Adopted #1

We must understand the richness of adoption if we are going to appreciate our salvation. We're going to see two things, the reality of adoption and the results of adoption.

This message has the potential to radically change your life. Most of us are familiar, at least in concept, with adoption in human terms. But the Bible tells us that as believers in Christ, we are adopted into God's family. The implications of that truth are staggering, as Pastor Don Green will remind you on this edition of The Truth Pulpit. Hi again, I'm Bill Wright, and as Don continues to teach God's people God's word, we'll continue our series, Secure in Christ Forever, with Part 1 of Don's message titled simply, Adoption. And Don, what's in store for us?

Well, Bill, I'm really excited about this message over the next couple of days. My friend, when you think about adoption, you realize that a loving parent reaches outside of their family and brings, in a sense, a stranger into their home and makes them part of their household. That is exactly what Scripture says that God did for us as believers.

We were strangers and alienated from him. He adopted us into his family and gave us full privileges in Christ. It's a wonderful truth that I know you're going to benefit from as you stay with us today on The Truth Pulpit.

Thanks, Don. And friend, have your Bible at the ready as we join our teacher now in The Truth Pulpit. We're going to see adoption laid out in the passage before us, and then we're going to look at some other Scriptures to see what it means for us, both now and into eternity. And it is rich, it is glorious. There's hardly ever a time where I'm not excited to step into the pulpit and share God's word with you.

That's especially true today. This message has the potential to radically change your life. If you have been tempted, if your past teaching has conditioned you to think of God as a somewhat reluctant taskmaster who took you only because he had to, or as someone who is an easily irritable deity who is scuffed at each time that you stumble or you somehow miss your quiet time, you need to hear this message and drink richly from this fountain.

Let's look first of all at the reality of adoption. We saw last time that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. That's the doctrine of election from verse 4. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. We said without hesitation, without qualification, and certainly without apology, that God chose us based on his own sovereign will. He did not choose us because he saw something good in us.

He did not choose us because he looked down the corridors of time and gained knowledge that he didn't previously had that we would one day choose him and elected us on that basis. No, no, God, before creation began, because of his own will, because it pleased him to do so, said, I will choose these people to be my own. What is adoption?

Let's define it very simply. Adoption is the act of God whereby he brings us into his family through Christ. Adoption is the act of God whereby he brings us into his family through Christ. The practice of adoption, the legal means of adoption, has a long history that traces back through millennia. The Greeks and the Romans both practiced adoption.

There's not much adoption in the Old Testament. Roman adoption law was similar to ours and at the risk of oversimplifying things. Adoption releases the child from the control of his natural father and places him under the control and care of his adoptive father. Quite simply stated, a child is born into his natural family and in the realm of adoption, a father comes and says, I will adopt this child and legal measures are taken of different kinds over the course of history, but all designed to sever the ties of the biological family in a way that brings this adopted child into the realm of this new family. The adopted son in Roman law acquired new status, new privilege, and he acquired rights to property, watch this, that would not otherwise have been his. The measure, the kindness, the purpose of the adoptive father, now watch this, this is so critical, the purposes of the adoptive father now intervene and control the direction of the adopted child's life. There is a severing of the prior biological relationship and he is brought by law into the place and the position of his adopted father. If a man adopted a child, he changed the trajectory of that child's life. If a rich man had adopted a child out of a poor family and brought him in, the child suddenly had riches that he was entitled to and a status that belonged to him that he never could have dreamt of in his original family. That child, after being adopted, held the same position as a biological son.

Now, here's what I want you to think about. Scripture says that somehow your status with God is like that. That somehow you enjoy a position with God that is like being adopted into a family.

And let's just work this out in terms of what it means, because it is glorious and it is humbling at the same time. If you have ever just barely missed a really bad car accident, just by a stroke of an instant, you may have that sense of, and that sick feeling of fear that that could have been disastrous, coupled with, but I'm okay, there's something of that spirit that comes upon us as we contemplate the doctrine of adoption. If you've been adopted, it means that you were delivered from a former family.

