Devotional 67: Adoption: Received as Sons and Daughters of God Through Christ

The Confession Read

All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have His name put upon them; receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 12, Section 1

Introduction

There is a misery known only to the child who has never known a father. It is a peculiar sorrow, a vacancy that runs deeper than loneliness and more piercing than grief. The orphan does not merely lack provision; he lacks identity. He has no name to bear into the world, no lineage to trace backward into the generations, no table at which his place is set. When night falls and the other children are gathered into their fathers' houses, the orphan remains outside, pressing his face against the glass of a warmth he cannot enter, watching a love he cannot claim. He may be fed by charity, clothed by strangers, sheltered by institutions — but he is no one's son. And that absence gnaws at the root of his being, for the human heart, fashioned by a triune Creator who is eternally Father and Son in the communion of the Spirit, was made for sonship. To be without a father is to be cut off from the deepest grammar of existence. Consider this: every son of Adam enters the world as a spiritual orphan. We are born into a race estranged from its Maker, children of wrath by nature, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. The fall of our first father did not merely wound us; it disinherited us. It cast us out of the Father's house into the far country, where we squandered our birthright on husks that could not satisfy. The prodigal son in the far country, fain to fill his belly with husks, is the portrait not of one exceptional sinner but of every sinner, and the rescue is more glorious than we dare imagine. For the gospel does not merely pardon the orphan. It does not merely release the prisoner from his cell and send him wandering into the street, absolved but alone. The gospel adopts. Justification cancels the guilt, but adoption bestows a name. Justification removes the sentence of death, but adoption sets a place at the table. Justification declares the sinner righteous in the heavenly court, but adoption brings the justified sinner into the heavenly family. The one who was no one's son becomes, by a sovereign act of divine grace, a child of the living God. And this is the doctrine to which the Westminster Assembly devoted a chapter so brief — a single section — yet so dense with pastoral comfort that it has been called the crown of all the benefits that flow from union with Christ. The Confession places adoption immediately after justification, and the order is no accident. Justification is the foundation; adoption is the superstructure. Justification answers the question, "How can a sinner stand before a holy God?" Adoption answers the question the justified sinner scarcely dares to ask: "And now that I stand, what am I to Him?" The answer confounds every expectation born of guilt and shame. You are not merely a pardoned criminal. You are not merely a servant admitted to the King's household on sufferance. You are a son. A daughter. An heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ. Every privilege that the Confession enumerates — and there are eleven of them — flows from this one stunning fact: the Judge who might have condemned you has instead adopted you.

