I Know Who I Am and Whose I Am (Acts 27:23)

“Believers are not only children of God by adoption, but they are also made joint heirs with Christ. This is a rich and glorious truth! Everything that belongs to Christ is ours in Him. As He is the heir of all things, so are we in Him. Our inheritance is sure because it is secured by His merit and sealed by His blood.” -Charles Spurgeon 

Dear flock, 

This week in our pastoral letter, we will look at the extraordinarily sweet biblical doctrine of adoption; that God has adopted us as his own children.  In this letter we will define the Bible’s teaching on adoption as “God’s gracious act of changing enemies into children by the Spirit of adoption, and blessing them with all the rights and privileges of a natural child.”

Beloved, are you aware of the great miracle and blessing it is that God would adopt us into his family?  We are often far more concerned about our salvation (justification) and less concerned about how we fit into God’s family.  John L. Girardeau, the great nineteenth century preacher in Charleston, explained the difference like this: “Justification confers upon him the rights of a righteous man; adoption, the rights of a child.” 

When we think of adoption, most of us probably think of it primarily in terms of human adoption, in which a child is transferred from one family to another in a legally binding act.  While such adoption is beautiful in itself, perhaps the greatest thing adoption does is point to the glorious way that God adopts us into His family as sons and daughters through Christ.  The great Puritan John Owen recognizes that five things must be true for an adoption to be considered legitimate:

1. The adoptee is initially of another family.
2. He is being brought into a family into which he ought have no right. 
3. This is “an authoritative, legal transition” from one family into another.
4. The adoptee be freed from all obligations incurred in his previous family. This means sin longer has any dominion in your life!!!
5. The adoptee, through adoption, “be invested in all the rights, privileges, advantages, and title to the whole inheritance,” of the adopting family, as if he were a natural born son.

All five of these are true in the way God adopts us, showing us that adoption into the family of God is not merely metaphorical language; it’s an authoritative, final act whereby God brings us into His family and loves us with Fatherly love. 

It is imperative for us to understand our adoption, for it tells us how both who we are and how we ought to relate to God.  Understanding our adoption is to understand the beauty of coming before our loving Father; it changes everything!  We don’t serve and obey Him in order to be loved; we serve and obey because we are loved!   Instead of hiding from God with slavish fear, we come to Him with the reverence appropriate for a child to have towards a good father.  William Cowper’s great hymn “Love Constraining to Obedience” captures this well:

To see the Law by Christ fulfilled,
To hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child
And duty into choice.

A Right to All the Privileges

In question 34 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we ask the question “What is Adoption.”  The answer: “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.”

Eternity will hardly be long enough to contemplate what it means that we have a right to all the privileges of the Sons of God!  Yet I’d like to briefly discuss four privileges that ought to impact our lives deeply today: 

1.  A Father’s Protection: Good fathers protect their children.  They protect them both from physical danger and from spiritual danger.  Our Heavenly Father does both for us: He and his angels have protected us from physical harm in ways that we’re unaware of.  He also protects us from spiritual harm, both in giving us the nourishment of the means of grace as well as foiling our own “best-laid plans” that could otherwise destroy us.  Your Father’s eye is always upon you!

2.  A Father’s Correction: Good fathers correct their children.   Parents who do not discipline and correct their children often think they are being loving by letting the child do whatever he wants, but in reality they are failing to do their duty of giving the child correcting grace.  It is a reminder that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He would rather afflict us than allow us to wander away from Him.  As the Puritan William Gurnall said, “God’s wounds cure; sin’s kisses kill.”  Our great heavenly Father is using all things for your good!

3.  A Father’s Attention: God may not always heed our prayers, but He always hears our prayers.  He enjoys hearing our prayers, perhaps far more even than we enjoy praying them.  Through Christ, we have access to the Father’s throne in a way that not even the angels have!  We’re not kept at a distance; we’re told that we should actually approach his throne with confidence (Hebrews 4:16).  Tim Keller states this beautifully: “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.”  Your Father delights for you to draw NEAR to Him!

