Adoption: the most amazing but the most forgotten Christian doctrine

God has many titles to us as Christians: Creator, King, Lord, Redeemer, Saviour. All awe-inspiring in their own right. But our relationship to God is even more tender and precious than that: ‘Father’, writes James Packer (1926-2020), ‘is the Christian name for God’.

The Reformation was pivotal for returning to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The emphasis was on justification by faith. This is fundamental for understanding how we as guilty sinners can be right with God. However, justification is a legal, forensic declaration; on its own it says nothing of the massive heart of love and mercy and grace behind it. We are justified to be brought into a living, personal relationship with God as our heavenly Father. We go out of the courtroom, legally justified, into our Father’s throne room of grace, lovingly adopted. Packer writes that ‘adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers’.

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:4-6

Adoption means that Christians are adopted by God as His own children, despite being illegitimate orphans without a hope in the world. He didn’t need us, we needed Him. Through Jesus’ work on the cross, our sins are transferred to His account in exchange for His perfect righteousness. Christians are freed from slavery to sin and brought into newness of life in God’s family, communing with the Triune God. We receive the ‘Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”’ (Romans 8:15). We are raised up to be joint-heirs with Christ Jesus, sons and daughters of the Living God to honour and enjoy Him forevermore. If that doesn’t make your heart sing and cause you to want to leap for joy then there’s something majorly wrong with you!

The Puritan Thomas Watson (1620-1686) writes:

It were much for God to take a clod of dust and make it a star; it is more for God to take a piece of clay and sin and adopt it for his heir.

Adoption is a wonderful doctrine unique to the Christian faith. But, sadly, it’s often forgotten or neglected by the church. When did you last read a book or hear a sermon on adoption? Where it is considered, it’s either just something that gets a line in a song or else it’s thought of as some pie-in-the-sky abstract concept with no bearing on our day-to-day lives. So you might be tempted to think that Adoption is great and all, nice to meditate on and think about, but it’s just doctrine, teaching – it doesn’t actually affect how Christians live their lives… Well, you would be wrong!

‘The entire Christian life has to be understood in terms of [adoption]’

Jesus’ sermon on the mount is one of the most misunderstood and misused teachings in the Bible. It’s sometimes preached in a moralistic way that an imam or a guru could happily amen. But it is not to be understood or interpreted except as directions for how life in the kingdom of Christ is to be, and how the Royal Family, of which we are a part, is to act. Packer says:

Royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline, which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of Kings.

We are being prepared to reign with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth, even over angels (1 Corinthians 6:3, 2 Timothy 2:12). The sermon on the mount requires the basis of adoption and uses the language of ‘your Father in heaven’ and of our sonship – and daughtership – throughout (Matthew 5:9, 5:16, 5:45, 5:48, 6:1, 6:4, 6:6, 6:8-9, 6:14-15, 6:18, 6:26, 6:32, 7:11, 7:21).

Take Jesus’ command to ‘love your enemies’ (Matthew 5:44), the next verse is part of the same sentence, ‘so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:45). ‘You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). Packer points out that this is children being told to imitate their Father. ‘The children must show the family likeness’, he writes. This is how children bring honour to their heavenly Father:

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 5:16

We must please our Father. Your reward is ‘from your Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:1). Unlike human families and human parents who let us down and break down, God will always be a perfect Father to us Who delights and rewards even a cup of cold water given in the name of His Son (Mark 9:41).

Adoption is the ‘basis of Christian prayer’. We pray ‘Our Father…hallowed be your name’ (Matthew 6:9). Packer says:

Jesus could say to his Father ‘you always hear me’ (John 11:41), and he wants his disciples to know that, as God’s adopted children, the same is true of them. The Father is always accessible to his children, and is never too preoccupied to listen to what they have to say […] prayer must not be thought of in impersonal or mechanical terms, as a technique for putting pressure on someone who otherwise might disregard you.

We are called by God’s name

Adoption should change how we live and act. We dwell on earth as members and representatives of God’s family, as the hands and feet of Christ. How we act on a day-to-day basis as God’s children and live out our faith is proof that that is what we are.

We treat fellow Christians as brothers and sisters (which is what we are to each other, and to Christ, our elder Brother). But we also ought to treat each other as sons and daughters of the King of kings—princes and princesses, if you will!

How do you treat royalty? With all respect and deference and courtesy. As Christians, we have a very high calling and must live up to it. Do God’s children give themselves over to indulging their sinful temptations when the eye of the world is not on them? How many of us give way to pride and self-righteousness? Do you secretly give way to lust in your bedroom? How many Christians are ruined by secret porn addictions?

Packer closes with a challenge:

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

And yet we wonder why we see so little fruit, so few conversions, so few answers to prayer. Is it any wonder when we harbour idols in our hearts! We put self, pride, greed, lust in the place of God. Even though no other human eye sees them, we still act before God, our King and heavenly Father.

‘Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself,’ prayed Augustine. He hits the nail on the head here. We like to bemoan the state of the world out there, but how about your own heart (Matthew 7:3)? Augustine’s prayer was directed to the Lord, and it’s only by His Spirit’s purifying and cleansing work that we can be delivered (Proverbs 3:11-12, 17:3).

Give thanks for our adoption

Adoption explains why trials come our way, they are the disciplines and training of a loving Father. Adoption takes us beyond this earth and this life, to see God’s purposes for us in the new heavens and new earth. God seeks worshippers, but He also seeks children. Adoption helps explain the purpose of everything: why God created us, why God created the heavens and the earth, why God allowed man to fall, and why Christ came into the world to save sinners. All so that we could be brought into a loving relationship with God as our Father, mercifully adopted as His children and provided, as an inheritance, treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20), ultimately, God Himself (Psalm 16:5). This brings great glory and honour to the name of God, thus our prayer ‘Amens’ this (2 Corinthians 1:20b): ‘hallowed be your name’ (Matthew 5:9b). Here is something so rich and profound here that no words can ever do it justice.

When all is said and done, we can only fall on our knees and praise God our Father:

Oh, who can utter the soul-satisfying, soul-ravishing consolation there is in this, that the same God that is the God of Jesus Christ is my God, and the same Father that is the Father of Jesus Christ is my Father!

Jeremiah Burroughs (1600-1646)

Or in the words of the apostle John:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

1 John 3:1 NIV