Scripture Foundation

The Apostle John, in the prologue of his Gospel, sets forth the dignity of adoption with a clarity that has moved saints in every generation. In John 1:12-13 he writes: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The word translated "power" is the Greek exousia, which carries the sense not merely of ability but of rightful authority, of conferred privilege, of legal standing. To those who receive Christ, God grants the authority to become His sons: not a grudging toleration, not a probationary admission, but the full legal right of sonship conferred by the Sovereign of the universe. And lest we think this sonship comes by natural descent or human effort, John immediately bars the door against every such pretension: not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man. Adoption is not heredity. It is not desire. It is not decision. It is birth from above — gennēthēsan ek theou, "born of God." The new birth and adoption are twin graces, distinct but inseparable. The one confers the nature; the other confers the name. Now turn to the Apostle Paul, whose eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is the crowning height of New Testament theology, and whose doctrine of adoption is its summit. In Romans 8:14-17 Paul writes: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." Three truths rise from this passage. First, the Spirit of adoption replaces the spirit of bondage. Before faith came, the soul was kept under the law, shut up unto the faith that should afterward be revealed. The law was a schoolmaster, and schoolmasters in the ancient world were not gentle. They drove with the rod. The sinner under conviction knows this spirit well: the lash of conscience, the terror of judgment, the dread of a God whose holiness consumes whatever it touches. But the Spirit of adoption does not drive; He draws. He does not threaten; He assures. He is the Spirit of the Son, poured into the hearts of those who belong to the Son, enabling them to look into the face of infinite majesty and whisper, "Father." Second, the cry "Abba, Father" is not a formal address but a child's cry. The Aramaic Abba is the word a Hebrew toddler would use to call his earthly father, the equivalent of "Papa" or "Daddy." Its presence in the Greek text, untranslated, preserved by the Holy Spirit in its original intimacy, signals that the early church understood something radical had happened. The thrice-holy God of Sinai, before whom Moses hid his face in terror, before whom Isaiah cried, "Woe is me, for I am undone," before whom the seraphim veil their faces and cover their feet — this God has become, to the believer, Abba. Not a distant potentate whose favour must be purchased with flattery and bribery. Not a stern taskmaster whose requirements must be met before affection may be dared. A Father. The best father the world has ever known, infinitely greater and clothed in blazing holiness, yet a Father still. Third, sonship carries inheritance. "If children, then heirs." The logic is inescapable. A son in the ancient world was not merely a resident in his father's house but the designated recipient of his father's estate. And what does the adopted child of God inherit? Paul does not leave us to guess: we are "heirs of God" — everything God has is ours in Christ — "and joint-heirs with Christ," sharing the inheritance of the only-begotten Son, who by nature possesses what we possess only by grace. This is not a share cropped from the edges of the estate. It is the whole inheritance, undiminished, "if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." The path to glory passes through the valley of suffering, but the destination is certain and the company is divine. The Apostle opens the same vein of gold in his letter to the Galatians, where the contrast between servitude and sonship is drawn with even sharper lines. In Galatians 4:4-7 he writes: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." The Trinitarian architecture of our adoption is remarkable. The Father sends the Son into the world, born of a woman, born under the law — the eternal Word taking to Himself the very nature that had rebelled against Him, subjecting Himself to the very law He had given, that He might redeem those who were under its curse. The redemption purchased on the cross is not an end in itself; it is the means to a higher end. Christ redeems that we might receive adoption. The Father then sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and the Spirit takes up the Son's own cry — "Abba, Father" — and makes it ours. The Son earns the inheritance; the Spirit applies the inheritance; the Father bestows the inheritance. The whole Trinity is engaged in making orphans into heirs. And then the grand conclusion: "Thou art no more a servant, but a son." The Greek doulos, servant or slave, describes a relationship of fear and compulsion. The son serves too, but his service flows from a different spring. The slave obeys because he must; the son obeys because he belongs. The slave works for wages; the son works from love. The slave dreads his master's return; the son longs for his father's embrace. This is the transformation that adoption works, not in the believer's standing only but in the very quality of his life before God. Everything changes when the servant becomes a son. The Apostle John, writing in the evening of his life, returns to this theme with the wonder of one who has long meditated on a truth that still exceeds comprehension. In 1 John 3:1-2 he exclaims: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." "Behold," John cries — idete, the imperative of astonished contemplation. Look and see. Fix your gaze upon it until its full dimensions become clear. What manner of love? The Greek potapēn asks not merely how much love but what kind of love, as though John were searching for a category adequate to contain it and finding none. It is a love that comes from outside the world's economy, a love foreign to every calculation of merit, a love that the world cannot understand because it cannot understand the Father from whom it flows. "Therefore the world knoweth us not." The child of God is a stranger in his own land, unrecognized by those who do not recognize his Father. But the alienation is temporary. "Now are we the sons of God." Not will be. Not might be. Not are becoming. Now. Already. The reality of sonship is present possession, even if its full glory is still veiled. And when Christ appears, the veil will be torn away, and we shall be like Him — not merely called sons but transformed into the perfect likeness of the only-begotten Son — for we shall see Him as He is. The ultimate destiny of adoption is nothing less than conformity to the image of Christ. One further passage anchors the eternal dimension of this doctrine. In Ephesians 1:4-5 Paul writes: "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." Adoption is not an afterthought, a divine reaction to the fall, a correction to a broken creation. It was the Father's purpose before the foundation of the world. The Greek proorisas, "having predestinated," means to determine beforehand. Before the stars were kindled, before the mountains were raised, the Father had already set His adopting love upon a people, chosen in Christ, destined for sonship. The fall did not surprise Him. The cross was not an emergency measure but the eternal plan, and adoption through the blood of the cross was the goal toward which all history marched from before the beginning.

