"Sons of God" (Chapter 19, part 2)

What Our Adoption Shows Us

Propitiation only occurs four times in the NT, but it is fundamentally important, as being the nucleus and focal point of the whole NT teaching on the saving work of Christ.

The word adoption only occurs three times in the NT with reference to our present relationship to God in Christ (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). Yet the concept of adoption is the nucleus and focal point of the whole NT teaching on the Christian life.

The focus of the NT message: adoption through propitiation.

God’s Love: Our adoption shows us the greatness of God’s love.

Two biblical ways to measure God’s love:

The cross of Christ

The gift of sonship

1 John 3:1 NIV

1 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.

In the ancient world, a well-to-do childless man would adopt a young adult who had shown himself to be worthy of carrying on the family name. God does not adopt us in this way. Just the opposite, he adopts us out of his free love, not because our character and record show us to be worthy to bear his name.

“Adoption, by its very nature, is an art of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a son or daughter, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because he chooses to. He had no duty to do so.” - J. I. Packer

God’s adoptive grace does not stop with the initial act of adoption. The establishing of the child’s status as a member of the family is only the beginning. The Father continues to show love to us by which he wins our love. “The prospect before the adopted children of God is an eternity of love.”

“It is like a fairy story—the reigning monarch adopts waifs and strays to make princes of them. But, praise God, it is not a fairy story: it is hard and solid fact, founded on the bedrock of free and sovereign grace.” - J. I. Packer

Hope: Our adoption shows us the glory of the Christian hope.

New Testament Christianity is a religion of hope, a faith that looks forward.

Our Christian adoption teaches us to think of our hope not as a possibility or as a likelihood, but as a guaranteed certainty, because it is a promised inheritance.

God’s adoption of us makes us his heirs, and so guarantees to us, as our right (we might say), the inheritance that he has in store for us.

The doctrine of adoption tells us that the sum and substance of our promised inheritance is a share in the glory of Christ.

We shall be made like our elder brother at every point, and sin and mortality, the double corruption of God’s good work in the moral and spiritual spheres respectively, will be things of the past.

This likeness will extend to our physical being as well as our mind and character.

Romans 8:23 NIV

23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

When we think of Jesus exalted in glory, in the fullness of the joy for which he endured the cross, we should always remind ourselves that everything he has will someday be shared with us, for it is our inheritance no less than his; we are among the“many sons” whom God is bringing to glory (Heb 2:10), and God’s promise to us and his work in us are not going to fail.

The doctrine of adoption tells us that the experience of heaven will be of a family gathering.

...as the great host of the redeemed meet together in face-to-face fellowship with their Father-God and Jesus their brother. This is the deepest and clearest idea of heaven that the Bible gives us.

What will make heaven to be heaven is the presence of Jesus, and of a reconciled divine Father who loves us for Jesus’ sake no less than he loves Jesus himself. To see, and know, and love, and be loved by, the Father and the Son, in company with the rest of God’s vast family, is the whole essence of the Christian hope.

The Spirit: Our adoption gives us the key to understanding the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Too many have a confused understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Rather than being content with the biblical description of his ministry, they seek that which is experiential, radical, mystical—something they can feel.

This quest for an inward explosion rather than an inward communion shows deep misunderstanding of the Spirit’s ministry.

The vital truth to be grasped here is that the Spirit is given to Christians as “the Spirit of adoption,” and in all his ministry to Christians he acts as the Spirit of adoption.

His task and purpose throughout is to make Christians realize with increasing clarity the meaning of their filial relationship with God in Christ, and to lead them into an ever deeper response to God in this relationship.

By considering the Spirit’s ministry through him being the “Spirit of adoption,” his work has three aspects:

He makes us and keeps us conscious that we are God’s children by free grace through Jesus Christ.

He moves us to look to God as to a father, showing toward him the respectful boldness and unlimited trust that is natural to children secure in an adored father’s love.

He impels us to act up to our position as royal children by manifesting the family likeness (conforming to Christ), furthering the family welfare (loving the brethren) and maintaining the family honor (seeking God’s glory). This is his work of sanctification.

“So it is not as we strain after feelings and experiences but as we seek God himself, looking to him as our Father, prizing his fellowship, and finding in ourselves an increasing concern to know and please him, that the reality of the Spirit’s ministry becomes visible in our lives.” - J. I. Packer

Holiness: Our adoption shows us the meaning and motives of “gospel holiness.”

“Gospel Holiness” vs. “Legal Holiness”

“Gospel Holiness” - authentic Christian living, springing from love and gratitude to God.