Let's think about that for a moment. Let's look at your former father. Let's look at your former father. Scripture says, even here in the book of Ephesians, that before you became a Christian, you were a child of wrath and a son of disobedience. That was your nature, metaphorically speaking. That was your spiritual biology. That was your spiritual DNA. That is what you were born into. Look at Ephesians chapter 2.

Look at the son language. Look at verse 1 with me. Chapter 2 verse 1. You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, a reference to Satan, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. That's where you were. That was the realm in which you walked. Was in the realm of the sons of disobedience dominated by the prince of the air. Among them, verse 3, among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature, here it is, by nature, children of wrath even as the rest. In your natural condition into which you were born in time, you were a sinful child of disobedience. You were by nature someone who deserved the wrath of God to come upon you.

You were dominated by the devil, you were doomed to suffer the wrath of God, and you had as your father Satan himself. Turn over to the Gospel of John, chapter 8. John 8, to reinforce this point. You see, when you look back on your life before Christ, you should realize that your spiritual heritage was one of shame and danger and threat. Look at John, chapter 8, verse 43. When you did not understand the word of God, when you were rejecting Christ, here is a window of insight into what your nature was.

This is your natural born spiritual family we are reading about here. Jesus said, why do you not understand what I'm saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies, but because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. Before you were a Christian, we're in that similar state of unbelief. When you were rejecting Christ in your unrepentant stubbornness of heart, you had the devil himself as your father.

That one who is a murderer, that one who is a liar by nature, who rejects the truth, who has no truth in him. Scripture says that's the family you came from. Talk about a dysfunctional family.

The whole human race is dysfunctional. And by nature, that's what you belonged to, whether you were born into the most pagan family on the face of the earth, or whether you were born into a loving, nurturing Christian family, you inherited sin traced all the way back to Adam, and you were born spiritually dead even when you were physically alive. And your nature was sinful, it was unrenewed, and you were dominated by the power of Satan, that murderer and that father of lies. That is who you belong to. That was your spiritual parent. That's your spiritual ancestry apart from Christ. It's nothing to be proud of.

It's something to look at with sobered awe. Wow, that's where I came from. That's who I belonged to. That was my family, the devil and his minions and all of the unbelievers throughout all the course of time. That's who I belong to.

Those who in their nature, proud, lying murderers, rejectors of God, rejectors of Christ, rejectors of his revelation. Now, you manifested it in different ways. Some of you were drunk, some of you were proud people of religion. But it all traces back to a common source of lies and deception and separation from God.

It's the family that you belong to right here. And look, you were blind to your lost condition. You liked where you were. Some of you I know from talking to you, you reveled in your false religion. You reveled in your sin. And you were blind to the fact that you were chained to an evil father who intended your destruction in the end. You were hopelessly, desperately lost in the worst possible family with no way to get out.

That's where you came from. That was your former father. That was your former family. But now, in Christ, Scripture says, you've been adopted. God has taken you from that prior spiritual dysfunctional family, severed your ties with Satan, severed his control over you, and transferred you and brought you into a completely different family, a completely wonderful family. And in adoption, you have a permanent status as the adopted child of your loving Heavenly Father. And so, beloved, as you think about salvation, as you think about your salvation in Christ, you should realize that one aspect of God's goal in your salvation was to change you from a son of the devil to a son of God, to bring you into his family, leaving the former family far behind. And that is an act of unspeakable grace. Go back to Ephesians chapter 1.

No wonder, Paul says, to the praise of the glory of his grace. We couldn't work our way out of our former family. That's who we belong to by nature. There's no working your way out of it. There's no way you could work for your salvation.

There's no way that a leopard can change his own spots, or that the Ethiopian can change his own skin. Perish the thought and crucify the pride that makes you think you could. If you are in the family of God today, it is because God had supernatural, glorious grace upon you to bring you out of a very wicked family and into his own. The thought of adoption, the scriptural doctrine of adoption.

Watch this. The reality of adoption shows the immeasurable kindness of God to you. God willingly saved us.

It says there in verse 5 that he did this according to the kind intention of his will. This is a display of the kindness of God that far surpasses the highest, most noble thing that any earthly adoptive father did to a child who is not biologically his own. What adoption tells you is that God enjoys giving these riches to his children. It delighted God to do this.

