Church Words- Week 4

Week 4 Text: Romans 8:14–17, 29–30 Topics: Justification, Adoption, Belonging Big Idea of the Message: God justifies us and makes us his children. Application Point: In gratitude for God’s love and adoption into his family, how is he calling you to create family for those without a place to belong? Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:

MarioPuzo’snovel(andsubsequentfilm)TheGodfatherfollowsthecriminal businesses and lives of the Sicilian American family, the Corleones. One member of the family, however, is not Sicilian: Thomas Hagen. Hagen is the adopted son of “the godfather.” Throughout the story, he is treated as a full member of the family, the only noticeable difference being his appearance. The power of adoption means that someone without a family or home can find both, as well as a new identity. Today’s word for this series is “justification,” but an important part of justification is our adoption into the household of faith.

JustasallhavefallenshortofGod’sglorybecauseoftheirsin,soallare “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). Justification, as used here and elsewhere in the New Testament, is a legal term of the courtroom. Justification is a pronouncement made by a judge and is the opposite of condemnation. Justification is not a pardon, as in the remission of a penalty, but rather, as John Stott explains, justification is “positive, the bestowal of a righteous status, the sinner’s reinstatement in the favour and fellowship of God” (John Stott, The Message of Romans [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994], 110). Justification is the formal declaration by God that you are accepted into his presence.

Justificationisafreegiftofgrace(Romans3:24)forallwhobelieve(v.23). When you put your faith in Jesus and trust completely in him, giving your life and hope over to him, you are justified in God’s sight. And this isn’t a work that we do; we are merely recognizing the work that Jesus has already done. It is an act of faith, in which God gives us a gift and we simply believe this good news is true. Like justification, adoption is a legal term. It isn’t simply that God makes us right; he demonstrates how right we are by making us his own children. Adoption,likejustification,isaone-wayactbytheFather.Romans8:14–17says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” As Tim Keller notes, in the ancient Near East “the moment adoption occurred several things were immediately true of the new son: 1) his old debts and legal obligations were canceled, 2) he got a new name and was instantly an heir of all the father had, 3) his new father became instantly liable for all his actions—his debts, crimes, etc., but 4) the new son also had new obligations and honor to his father” (Tim Keller, Romans: A Study Course in the Gospel [New York: Gospel in Life, 2003], 127).

Thisnewlifeshouldleadtoanewlevelofhealthyrelationshipsandanentirely new identity. Paul says the Holy Spirit helps us cry out to God, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15), which is a term of endearment like “Daddy.” We have a new relationship with God that is now the foundation for a new life of belonging. This would be a good time to use a real-life illustration of adoption to show how it can completely transform one’s life. The Dave Thomas Foundation has a lot of good testimonials from adoptive families on their website: https://www.davethomasfoundation.org/category/blog/?_blog_categories=blog.

Romans8:14impliesthatnoteveryoneisachildofGod,butonlythosewho have God’s Spirit and believe. It also implies that before we were adopted, we were living as orphans. Jesus recognized this when he walked among us. He promised in John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” We know these promises, but sometimes it’s easy to live life as if we were still orphans. Do you live as an orphan, filled with fear and uncertainty about your worth? Or do you live as a child of God, confident in the knowledge that the God of the universe loves you and is there for you in your times of need?

OneimportantwayinwhichwecanapplytheteachingaboutadoptionintoGod’s family is by looking for those who are in need of belonging and then welcoming them into the family of faith and our own immediate families. This includes single and celibate people, as well as those who might be wrongly shunned by Christian society. Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets write, “Part of honoring singleness within the church means recognizing that the nuclear biological family should not be the only—or even the primary—source of familial belonging in Christian communities.” One celibate gay Christian they interviewed provided some insights: “Instead, Ben proposed, singles need to be organically incorporated into the lives of others in the church; he longed ‘to see a lot of married couples and married families see singles not as, Oh, we should invite them over for dinner, but like, What if we went on vacation with them?’” (Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets, Costly Obedience: What We Can Learn from the Celibate Gay Christian Community [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2019], 152). One Christian couple, Greg and Lynn McDonald, went from grief and shock when their son came out as gay to realizing how many of the LGBTQ community had been abandoned by their family members or by Christians. God called them to step in as “McMom” and “McDad” to those who had been shunned or misunderstood by their own families: https://vimeo.com/206305737.