What the Divines Meant

When the Westminster Assembly convened, the doctrine of adoption was not, strictly speaking, a point of controversy in the way that justification and predestination were. Rome did not formally deny the adoption of believers, though its doctrine of merit and purgatory severely compromised the confidence that should flow from it. The Socinians spiritualized it into mere moral influence. The Antinomians, in their characteristic confusion, treated the privileges of sonship as a license to disregard the Father's commands. The error the Divines chiefly confronted was not outright denial but a pervasive neglect: a failure to give adoption its proper place in the system of grace, a tendency to collapse it into justification or sanctification and thereby lose its distinct comfort. The Assembly gave adoption its own chapter, brief but strategically placed. It follows justification and precedes sanctification, for the order is theologically precise. Justification secures the believer's standing before the bar of divine justice; adoption secures his standing in the household of divine love. Sanctification that flows from the fear of a slave is a cramped and anxious thing; sanctification that flows from the security of a son is free and joyful. The Divines understood that comfort is the mother of obedience, not its enemy. A child who knows he is loved obeys from a different place than a servant who fears dismissal. The opening clause — "All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption" — establishes two vital principles at once. First, adoption is coextensive with justification. Every justified person is adopted; there is no such thing as a justified sinner who is not also a child of God. The graces of the covenant are not distributed piecemeal, some receiving pardon without sonship, others sonship without pardon. Where justification is, adoption is. Second, the ground of adoption is the same as the ground of justification: it is "in and for His only Son Jesus Christ." We are not adopted because we are lovable, not because of anything in us that attracted the Father's affection. The Father loves us because He loves the Son, and we are in the Son. The adoption is "in Christ" — our sonship is a participation in His Sonship. As He is Son by nature, we become sons by grace. As He is the beloved, we are accepted in the Beloved. The Divines then enumerate, with the compression of a catechism and the warmth of a pastor's letter, eleven privileges that belong to the adopted child. "Taken into the number" — once outsiders, now counted among the household. "Enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God" — freedom from the bondage of sin, Satan, and the law as a covenant of works. "Have His name put upon them" — an echo of the Aaronic blessing, the name of God written on the forehead of His people. "Receive the Spirit of adoption" — the indwelling Comforter who sheds abroad the love of God in the heart. "Have access to the throne of grace with boldness" — the Greek parrēsia means freedom of speech, the confidence of a child who can climb onto his father's knee without fear of rejection. "Enabled to cry, Abba, Father" — the Spirit's work, not the flesh's effort, enabling the cry that is the native language of the household of God. Then the Confession turns from privileges to providences: the adopted child is "pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened." The Father's heart is moved with compassion at His child's distress. His arm is stretched out for protection against spiritual enemies. His hand is opened in provision for every need of body and soul. And when the child strays, the Father does not abandon him to his wandering but pursues him with the rod of correction — not the executioner's axe, but the shepherd's staff, the father's belt, the surgeon's scalpel. The chastening is the proof of sonship, not the revocation of it: "yet never cast off." The Hebrew hesed, the covenant love of God, is invoked by this single line — the love that is not conditioned on the beloved's performance but anchored in the Lover's character. God may hide His face for a season, but He never un-adopts His children. And finally, the eschatological horizon: the adopted child is "sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation." The Spirit is the seal, the arrabōn, the down payment and guarantee of the full inheritance to come. What we taste now in foretaste we shall one day enjoy in fullness. The adoption that is already real will one day be openly manifested, and the sons of God, for whom creation groans, will be revealed in glory.