And just as a child adopted out of material poverty should have an everlasting love and affection and gratitude to an earthly parent who adopts him into wealth and privilege, to a far greater extent, you Christians should, of all people, have this unending sense of praise and gratitude and believing wonder at the kindness of God to deliver you from the dark realm of the devil into the kingdom and family of his beloved Son. This is the power of revealed truth. This is why God has given us the Scriptures so that we could read this and understand it for ourselves. Look at the verses 5 and 6 with me again.

I want to keep them fresh in front of your mind as we continue on here this morning. He predestined us into verse 4. In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. See the spirit of it, beloved. Love, kindness, grace, freely abundantly bestowed on us in Christ. And embedded into the passage there is an almost passing reference to Christ.

He talks about Christ more in the verses that follow, and we'll start to look at that next week. But he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. The means by which you were adopted was no less than the crucifixion and resurrection of God the Son. It's not just that God did this for you.

It's the price and the cost and the means by which he did it. Christ coming from heaven, Christ going to the cross, Christ crucified, bearing the weight of your sin on his shoulders, suffering the punishment that you deserved on the cross in your place, as your substitute, as your representative, suffering for your sins in his body so that this transfer of adoption could take place for you. Praise be to his glorious grace. This was no mere legal entry in the transactional books of heaven. This cost Christ to deliver this blessing to you.

Cost him in immeasurable ways. It is through Christ that he did this. A wondrous plan of adoption that only Jesus' sacrifice for sin could establish. Only the cross could establish the basis upon which God could receive us into the family because something had to be done about your sin and Christ did it. Praise be to the glory of his grace which was appointed to you as a Christian before the foundation of the world. God had all of this marvelously complex various colored glory to bestow on you and he established the unfolding of it before time began. That is what you have entered into into the family of God. That's what salvation has delivered to you. Not just new birth and new life. Not just justification and the declaration of righteousness that satisfies the demands of God's law against you. But adoption. His family.

Beloved, adoption means you belong to God and that he belongs to you. How can you declare the wonder of that? What words can we give that would adequately describe how valuable and precious and gracious this is?

Who's adequate to say anything of this sort? God the Father purposed it. Christ the Son shed his blood to secure it. Beloved, step back and see again that in salvation is fully manifested the saving love and work of God toward you by name. Paul said I never get tired of reminding you of this. Galatians 2.20.

You don't need to turn there. Where Paul speaks in the first person and says I have been crucified with Christ. No longer I who live but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

This was no mass transaction where the borders of heaven were opened up and just a flood of immigrants were allowed to come in in a nameless barrage on heaven. This was something that God did personally for you by name. He appointed you for this by name before time began. And so as we look at that we see that God has generously shared blessing with us. It delighted him to do so.

It was exceedingly gracious of him. And the goal of our salvation is that we would praise him for his glorious grace. Brothers and sisters, the Father shared blessing with us that we had no claim on. That's the bottom line of salvation. God has given us that which we did not deserve and which we could never have earned and which we had no basis upon which to ask.

And yet here we are embraced in the family of God through adoption. There are two words that should be echoing in your heart. The presence of them would affirm your salvation. The absence of these two words should convict you that you must not be a Christian if you can't if this doesn't spontaneously rise up in your heart in response to what scripture has shown us.

Two words. Praise God. Praise God that he has done this for me. That is the reality of adoption. The reality of our adoption by God is a complete transference out of a hell-bound family into God's heaven-bound family. And that in turn produces some practical results which Pastor Don Green will detail for us on our next program. Join us for part two of his message, Adoption, here on The Truth Pulpit as we continue the series Secure in Christ Forever. Meanwhile, we invite you to visit us at thetruthpulpit.com. There you can download podcasts or find out how to receive CD copies of Don's radio messages for your personal study library. And if you want to go even more in depth, you'll also find the link Follow Don's Pulpit. That'll take you to Don's full-length weekly sermons not subject to the time editing needed for radio broadcasts. And by the way, if you're in the Cincinnati area, check out the service times for Truth Community Church also on our website. Again, just visit thetruthpulpit.com. Now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright. Join us again next time as Don teaches God's people God's Word from the Truth Pulpit.