4.  A Father’s Provision: When Jesus was speaking about worry and anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount, He pointed to the fact that we should not worry because God is our Father.  The gentiles seek after the things of this world, and yet your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all (Matthew 6:32).  God, as a good heavenly Father, never forgets his children.  He always provides what we need on time, all the time.  Your Father cares for you even more than you care for your own children!

How Deep the Father’s Love for Us!

Armed with the doctrine of adoption, we’re able to walk through life knowing that our Father, who loves us with an everlasting love, has ordained every single thing that comes into our lives.  If you experience hardship, it is part of your Father’s correction.  If you experience blessing, it comes from the hand of a Heavenly Father who loves to bless His children. 

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss –
The Father turns His face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

Unless God is our Father, we are orphans.  But God’s own Son has become our Older Brother, and we receive all that is His.  The Holy Spirit dwells in our lives, making us a suitable dwelling place to receive the Father and the Son!  What an awesome blessing, as we learn that we are not abandoned and unloved, but rather that we are loved by the Father, by the Son, and lovingly cared for by the Holy Spirit (John 14:21).

In His kindness, when we are first starting to understand the faith He doesn’t overwhelm us with His awesome glory, for we would be terrified to draw near to Him if we saw all that He is.  But as we grow up in the faith, we find that He grows with us, and we never outgrow Him.  The same truths that once our young minds seemed to fully grasp, now we can hardly begin to ponder.  As we grow, He grows so much bigger!

One example of this is what Paul says in our passage in Romans 8, specifically that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”  When I was a fairly new Christian, I memorized all of Romans 8, and I can remember reading that line and thinking that it was special, but it was just one of many great promises in Romans 8.  Today, after 24 years as a Christian, I feel that I have far less of a grip on this awesome truth than I did as a new believer; it’s not that my theological understanding has declined, but that what it means to be in Christ, and all of the privileges that entails, has grown so much in my eyes. 

Co-Heirs with Christ

So what does it mean that we are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ?  It means, as Spurgeon said, “Everything that belongs to Christ is ours in Him.”  There is an inheritance that Christ deserves as the Son of God in whom His Father is well pleased, and through our adoption as Sons of God, the Father is absolutely delighted to share the fullness of that inheritance with us. 

In Luke 12, Jesus was asked to intervene in a dispute between brothers concerning who would receive the largest portion of their father’s inheritance.  It’s a sad but oft-repeated scene in this world.  Yet such a scene will never happen in Heaven, for the inheritance that is ours in Christ is infinite.  There is no dividing the inheritance, for all of us who are in Christ receive all that belongs to Christ!

What a truth for us to grow into!  No human language can begin to capture the magnitude of this promise, but I think Jonathan Edwards did as well as any: “To be heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ means that we share in all the blessings and privileges that belong to Christ as the Son of God. We are adopted into God’s family, made partakers of His grace, and destined for glory. This is a glorious inheritance that surpasses anything the world has to offer.”

Growing in the Family Likeness

But dear one, being heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ is not merely a cause for celebration; it is also a call to action.  Just as Jesus laid down His life for us, so too are we called to take up our cross and follow Him.  We are called to live lives of sacrificial love and obedience, thus the Apostle’s exhortation, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”  

As you go through your day, facing both its joys and its trials, embrace your identity as a child of God with boldness and confidence.  Take heart in the words of Peter, who reminds us that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us by the power of God (1 Peter 1:4).

Are these truths real to you?  Do you realize that you are the “apple of your father’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8)?  Do you believe that He loves you more than any earthly father has ever loved a child?  Do you believe in His Fatherly care?  Yes, beloved, He has promised all of these things to you in His Word. 

May the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, empower you to live a life worthy of your calling as a beloved child of God.  May He strengthen you with His power and fill you with His peace, knowing that you are loved beyond measure and that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.