Theological Depth

Calvin treats adoption in the third book of his Institutes with a warmth that softens his reputation for austere logic. "We are not otherwise His children," Calvin insists, "than because we are the members of His only-begotten Son." Three words bear the whole weight of the doctrine: we are sons in Christ. Calvin understood that adoption is not a feeling, though it produces the deepest feelings. It is a legal act of God, a change of status effected by the same decree that justifies. The Father does not slowly grow fond of us as we improve; He declares us His children on the ground of Christ's Sonship, and the affection that follows is the fruit of the decree, not its cause. Thomas Watson, whose Body of Divinity distills the marrow of Puritan practical theology, devotes a whole section to what he calls "the amazing privilege of adoption." Watson notes that adoption is a greater mercy than creation. In creation, God made us men; in adoption, He makes us sons. In creation, He gave us the image of Adam; in adoption, He gives us the image of Christ. In creation, He breathed into us the breath of life; in adoption, He breathes into us the Spirit of His Son. Watson urges believers to meditate on the dignity of their new status: "A child of God! It is a title more honourable than 'Emperor of Rome.'" And yet, Watson adds with characteristic balance, this dignity carries responsibility. The child of a king must not behave as a beggar. "You who are the children of the Most High, do nothing that may cast a reflection upon your noble birth." John Owen, in his magisterial treatise Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, takes this theme and draws it out to its full length. Owen observes that the saints have distinct communion with each Person of the Trinity: with the Father in love, with the Son in grace, with the Spirit in comfort. Communion with the Father is peculiarly the fruit of adoption, for it is the Father who has loved us with an everlasting love and who, in the gospel, reveals Himself as the fountain of all blessing. Owen warns against a Christ-centered piety that, in its zeal to honour the Son, neglects communion with the Father. The Son came to bring us to the Father. Every prayer ascends to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. To know the Father as Father — not merely as Creator, not merely as Lawgiver, not merely as Judge — is the privilege of those who are in Christ, and Owen would have believers cultivate this knowledge with the same diligence they give to communion with the Son. B.B. Warfield contributed a penetrating study of the term "Abba" in the New Testament, showing that its preservation in Aramaic — transliterated rather than translated — indicates that it was a distinctive mark of early Christian prayer. Warfield argues that the early church's use of Abba was not a sentimental affectation but a theological confession. To call God "Abba" was to claim the full reality of adoption: intimacy without impertinence, confidence without presumption, the love of a child who knows that his Father's ear is always open. Warfield connects this to the Spirit's work: the cry "Abba" is not the believer's natural cry but the Spirit's cry in the believer, the voice of the Son echoed in the hearts of those who are sons in the Son. This means that even when our prayer is weak, stumbling, and inarticulate, the Spirit is praying within us, and the prayer that reaches the Father's ear is always perfect — for it is the prayer of Christ in us. Thomas Goodwin, a Westminster Divine who exerted a profound influence on the Assembly's treatment of adoption, unfolded the heart of God the Father toward His children with a tenderness that has few equals in theological literature. In his work The Heart of Christ in Heaven toward Sinners on Earth, Goodwin meditates on the Father's pity. The word "pitied" in the Confession is not accidental. It means that the Father is affected by the miseries of His children. He is not a Stoic deity, unmoved and unmovable. He is the Father of the prodigal who saw his son a great way off and ran to meet him. The Father pities your weakness, your fear, your confusion, your grief. He knows your frame; He remembers that you are dust. And His pity is not passive sentiment but active help: He protects, He provides, He chastens — all because He pities. Robert Shaw, the Scottish expositor of the Confession whose commentary became a standard text for theological students in the nineteenth century, emphasises the forensic nature of adoption. He notes that while regeneration changes the sinner's nature, adoption changes his relation. The two are simultaneous but distinct. A child may be born into a household, but he must also be acknowledged and given the rights of a son. The new birth brings the nature of a child; adoption confers the standing of a child. Shaw observes that this forensic dimension is vital for assurance. If my sonship depended on the degree of my sanctification, I could never be certain of it in this life, for my sanctification is always imperfect. But because my sonship rests on a legal act of God — because He has declared me His child in Christ — it is as certain as the decree that established it and as immutable as the Christ in whom it is grounded.

