The Spirit of Adoption (Rom. 8:15)
 |
| Photo from Unsplash |
This past week, I was listening to an interview that John Piper gave at a pastors’ conference last year. One of the things that came up was Bible memorization, and in the course of that part of the interview, Piper said this: “Every pastor should know Romans chapter 8 by heart. If you don’t, you should feel guilty right now. It is the greatest chapter in the greatest letter in the greatest book in the world. . . . It is totally relevant for every situation. You will never come into a situation in which Romans 8 will not be valuable. Romans 8 contains the greatest promises, the greatest protections from being cut off from Jesus.” I think those remarks are not only relevant for pastors, but for every Christian. I’m not saying you should feel guilty if you haven’t memorized it, but I strongly encourage you to do so. The truths of this chapter are, as Dr. Piper puts it, relevant for every situation that you will face.
And this is one reason why I am spending so much time here in the eighth chapter of Romans. There is a richness in this chapter that is unique in some sense to it. That’s not to say that it’s more inspired than other chapters in the Bible. But it is to say that we will be greatly helped if we really understand and apply and meditate on the truths of this great and tremendous chapter.
Of the truths of this chapter, perhaps none are so breathtaking as the ones we are looking here in verses 15-17. Remember that Paul is showing us how certain is the final salvation of all who are justified in Christ. He has shown how certain this is in the work of the Spirit sanctifying us, enabling us to no longer walk after the flesh, but to kill the sins of the flesh and to walk in and be led by the Spirit. Now, he goes on to say that the Holy Spirit witnesses to something very special, a reality that if grasped, will put any doubts about the salvation of God’s people to rest once and forever. That reality is the reality of being a child of God and of relating to God as our Father. The conclusion we are meant to arrive at is that it is unthinkable for God to abandon his own children. He will not; he cannot. Those who belong to him will certainly be saved.
But more than that, the very nature of this blessing, the blessing of being adopted into the family of God, is something that is in some sense the pinnacle of every blessing. We are not saved just to not go to hell. We are not saved just to have our sins forgiven. We are not saved only to be justified. We are, ultimately, saved in order to enjoy God welcoming us into his family, to be a son or daughter of the Most High with all its attendant privileges. That is the greatest of all blessings, all to the glory and praise of God in Christ.
Dr. John Gill, speaking of the blessing of adoption into the family of God, put it this way: “This favour is an instance of surprising grace, exceeds other blessings, makes the saints honorable, is attended with many privileges and lasts forever: such who are in this relation to God, ought to ascribe it to his grace, to requite him with thankfulness, and a becoming conversation, to be followers of him, and to love, honour, and obey him.” I would argue that many of the Christian’s difficulties arise from a failure to properly appreciate and grasp the implications of this great blessing. We would be much more confident and joyful if we really believed what we profess to believe, that we are the sons and daughters of God. So let’s dig in and try to savor the sweetness and digest the richness of the spiritual food that is offered to us in these great and wonderful words of Romans 8:15-17.
As a sort of preliminary remark, I want to say that we should not confuse adoption with election. To be elect is not the same thing as being a child of God though the former guarantees the latter. We need to remember that election is not salvation; is it unto salvation. In the same way, we are predestined to the adoption of children. One leads to the other, but they are not the same thing. Note what Paul says to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 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, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:3-6). Predestination is not adoption. It is unto it. We must not confuse the two.
