “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man.” It is simply by the will of our
Heavenly Father. James puts it this way,
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no
variation or shadow of turning. Of His
own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of
firstfruits of His creatures.”
Discuss
the following with your family:
1.
Have family
members to evaluate their own words, attitudes, and actions and determine if
they honor God and His family or bring reproach to it. Have them confess any reproach.
Day 3:
Privileges of Adoption
Romans
8:16-17
We
touched on some privileges of our adoption into the family of God in our last
lesson. Today we will explore a few
more.
The
context of these verses is against the backdrop of Romans 7 where Paul plots
the works of the flesh against the works of the Spirit. We see the absolute futility to be obedient
to God in the power of our flesh. After
a cry of desperation (7:24), he concludes in 8:1 the famous: “There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not
walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” In 8:12-13, Paul points out that we are no
longer indebted to the flesh to practice sin, but we must put the deeds of the
flesh to death. Then he gives a series
of verses (14-16) basically saying that we are indwelled by the Spirit of God
who bears witness to us that we are children of God. In verse 16 the expression “bears witness
with” is one word summartureo in the
Greek meaning to bear witness with or to bear joint witness. We have great assurance from the fact that
the presence of the Spirit of God within us bears witness to us as children of
God. Ephesians 1:13-14 reinforces our
admission into the family of God showing that the Holy Spirit is “guarantee of
our inheritance.”
Verse
17 highlights that if we are children of God then of course we are heirs to His
inheritance. And since Christ is also
God’s Son, it follows that we are joint heirs with Him. Heir in the Greek is kleronomos meaning in this context one who receives his allotted
possession by right of sonship. There is
so much that we inherit now and in the world to come that it is impossible to
put it all down here. 2 Peter 1:3 sums
up what we are given now very well: “all things that pertain to life and
godliness.” (We will let Mr. Brown
expound on this verse Sunday.) Paul
gives us quite a list of benefits that we inherit from God in Ephesians 1:3-14:
“every spiritual blessing,” “accepted in the Beloved,” “redemption,” “to be the
praise of His glory,” “the purchased possession” which is eternal life.
We
see further that we are not just heirs but joint heirs with Christ. Joint heirs in the Greek is sugkleronomos which translates literally
as a joint heir or fellow heir, but also as one who obtains something assigned
to himself and others and a joint participant.
We share a special relationship with Christ Jesus the Son of God who has
purchased our salvation with His own blood.
We see this in John 14:16-21. He
will not leave us as orphans, but will supply to us His Spirit (verse 18). Because He lives, we will also live (verse
19). Also Revelation 3:21, “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me
on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His
throne.” And lastly in John 17:22-24, we
see the glory, unity, perfection, and love that we share with Him. We maybe
called to share in His sufferings as His church is so often called to do, but
in the end we will all be glorified together.
Discuss
the following with your family:
1. Talk
to your family about inheritance in human terms. Discuss how adopted children receive the same
benefits and inheritance of natural ones.
Relate this to our discussion of Romans 8:16-17.
2. Review
the “hall of faith” verses in Hebrews 11.
Note that these are also heirs who have left us quite a legacy. What legacy will we leave for our posterity?
3. Fathers
study Psalm 78 on your own and share any insights with your family. Consciously share your family’s story with
your children, especially as it relates to your place (and theirs) in the
family of God.
Scripture:
1 John 3:1; John 1:12; Romans 8:16,17.