“Legal Holiness” - consisting merely of forms, routines and outward appearances, maintained from self-regarding motives.

“Gospel Holiness”

Consistently living out our filial relationship with God into which the gospel brings us. It is the expressing of one’s adoption into the family of God. A child of God living as a child of God, true to his Father, to his Savior, and to himself.

The adoptive relationship, which displays God’s grace so vividly, itself provides the motive for this authentically holy living.

We live like a daughter or son of God, because we are a son or daughter of God.

1 John 3:1–3 NIV

1 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. 2 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. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

“The children know that holiness is their Father’s will for them, and that it is both a means, condition, and constituent of their happiness, here and hereafter; and because they love their Father they actively seek the fulfilling of his beneficent purpose.” - J. I. Packer

The Father’s discipline is a loving part of the process of moving us toward holiness, which is our ultimate destiny.

Hebrews 12:6–7 NIV

6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” 7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

Hebrews 12:11 NIV

11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Adoption into the family of God for the purpose of gospel holiness helps us better understand Romans 8:28.

Romans 8:28 NIV

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Adoption into the family of God for the purpose of gospel holiness also helps us better understand the place of obedience in the Christian life.

“Justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one’s newfound Father. Law-keeping is the family likeness of God’s children...” - J. I. Packer

Assurance: Our adoption gives the clue we need to see our way through the problem of assurance.

What is assurance?

Whom does God assure?—all believers, some or none?

When he assures, what does he assure of?

And by what means is assurance given?

If God in love has made Christians his children, and if he is perfect as a Father, two things would seem to follow:

The family relationship must be an abiding one, lasting forever. Perfect parents do not cast off their children. Christians may act the prodigal, but God will not cease to act the prodigal’s father.

Romans 8:29–30 NIV

29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

God will go out of his way to make his children feel his love for them and know their privilege and security as members of his family. Adopted children need assurance that they belong, and a perfect parent will not withhold it.

Romans 8:16–17 NIV

16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 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.

The witness of our spirit becomes a reality as “the Holy Spirit enables us to ascertain our sonship, from being conscious of, and discovering in ourselves, the true marks of a renewed state.” - Robert Haldane (quoted in J. I. Packer, Knowing God)

This is inferential assurance, being a conclusion drawn from the fact that one knows the gospel, trusts Christ, brings forth works meet for repentance, and manifests the instincts of a regenerate man.

“The Holy Spirit testifies to our spirit in a distinct and immediate testimony, and also with our spirit in a concurrent testimony.” - Robert Haldane (quoted in J. I. Packer, Knowing God)

This is immediate assurance, the direct work of the Spirit in the regenerate heart, coming in to supplement the God-prompted witness of our own spirit.

“So the truth about assurance comes out like this: Our heavenly Father intends his children to know his love for them, and their own security in his family. He would not be the perfect Father if he did not want this, and if he did not act to bring it about. His action takes the form of making the dual witness that we have described part of the regular experience of his children. Thus he leads them to rejoice in his love.” - J. I. Packer

We may strengthen the inferential aspect of our assurance by making use of the doctrinal and ethical criteria of 1 John. The source of our assurance, however, is not our inferences as such, but the work of the Spirit, convincing us that we are God’s children and that the saving love and promises of God apply directly to us.

The Great Secret

The doctrine of adoption has not received the attention it deserves in our thinking on the Christian life.

“Do I, as a Christian, understand myself? Do I know my own real identity? My own real destiny? I am a child of God. God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother too.” - J. I. Packer

Do I understand my adoption? Do I value it? Do I daily remind myself of my privilege as a child of God?

Have I sought full assurance of my adoption? Do I daily dwell on the love of God to me?

Do I treat God as my Father in heaven, loving, honoring and obeying him, seeking and welcoming his fellowship, and trying in everything to please him, as a human parent would want his child to do?

Do I think of Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Lord, as my brother too, bearing to me not only a divine authority but also a divine-human sympathy? Do I think daily how close he is to me, how completely he understands me, and how much, as my kinsman-redeemer, he cares for me?

Have I learned to hate the things that displease my Father? Am I sensitive to the evil things to which he is sensitive? Do I make a point of avoiding them, lest I grieve him?

Do I look forward daily to that great family occasion when the children of God will finally gather in heaven before the throne of God, their Father, and of the Lamb, their brother and their Lord? Have I felt the thrill of this hope?

Do I love my Christian brothers and sisters with whom I live day by day, in a way that I shall not be ashamed of when in heaven I think back over it?

Am I proud of my Father, and of his family, to which by his grace I belong?

Does the family likeness appear in me? If not, why not?