Now these verses do show that God from eternity purposed that all whom he chose in Christ would be adopted into his family. And it is true that this purpose is a sure purpose. It will be fulfilled. But that does not mean that the elect are in fact children of God from eternity. Some people think that they have to say that in order to hold to the doctrines of grace. But this is not a corollary of the doctrines of grace. It’s not because it’s not a corollary of Scripture! For the Bible says that we become the sons and daughters of God when we embrace Christ through faith. This is explicitly what the apostle John tells us in John 1:12: “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.” Or, as the apostle Peter put it: “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9-10). Note what he says there: the believer was once not a people, and the following part of the verse makes it clear that he means that they were once not a member of the people, or family, of God. But now they are! Before our conversion to Christ, we are outside the family of God. But thank God, when God brings us by his Spirit and word into union with Christ by faith, he makes us sons and daughters of God. And to add the apostle Paul’s testimony to that of John and Peter, notice that he argues that the Ephesian Christians, before their conversion to Christ were “at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). They were outside the covenant people of God. This means more than just that they weren’t church members! You see this because he goes on to say that they have been reconciled to God through Christ, and as a result of that, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (19). Now, he says, you are “of the household of God.” Before, they weren’t. Now, they are. What made the difference? The difference was that they were no longer merely Gentiles in the flesh, they were no longer dead in trespasses and in sins. Christ had come and preached peace to them through the blood of his cross (17), and they had believed the message and embraced him by faith.
In election, God from eternity gave a people to Christ to save. Christ came into the world and died for their sins, and rose for their justification. The Spirit comes in time and applies that redemption to them, and he applies it when he regenerates them and draws them to faith in Christ as he is revealed in the gospel. And what I’m saying is that when we believe the gospel, we don’t only get our sins forgiven, we aren’t only justified, we are also adopted into the family of God. And that is a blessing that surpasses all others.
With this in mind, let’s now come to the text and examine and mediate upon it together. There are two basic points to be made here. First, negatively, we need to see what God has not given to us, which is a spirit of bondage leading to fear. Second, and positively, we need what God has given to us, which is a spirit of adoption, upon which the apostle elaborates in verses 16-17.
What God has not given to us: a spirit of bondage again to fear
Paul writes, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear” (15). This verse connects to the previous verse (note the word “for” again) by giving a reason why those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. We can know this because the very Spirit who leads them is also the one who gives them a spirit of adoption. That is, he doesn’t testify to us that we are slaves but that we are sons and daughters of God.
There has been a lot of debate over the meaning of the two instances of the word “spirit” in verse 15. You will note that in the first instance, the word spirit is not capitalized; in the second one it is. The argument is that the second is a reference to the Holy Spirit, whereas the first to something else. The word is the same in the Greek in both cases, and in the earliest NT MSS, all the words were in capital letters. So to capitalize the word in one instance and not the other is really an interpretative translation.
Now it seems to me that both instances of the word spirit in verse 15 are not a reference either to our spirit or to the Holy Spirit, at least not directly. I think the meaning of the word here is something along the lines of “disposition” or “attitude.” God has not given us the disposition of slaves but of sons. It’s like the way Paul uses the word with Timothy, when he tells him, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7). However, the disposition of sons is an attitude which is given by the Holy Spirit as verse 16 shows, so it doesn’t make a lot of difference at the end of the day whether you capitalize the S in Spirit or not in the second half of verse 15. Now Galatians 4 puts it beyond doubt that it is the Holy Spirit that Paul is talking about in verse 16, because there he writes, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6).
However, the first instance of spirit in verse 15 is definitely not a reference to the Holy Spirit. Granted, some have argued that it is, and they say that what Paul is referring to here is the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting a person of their sins and that this must take place before a person will come to Christ by faith and receive the forgiveness of sins. I don’t think that’s what Paul is referring to. Rather, Paul is referring to the state every believer was in before they were converted. Before we are united to Christ by faith, we are in a state of bondage, in bondage to sin, in bondage to the impending judgment of God’s law upon us. And that state of bondage leads to fear. It creates a disposition towards fear. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all lost people are in a constant state of fear. But that is only because they are not facing reality. If they were, they would be properly afraid. And what Paul is saying is that it is not the work of the Holy Spirit to bring us back into that state or to leave us with that sort of disposition and attitude.
Let’s think about what this spirit of bondage is. It is clearly contrasted with the spirit (or Spirit) of adoption. Now it’s good for us to know what this looks like, because Paul is saying that God does not want us to be brought back (again) to this spirit of bondage. So we need to see it for what it is. One of the reasons it is necessary for us to consider this is because there are versions of Christianity out there that will lead you to believe that this sort of mentality is a sort of superior spirituality, that a doubting, despairing, hopeless, bleak sort of Christianity is somehow what it means to be holy. It’s not! God has not given us the spirit of bondage again to fear. Instead, he has given the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry out to God, “Abba! Father!” True Christianity does not shut you out from God or away from God. God does not treat his children like King David treated his son Absolom who had him come back from exile but then would not have anything to do with him. God does not do that. He does not treat us as slaves but as sons and daughters with ready access to him.
