Q34. What is adoption?
A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God.
J. I. Packer wrote that,
“Our first point about adoption is that it is the highest privilege that the gospel offers … In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship—he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the Judge [justification] is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father [adoption] is a greater.”1
Elsewhere he writes, “Justification is the basic blessing, on which adoption is founded; adoption is the crowning blessing, to which justification clears the way.”2
This is an interesting consideration, as the likes of Turretin, Owen, and Hodge devoted little space to it, specifically placing it within their sections on justification. Dabney explains this by saying that this is “because adoption performs the same act for us, in Bible representations, which justification does : translates us from under God’s curse into His fatherly favour.”3 Brakel, who has a full section devoted to adoption, nonetheless agrees that “justification includes spiritual sonship.”4
The Grace of Adoption
One acronym for GRACE we have seen is “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense,” and in this case, I think we can say that. Adoption was costly and Jesus took the initiative.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).
Adoption is a positive gift. It is more than simply the forgiveness of sins. In ordinary human affairs, if we long to be forgiven by another person, why is this? Is it merely to “clear the air,” or is it not to have the obstacle removed for some greater end? Consider these scriptural words: “for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).
The bringing of the soul back to God—when we call reconciliation—is the greater end, for which justification is the means.
The Right of Adoption
In John’s Gospel prologue, to be called the son of God is treated as a “right” (Jn. 1:12), and that by believing in His name. This marks off the children of God from the enemies of God by this line of faith. It may be objected by the liberal or the universalist that Paul agreed with the Greek poet that, “we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28). But as Watson remarked, “This is no privilege, for men may have God for their Father by creation, and yet have the devil for their father.”5 Adam was called a “son of God” (Lk. 3:38); the angels are called “sons of God” (Job 38:7); and even kings of the earth called “gods, sons of the Most High” (Ps. 82:6). But these are all sons according to a lesser nature and, all things being equal, subject to be exiled from the house. To be a son by adoption is very different. Part of Paul’s designation “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) is about status, not just nature.
Dabney closely links adoption to that “right of life” that comes in addition to pardon in justification. So he cites Zechariah 3:4-5 and Acts 26:18 to speak of how faith obtains both a clean robe and the inheritance of “a place” together with the saints. These two pieces of imagery call attention to a family and of a fatherly act of taking in one who is otherwise too filthy to enter the house.
These are sons and daughters earned and gained by the perfect Elder Brother, … “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Heb. 2:11). So Christ’s glory is at stake in the right of this permanent familial bond.
Objection. If the adoption belonged to Israel of Old, as Paul says in Romans 9:4, “To them belonged the adoption,” so that the Gentiles are brought into that (Eph. 2:12; Gal. 4:5), and if many of them fell in unbelief, could not we be adopted and yet fall away from the Father?
Reply. Again, no! Jesus said, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn. 10:29).
So is it ever appropriate to refer to Jesus as our “Elder Brother”? While the language of “older” brother is not necessarily what is used in Scripture, that He is considered our “brother” is clear in that Hebrews 2:11 text. It may be that some people will use that terminology of “older” as an attempt at respect, given what may appear to them as too much of a sense of equality. Others may have heard in a sermon on the Prodigal Son that Jesus “is the Good Older Brother,” as distinguished from the actual older brother in the story. However that typology may be appropriate to the intent of the Holy Spirit, we must remember that it is still not strictly stated.
Those who use the language may also have in mind the phrase “firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). Although the word “firstborn” in the context of Jesus has to do with his inheritance as the Christ and not about anything like earthly birth orders. And we must know our audience as well. Mormons will use the language of Jesus as “our elder brother” in a way that is wrapped up in their errors about eternal progression. While it may stretch things to say that the words themselves constitute error, we should at least be aware that the language be scriptural in its connotations.
The Heart of Adoption
When we think of adoption on a human level, we might think first to the moment: the realization of a child being adopted. A few of the main biblical texts have something like this in mind. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3:1).
We need to see the link between the ministry of the Spirit in giving birth to the longing of assurance in us (cf. Rom. 8:16, Gal. 4:6) and the awakening to the inheritance in us.
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13-14).
“he has caused us to be born again to a living hope jthrough the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:3-5).
In fact, what these verses are really saying is that the Spirit Himself is that first, great Gift of the gospel actually experienced, whether we realize it or not: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14).
So this realization of adoption brings us back the matter of assurance that we have touched on before at a few points. In Romans 8, Paul uses the same language he had used in Galatians 4, about one of the ministries of the Spirit in applying the redemption of Christ to us:
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:14-17).
All biblical talk of inheritance has this context of adoption. The inheritance is not a distant or impersonal thing. That point about suffering brings up a final truth about adoption. We said that it is by grace. Yet like all grace, there are conditions that follow. They follow. They do not cause and underly grace. Grace guarantees what follows. So Paul speaks of a suffering adopted child because the Elder Brother suffered, and we “follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21), not to earn the Father’s love but to please and to glorify Him. Another place in Paul’s letters connects being separate from worldly fellowship to the same. It is right after we are told, “go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord,” where He says, “and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:18).
As we’ve seen in other cases, so it is here. That separate identity does not earn adoption, but proves it out.
The Excellecy of Adoption
Brakel has a whole section devoted to this, and it is easy to forget. Though, of all things to forget, this is the most marvelous. First, take seriously the words of Ephesians 1:3—“every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Brakel reminds us of the obvious: “To be the child of a king is a great thing in this world. Many boast of the fact that they consider themselves among the desendents of kings and of the great men of the world.”6 Don’t we do that about far more pathetic mortals! We name-drop and star-gaze about people whose only claim to fame in a culture than has exalted fame so widely that even the most superficial version of it no longer has any meaning. And yet we still drool over it!
But in the gospel, we not only know the King, but have been chosen by Him and taken in to the royal family by him. Worlds await for our dominion in glory.
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1. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 206, 07.
2. Packer, Concise Theology (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1993), 167.
3. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 627.
4. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, II:415.
5. Watson, A Body of Divinity, 232.
6. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, II:417.