Puritan Application

First, consider well what you were and what you now are. The Confession places adoption immediately after justification, and for good pastoral reason. The soul that has passed through the terrors of the law, that has seen its guilt as it truly is and fled to Christ for refuge, trembles still. It knows it is pardoned, but it can scarcely believe it is loved. To such a soul the doctrine of adoption is the medicine it most needs. You were a child of wrath, even as others. You were an alien, a stranger, a rebel, an enemy. You deserved nothing but banishment from the Father's presence. And now, by a grace that overflows every bank of reason and every dam of justice, you are a son. A daughter. The God who might have cast you into outer darkness has instead brought you into His banqueting house, and His banner over you is love. Do not let the memory of your sins eclipse the wonder of your standing. The Prodigal was received with a robe and a ring and a feast, not with a lecture and a probation. Your Father has run to meet you. Will you hold Him at arm's length? Second, use the access you have been given. The Confession declares that the adopted child has "access to the throne of grace with boldness." The Greek parrēsia behind "boldness" means freedom of speech, the right to say everything, the confidence that you will not be turned away. The throne of grace is not the throne of judgment. It is the mercy seat, sprinkled with the blood of the covenant, where the Father sits not as Judge but as reconciled Father. You may bring Him your fears, your failures, your temptations, your confusions. You may bring Him your anger and your grief. You may bring Him the burdens that no other ear can bear. He will not weary of your coming. He will not reproach you for your need. The door to the throne room stands open, and the blood of Christ has consecrated a new and living way. Why do you stand outside, knocking timidly, when the Father has already flung the doors wide? Third, cry "Abba" from the heart and not merely from the lips. The Spirit of adoption has been given to you, and His peculiar work is to enable that cry. Yet many believers pray like servants rather than sons. Their prayers are formal, measured, guarded — as though they were addressing a distant official whose favour must be courted with careful phrases. But the Father desires the heart, not the rhetoric. He would rather hear a stammering "Abba" from a child who means it than an elegant oration from an orator who does not. Let your prayers be marked by the simplicity and urgency of a child running to his father. Tell Him what you need. Tell Him what you fear. Tell Him what you hope. The Spirit who indwells you will take your broken syllables and present them before the throne as the prayer of Christ Himself. You cannot pray poorly when the Spirit prays within you. Fourth, receive chastening as the mark of sonship, not the mark of rejection. The Confession lists chastening among the privileges of the adopted child — a paradox that only faith can embrace. When affliction comes, when providences cross your desires, when the hand of the Lord lies heavy upon you, the tempter will whisper that God has abandoned you, that your sins have finally exhausted His patience, that you are no true child after all. But the Scripture says the opposite: "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." The father who does not discipline his son hates his son in his heart, for he leaves him to run unchecked toward the precipice. The Father who chastens you loves you too much to let you wander to destruction. When the rod falls, do not run from it. Ask what it teaches. Search your heart for the sin it exposes. Then look through the pain to the hand that holds the rod — and see in that hand the nail prints of the Son who bore the wrath so that you might receive only the chastening of love. Fifth, live as who you are, not as who you were. The great pastoral burden of the New Testament is not that we might become sons but that we might live as sons. "Thou art no more a servant, but a son," Paul declares, and the implication is that many who are sons still live like servants. The servant obeys from fear of punishment; the son obeys from love of the Father. The servant works for wages; the son works because he delights in the Father's pleasure. The servant dreads the master's return; the son longs for the Father's appearing. Examine your own heart. When you read the Scriptures, do you hear commands that threaten or promises that embrace? When you pray, do you enter a courtroom or a family room? When you sin, do you flee from God like Adam in the garden or do you run toward Him like the Prodigal on the road home? The gospel of adoption calls you to a new manner of life — not a life of grim duty but of grateful delight, not a life of anxious striving but of confident resting in the Father's love. Sixth, fix your hope on the inheritance to come. The adoption that is already yours in Christ has not yet been fully manifested. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." The child of a king who is raised in a foreign land may know his lineage but has not yet seen the palace. He wears common clothes, eats common food, endures common hardships. But one day the king will send for him, and the heir will come into his inheritance. So it is with the adopted children of God. We groan, waiting for the adoption: not a second adoption, but the full revelation of the one we already possess. When Christ appears, the veil will be torn from top to bottom, and we shall see the Father face to face. The struggle with sin will end. The battle with unbelief will cease. The long night of weeping will give way to an eternal morning of joy. And we shall inherit: not a portion, not a share, but the whole estate of the living God. "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." Let this hope anchor your soul in the storms of the present age. The best is yet to be. The Father is coming for His children, and when He comes, He will gather them into His arms and carry them into a joy that never fades.

Prayer

O our Father, whose name is holy and whose love is older than the mountains, we can scarcely lift our eyes to Thee, so astonished are we at the grace that has made us Thy children. We who were children of wrath, children of disobedience, children of the night — we who had no claim upon Thee and no place in Thy household — have been brought near by the blood of Thy dear Son. We bless Thee for the adoption that is ours in Christ Jesus, for the Spirit of adoption whom Thou hast sent into our hearts, for the cry "Abba, Father" that rises from the depths of our being by the Spirit's enabling power. We confess that we have not lived as Thy children ought. We have doubted Thy love when we should have rested in it. We have feared Thy displeasure when we should have trusted Thy faithfulness. We have obeyed from the anxiety of servants rather than from the affection of sons. Forgive us, we pray, and grant us a deeper sense of our place in Thy heart. Teach us to use the access we have been given, to come boldly to the throne of grace in every time of need, to pour out our hearts before Thee with the freedom of children who know that their Father's ear is never closed and their Father's heart is never cold. In the day of chastening, help us to see the rod as the instrument of love and not of wrath, to kiss the hand that wounds us because we know the heart that guides it. Comfort Thy children who suffer, provide for Thy children who lack, protect Thy children who are beset by enemies, and pity Thy children who mourn. Seal us by Thy Spirit unto the day of redemption, that we may endure to the end and be found in Christ at His appearing. And bring us at last to that inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for those who are kept by Thy power. There, with all the redeemed of every age, we shall see Thee as Thou art and be like Thee, for we shall see Thee face to face. Until that day, hold us fast, we beseech Thee, in the grip of a love that will never let us go. In the name of Jesus Christ, Thine only-begotten Son, our elder Brother and our everlasting Lord. Amen.