The fear that the apostle says we are not given is a fear that is incongruous with being a child of God. It is the spirit of a slave, of one in bondage. What might such a fear be like? Now before I say what I’m going to say, please hear me when I say that these fears aren’t an evidence that you are not saved. One of the aims of the apostle in this part of Romans 8, and one of the things implied in the word “again” – “the spirit of bondage again to fear” – is that a believer can be brought again into possessing such an attitude and disposition. We can fear all the things that go along with this slavish fear. But the thing is that we don’t have to give in, and the reason why we don’t have to give in is that this fear doesn’t come from the Lord if we belong to Christ. So the question is, what sorts of fears have we been delivered from by the redemption purchased by Christ? What sorts of things do justified people (8:1) need not be afraid of?
Death
The first thing I would say is that the believer need have no fear of is death. Listen to what the author of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself [that is, the Lord Jesus] likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:14-15). Note here that fear and bondage are connected, as they are in Romans 8:15, and the fear is explicitly the fear of death.
Now if you are not a believer, you ought to fear death. Jesus said to people in his day, “If ye believe not that I am he [that is, the Christ], ye shall die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24). That means that those who die in unbelief will die in an unforgiven state, and that can only mean one thing – they will suffer God’s just and eternal punishment in hell. You may not fear death, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.
But the believer in Christ need not fear death. That doesn’t mean that dying won’t be hard – I will never forget what R. C. Sproul said about it: “I don’t fear death, but I fear dying” – but it does mean that death itself need be no cause of trouble to the Christian. The triumphant language of Paul ought to be the cry of every Christian: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55-57). For Jesus our Lord has already died, and risen again. He is the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in him, though they die, yet they shall live (Jn. 11:25-27). Death is not the end; it is the beginning of something wonderful. It is the way to never-ending, ever-increasing joy in the presence of the Lord.
Here’s the thing, and this can actually help us out I think: the reality is that even if the believer fears death, this can’t cut him or her off from God’s grace. But as we draw near to the Jordan, we ought to remind ourselves that Jesus Christ has prepared a place for us. He is waiting to receive us. Do you remember how our Lord prayed to the Father in his high priestly prayer? “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (Jn. 17:24). He wants you to be with him! It is better for us to be absent from the body and present with the Lord – in fact, as Paul puts it, far better. Believer, death is but the path we must take to go into the immediate presence of our Lord. It is not something to be feared or avoided. The Christian doesn’t live to avoid death. The Christian lives to die well. Death is door through which we must pass to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We need not fear death; God has not given us the spirit of bondage again to fear death.
Damnation
Sometimes, even God’s children can get to a place where they fear God’s wrath and judgment. Yes, the unbeliever should fear it, but the child of God, never. Nevertheless, the knowledge of past sins, the fear of not repenting enough, or believing enough, all this can bring even a true believer into bondage. But what does the Scripture say? Yes, we are to repent. Yes, we are to put our faith in Christ. But we are not to put our faith in repenting, or in our faith! Faith is like a window in a house. It is something you through, not something you look at. We look through faith to Jesus and his perfect righteousness. We remember that he justifies the ungodly. We remember that we are justified, not by our righteousness, but by the righteousness of God, which is perfect and entire, wanting nothing. God has not given us the spirit of fear. He has not given us the spirit of bondage again to this fear.
Distance
As believers in Christ, as justified from sin, we need not fear death, but we also need not fear distance from God or desertion by God. But every unbeliever is separated from God. The prophet Isaiah wrote, “Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:1-2). Again, as Paul describes unbelievers in his letter to the Ephesians, they are “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). I cannot imagine a worse position to be in. It’s not of course that they have escaped the omnipresence of God, or the omniscience of God. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). But it means that God’s presence is not a presence to bless but a presence to curse. He is not for them but against them. However, every believer can say with the apostle Paul, “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33-34).
