I’ve been thinking a lot about adoption lately. And not just about our adoption, but our spiritual adoption as Christians.
There’s a child somewhere that we will eventually adopt, but right now he’s not a part of our family. We don’t call that child our son yet and we don’t treat him as our son. We have to go through the adoption process and then we will begin grafting him into our family. We will begin doing all the things that parents do.
Even though an adult doesn’t give birth to a child, when he provides for, protects, trains, teaches, looks after, favors and advocates for that child, then that makes him the child’s parent.
But it is the adoption that is the turning point. At one time he is not our child, the adoption happens and then he is our child.
I thought about the implications of that spiritually and realized there’s a statement that gets tossed around that’s simply false: We’re all God’s children.
We’re not. We are not all God’s children.
Yes, we are all created by him and loved by him. Isaiah 30 even says he longs to be gracious to us. But that does not immediately make us his children, just as a biological father is not necessarily the one to actually parent a child.
I started thinking on this because those feel like strong words. It feels icky to think about one person being in while another one gets left out. It doesn’t feel very loving to say you’re not a child of God.
I started doing some reading in the Bible to see what it has to say.
First, let’s see the concept of adoption. We know adoption simply means that at one time a person is not a part of a family and then at some time, he is.
Ephesians 1:5 says, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”
This confirms the idea of spiritual adoption and explains that it comes through Jesus Christ.
Jesus himself explains this spiritual adoption as a spiritual rebirth in John 3 “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit give birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’”
Romans 8 explains who children of God are by saying “…those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
So, not only do we become children of God through faith in Christ, but the Holy Spirit helps us know that we are children of God.
1 John 3 really drives home the point, though, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”
And so, this is telling us some people are children of God and some are children of the devil. Those are hard words!!
So why do I bring this up? It seems sort of depressing, right?
Well, in an attempt to be accepting and loving to everyone, I think our culture many times has either replaced the gospel message or simply forgotten how powerful it is. The gospel says we must be adopted into God’s family through faith in Christ to be a child of God.
As Christians, we need to be aware of that truth first (and rejoice) and then, that should burden us to share the true gospel!
Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That’s the turning point and the good news! It’s EASY to be adopted into God’s family. No paperwork, no interviews, no money. When we believe, we are grafted into God’s family. God is then the one that spiritually feeds us, protects us, His word trains us, His Spirit teaches us, Christ goes before the Father to advocate for us. He becomes our Abba Father. And we can know it.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God. 1 John 3:1