Adopted
Readings: Romans 8. 12-25
What does it mean to be a Christian? Is it about an extra set of practices we need to keep: reading the Bible, praying, doing good? Is it about a few extra things in our diary like worship on Sundays and other things throughout the week? Is it about a new set of beliefs we sign up to and say ‘yes, that’s what I believe’ as we do each week in the Creeds? All of those things are true, but they don’t get to the heart of it, they’re the working out of a bigger and more fundamental truth: to be a Christian is to be adopted into the family of the God of the Universe.
‘Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God’. Paul has been talking in the first part of this chapter about the contrast between living according to the flesh, that is according to our own desires and impulses, and living according to the Spirit, lives shaped by the work of God’s own Holy Spirit in our lives, we thought a little about that a fortnight ago. But now he tells us that those who are led by the Spirit, those whom the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is leading forwards, aren’t simply disciples, but children. We’re not just living a new way, we’re part of a new family.
When you put your faith in Jesus, whether that was years ago, recently, or still yet to come for you, it wasn’t simply a choice to add a bunch of new things to your life, new beliefs, new habits, new things to go to. When you put your faith in Jesus your whole life was changed forever. Because at that moment God placed the Holy Spirit in you, the very presence and power of God came to dwell within you. And this Spirit who leads you in the ways of holiness and righteousness, is also the testimony that you are now God’s child. As you live this new way, empowered by God’s Spirit, that same Spirit reveals your adoption into his family.
We are children of God, not by birth, it’s not simply the case that being a human being is to be a child of God. It may be in some sense in the fact that we all have our origin from him, as Paul says when he’s sharing the Gospel in Athens, but that’s not what Paul is getting at with this language of children here. No, whilst we were children of this world at birth, having come to Jesus, we have been adopted into God’s family, chosen, honoured, and welcomed into the family of God.
And as Paul continues he reminds us that we are not slaves, but sons/children. We can so easily fall into the habit of thinking of God as our Master, he’s all powerful, we are his servants, or even slaves to use the language Paul uses here. Does that sound familiar?
We may not think of it in those terms, but are we working harder in order for God to be pleased with us? When we sin do we beat ourselves up because we’ve failed him, we’ve messed up big time and we’d better sort it out before we can come back to God? And when things are going really well, do we think God is more pleased with us? Is our thinking about our status before God tied up with how well we think we’re doing with the things he commands? Do we think of our status as related to our performance? We may not put it in those terms, but if you think on some level that your status before God, his worth placed on you, is in some way attached to what you’re doing you’ve got a problem, you’re thinking of yourself not as a son but as a slave.
Slaves are valued according to their productivity, their work and performance. But sons are valued because they’re sons. Children are valued simply because they’re your children. Now in our fallen world sadly this isn’t always the case, but in a good and healthy family, you don’t need to prove your worth to earn your parents’ approval, you don’t need to be productive for them to love you. They love you because you’re their child. And Paul is telling us that this is the relationship we now have as Christians with the God of the Universe, not slaves, but sons, his children.
And moreover there’s a greater stability in being a child rather than a slave. What do you do if the hired help isn’t doing their best, if things aren’t up to scratch? You change them don’t you, you fire them and hire a new one. But you don’t do that with your family do you. You don’t normally go, you messed up last week, you’re out, we’ll get a new sister. Being adopted into God’s family speaks to the permanence of that change, we’ll circle back to that idea next week.
We’re children of God, adopted into his family, the Spirit testifies to that truth, and by that same Spirit we cry out ‘Abba’ which is Aramaic for ‘Father’. We can easily gloss over this, especially if you’ve been a Christian for many years. But just pause for a moment. We get to call the God who made all things, the one who is utterly holy, the one who is utterly beyond all things, the one who is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, the one who is the King of the Universe, we get to call him Dad. He’s our Dad. The one who is so utterly beyond our comprehension sent his Son so that you can call him Dad. And not just call him Dad, but know him as your Father, know the intimacy and security and joy of knowing him as your Father. I don’t know what your relationship is like with your earthly Father, it may be great, it may be not so great, it may be a complete disaster. But whatever that looks like for you, perhaps especially if you’re in the latter two categories, the God of the Universe wants to know you as his beloved child, and you to know him as your all loving Father. The one who cares for you, protects you, provides for you, loves you.
And as his children, we are also his heirs. Paul keeps using the language of sons here, and it’s not because daughters couldn’t inherit in those days, he’s using it to point us to the Son, the one we know as Jesus. Because God isn’t childless, and so he adopts us so that he can have children, no, he already has a Son. The eternal Son, whom the Father has loved since before the foundation of the world, the one upon whom his love has been pouring down on from eternity to eternity. And he sent this Son, in the person of Jesus, to ransom and redeem us, so that we too can be sons, not in the sense of becoming gods, but in our status before him.
In the ancient world adoption was a little different to how it is today, for one you could adopt someone at any age, even people who were fully grown adults in their own right. But to be adopted was to receive all the benefits, rights and privileges of a natural born child in that house. It was to remove your previous status and family and graft you into a new one, fully and completely, and therefore to be the heir when they died. And what Paul is telling us as he tells us that we are heirs, is that everything the Son gets, everything that Jesus gets, we get. The relationship which the Son has enjoyed with the Father since before the foundation of the world? We get. The whole world which is his and which will be made perfect and right when Jesus returns to claim it? We get. Eternal life, life without end that is deeper in joy and light and wonder? We get. To be adopted as God’s children is to receive all that is Jesus’, because we have been made co-heirs with him. We may not get it all now, a few of those things are still in the future, but they are ours, our inheritance is assured.
And the sufferings of Jesus? Those are ours too. We share his sufferings in this life, not simply in terms of our suffering for his sake, the sufferings for our faith, but all suffering, the suffering of illness, of loss, of grief, of worry, all those things we share with Christ. And we share them with him because he came down that he might share them with us, that he might be alongside us in them. We share his glory, he shares our sufferings. And in those sufferings Paul assures us that they aren’t worth comparing to the glory to come. That our inheritance when it comes will far outshine it all. In what way? How will that look? We don’t know, but we are assured that it will, that what is coming far outstrips all the sufferings we endure now.
My brothers and sisters, for that is what you are, adopted as God’s children. Let us not live as slaves of God, trying to prove our worth, living fearful that we may end up cut off. But let us rejoice in our status as God’s beloved children, brought into his family to know him as Father, and to share in all that Jesus, the eternal Son, enjoys when our inheritance comes at last. Let us live in this truth, daily reminding ourselves of it when we are tempted to live as slaves instrad of sons, treat God as our heavenly sergeant than our Heavenly Father, despair of our sufferings and forget our inheritance. No, in all things let us hold onto this hope, and, as Paul reminds us, hold on to it patiently.
Amen.