However, faith in Christ ought to deliver us from the fear of alienation and separation from God. May I remind you of that great saying of Robert Murray M’Cheyne? “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” I know that we can sometimes feel abandoned, but the child of God need never fear that he or she will ever be abandoned. Distance makes no difference. He will never leave us or forsake us, and he will never desert or abandon us.
Now someone at this point may want to ask, “Wait a minute, what about godly fear? Doesn’t the Bible tell us to fear God?” The answer is yes; it does. In fact, the fear of God is at the heart and center of all true worship. But this clearly is not what Paul is talking about here. There is a difference between slavish fear, the fear of slavery, that Paul is talking about here, and the fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom. Paul helps us out here in something he says to the Corinthians. He writes, “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10). Now it’s true he’s talking about godly versus worldly sorrow. But his is connected to fear, as his next words show: “For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (11). Godly fear, you see, leads to repentance, but slavish fear (like that of Judas) leads to death. Godly fear is basically reverence mixed with humility; slavish fear has no respect for God, and hates or at best puts up with God rather than loves him. As the apostle John tells us, “Perfect love casts out [this sort of] fear.”
So we want to push back against this fear, because it is the opposite of and a hindrance to the spirit of adoption. We want to cultivate the spirit of adoption. And that brings us to our next point.
What God has given to us: a spirit of adoption
God has given those who believe in his Son a spirit of adoption, which is as we’ve been saying a disposition of sons and daughters of God. And there are two wonderful realities (at least) in verse 15 that this points to that I want to talk to you about.
Prayer to God
The first thing this points us to is prayer. Notice that the apostle writes, “but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (15). It is by this disposition of sons and daughters that we are enabled to cry out to God in prayer. The unbeliever may indeed cry out to God. But they do not cry out to him the way Paul is speaking of here. It is often out of fear that they cry. They don’t approach God as a Father, but as a cosmic vending machine to serve their lusts. But this is the cry of a child, a cry that doesn’t just approach the throne because it needs something, but because it wants fellowship and communion with God.
It has been noted that the word “cry” here is a strong word. This is prayer by someone who really believes that God hears prayer. They are not crying in order to get God’s attention, but because they want his attention. And this is a continual cry, not in the sense of we’re on our knees 24/7, but in the sense that the believer lives in an attitude of prayer. Prayer is the breath of a regenerate person. We cannot not pray!
So that’s an evidence of salvation. Is your relationship to God one in which prayer is the most natural thing? That’s not to say prayer isn’t hard – it’s spiritual warfare, and the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak – but even though it is hard, prayer is for the Christian something we must do. We cannot live without prayer to God. We pray to him because we must pray to him.
Access to God
And then as we pray to God, we are praying to him, as Paul puts it here, with the words, “Abba, Father.” Now the intention of Paul in these words has been debated and sometimes perhaps overstated. But the fact of the matter is that calling the Creator of the world, the God who spoke all things into existence, the God who sovereignly upholds all things by the word of his power, the God before whom the seraphim tremble, to call this God “Father” is something we would not dare to do unless God himself invited us to do it. It points us to an amazing privilege, a privilege that John points us to when he writes, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 Jn. 3:1).
To call God Father is something that David preached to us about a few weeks ago. It is how Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven.” This title is meant to indicate, first of all, the fact that every believer has access to God. He is our Father. Fathers don’t shut out their children, at least, not good fathers! And God is a good Father. We are the evil ones. But God is the perfect, always good, always wise, always loving Father.
Interestingly, this is the way the gospel of Mark relates how Jesus approached the Father in his prayer. We read in Mark 14:36, “And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” In other words, one way that Romans 8:15 can be read is as an invitation to pray as Jesus prayed. And as such, it is a reminder that our access to God comes not because of our personal accomplishments and goodness, but because of what Christ has done for us, and that “through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). So our access to God is an access that is created by Christ. We have this access because Christ gives it to us. He holds the door open. He leads us by the hand into his Father’s presence.
And this is open for every believer, no matter what their background is. The word “Abba” is Aramaic for father. What follows is the Greek word for father, “pater.” Abba is the word a Jewish believer would use to refer to God as Father and Pater is the word a Greek or Roman believer would use to refer to God as Father. In other words, God is the Father not only of Jewish believers, but now of Gentile believers too. Many of the Jewish believers, like Timothy, would have been raised in godly homes. But Gentiles would have been brought up in the pigsty of paganism. However, both are invited to come on the same basis into the presence of God, and to call him their Father. That is the point of the “we both have access . . . unto the Father” of Eph. 2:18. The “we both” is Jew and Gentile. And the application today is that, even if your past is a pagan past, one pockmarked by bad decisions and wicked choices, by Jesus Christ we can freely and without hesitation come into the presence of God who will receive us as a father does his children. In fact, as the Psalmist reminds us, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him” (Ps. 103:13).
John Murray helpfully writes in his commentary on these words, “The repetition [Abba, Father] indicates the warmth as well as the confidence with which the Holy Spirit emboldens the people of God to draw nigh as children to a father able and ready to help them.” He goes on to say, “The hesitation to entertain this confidence of approach to God the Father is not a mark of true humility.” Yes! It is not humility for a child of God to hesitate to come to their Father. It dishonors God for us to stand back, as it were.
Now Paul is clearly saying that God gives his children this disposition of sons through the Holy Spirit, as verse 16 puts beyond all doubt. This is not something that we give ourselves. It is something which is given. We receive it. But it is something that all God’s children receive. What is it that enables us to approach God with the child-like confidence? It is not our spiritual strength or cleverness. It is the gracious and sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in us. In other words, this is something that God intends for all of us to enjoy if we belong to him through Christ.
But let me anticipate an objection here that is necessary to deal with from a pastoral point of view. Someone who is a true believer in Jesus might feel distant from God, and wonder if this means that they lack this disposition of sons and therefore conclude that they are not children of God. However, we should not evaluate our status as children of God on the basis of whether or not we feel like it.
The reason we should not is that Paul clearly thinks that a genuine child of God can fall back into a spirit of bondage again to fear, as we’ve already pointed out. And that means such a person will not have, on the level of their feelings, a spirit of adoption. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, but it does mean we may not feel it because we have been believing lies. As an illustration of this, remember Paul’s words to Timothy, “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:6-7). Why was Paul having to say this to Timothy? He was having to say it because Timothy was in danger of giving way to the spirit of fear, and as a result of not stirring up the gift of God that was in him. It was there, it was always there, but Timothy needed to stir it up and to not give into the spirit of fear, but rather to take advantage of the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.
In the same way, we can give way to fears that will obscure the spirit of adoption in us. But that means that we need to fight back against them. We need to stir up the gift of God in us; we need to stir up this spirit of adoption that God has given to us. So let me end this morning with some practical suggestions as to how we might go about this.
First, we need to start with the gospel and grace. We need to start with Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” The basis of our fears, whether of death, damnation, or desertion, is the fear that God does not love us, which is another way of saying that he condemns us. But does God condemn us? Not if we are in Christ. How are you in Christ? Not because of our good works but because of Christ’s good works. Not because of our righteousness but because of the righteousness of God, which is received not by trying harder but by trusting Jesus. Not by looking to ourselves but by looking to Christ. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1-2). Listen to the words of your Lord: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (Jn. 5:24).
Second, kill the sin in your life. Repent and turn from cherished sins. We must never forget the context. We are led by the Spirit to mortify sin in the life (13-14). It is of these that verse 15 speaks: “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.” Who are the “ye”? They are the ones spoken of in verses 12-13: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” The Spirit who gives us the spirit, the disposition of children, is the Holy Spirit. The Bible makes it very clear that he can be grieved and quenched. What grieves the Spirit? Sin does. We cannot think that we will enjoy the blessed testimony of the Spirit witnessing to the wonderful privilege of our status as adopted sons and daughters of God while we make the Spirit hold his nose at the sins in our lives.
At the same time, if you are a Christian, remember that the sins you are fighting are cancelled sins, and God is more than willing to forgive you and welcome you back into the fellowship of his presence when you turn. God is more ready to forgive than we are to repent: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:7-9). Not only is his grace on our side, but also his justice and faithfulness! All the attributes of God are armed, not to kill us, but to revive us and bless us.
And then seek the Lord in prayer for the blessing. Those who cry, “Abba, Father,” are the ones who have the spirit of adoption. Not that prayer creates it, but it is tied to it, and when the feeling of it wanes, we must not think to get it back with fervently seeking the face of the Lord in prayer. This is what you see again and again in the Psalms, isn’t it? Hear the way King David appeals to the Lord after his terrible sin: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Ps. 51:10-12).
Though our feelings do not determine our status with God, they are important. There is no doubt that feelings and affections and emotions are involved in the spirit of adoption and the witness of the Spirit with our spirits that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16). We must not think it wrong to desire a frame of mind and heart that is warmed in the glow of God’s love for us in Christ. We should want the joy of our salvation, as King David put it. Do you have that? Do you want that? I think that even the desire for that is evidence of our sonship! It is the son or daughter of God who prays, as the hymn puts it:
-------------------------------------
Note on hyiothesia (Gk., “adoption”).
In this note I am dealing with an objection that I sometimes hear. The objection is this: how is it possible to be adopted into God’s family when you are born into it? The Bible says that we are born of God. It is argued that becoming part of the family of God happens through the new birth and that being the case, it becomes impossible to think that we need to also be adopted. And so the proponents of this view argue that the word universally translated in verse 15 as “adoption” should be translated rather in terms of sonship. God has given us the spirit of sonship, rather than the spirit of adoption. What are we to say to this?
Well, first I would point out that the best available lexicons of New Testament Greek argue differently. They consistently argue that this word means adoption. That’s just what the language indicates. The BAGD lexicon, perhaps the standard NT Greek dictionary, defines the meaning of the word Paul uses here and elsewhere as adoption. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology says that hyiothesia “is a technical legal term and means adoption, the accepting of a child as one’s own.” The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament argues that the “word indicates a total break w. the old family, and a new family relation with all its rights, privileges, and responsibilities.” Douglas Moo writes in his commentary on Romans 8:15, “The word denoted the Greek, and particularly Roman, legal institution whereby one can ‘adopt’ a child and confer on that child all the legal rights and privileges that would ordinarily accrue to a natural child.” [See Douglas Moo, Romans (1st ed.), NICNT, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 1996), p. 501.] In a footnote on the same page, he goes on to say, “Scholars debate whether the term [hyiothesia], as Paul uses it, denotes the act of adoption . . . or the status of ‘sonship’ . . . .” Moo ends up opting for the former, but in any case even if the status of sonship is in view, it is not disconnected from the act of adoption. In that case, it would be the status of sonship that was in focus, but it would still be a status conferred by the act of adoption. It’s a word that not only says that we are sons, but that we have been put into the category of sons by a surprising act of God’s grace. So we better wrap our theology around the language Paul uses rather than wrapping the language around our theology!
Second, the idea that being born again into the family of God precludes adoption into the family of God fails to see the point of the various metaphors that the Bible uses to describe the multifaceted nature of our salvation. I could also argue that being born into the family of God means that I don’t need redemption from slavery! But the Bible very clearly sees us as slaves in need of redemption. The fact of the matter is that the language of new birth is meant to point to the necessity of a new nature. We are dead in trespasses and in sins by nature, and we need to be given a new heart with new affections and a new will. This is what transpires in the new birth. But we also need to be taken from being outside the family of God to being put inside the family of God. This is what happens in the blessing of adoption. To borrow the language of J. I. Packer in his book Knowing God: in the new birth, we are given a new nature, and in adoption, we are given a new name. Both are necessary, and both are needed, and it is the glory of our salvation in Christ that we have both in him.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment