3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, 6 to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, 8 which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. 13 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, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.
As we have been working our way through this series, looking at some of the key doctrines of the Christian faith, my prayer has been that if nothing else, our appreciation of just what God has done for us will have grown. We are so used to hearing words like salvation and justification in the Church, that we easily forget the wonder of it all, and in that sense our subject today is no different.
God doesn’t merely save us, but as He gives us the gift of justification by faith, He adopts us as His own. The Christian’s adoption into God’s family is something which happens simultaneously with justification. As God declares a sinner not guilty and righteous, based on the righteousness of Christ, at the same time He also adopts him or her into His family.
Because of our betrayal of God, and as a consequence of our rebellion and sin, we deserve nothing more than His judgment and wrath. But instead of pouring out His wrath on those who justly deserve it, God elects to save us to the extent where not only are our sins forgiven, but we are adopted as His own. Verses 4-6 of Ephesians 1 again: “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.”
A question we need to ask is this: Bearing in mind that we are looking at some of the key doctrines of the Christian faith, why is the doctrine of adoption important?
There are a couple of answers to that, but probably the most important is because God adopts us into His family, the logical conclusion is that before adoption we are not automatically part of His family. This truth stands directly opposed to this idea that we are all God’s children, but if God has adopted us by grace, this means that there must have been a time when we were outside of His family.
In other words, the doctrine of adoption presupposes that we are not naturally in God’s family, but we must be adopted into it by Him before we can call ourselves children of God.
The Bible does not teach that man in his fallen state is naturally part of God’s family, and the reason for this is sin. Until we are saved and justified by grace, we are enemies of God. We often hear the statement, “people are basically good.” But if this is true, why is sin so universal? The answer is obvious. The Bible teaches that our original parents, Adam and Eve, sinned, and because of this, every human being is born with a sinful and a corrupt nature. This is what we also know as original sin, and this is why sin is so universal and common to us all. Original sin is not the act of Adam’s disobedience, but rather, it is the result of the first sin. The result is the corruption of the human race. Original sin refers to the fallen condition into which we are born, and this is why sin is universal.
Section 4 of chapter 6 of the Westminster Confession puts it like this: “From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.”
That last phrase “do proceed all actual transgressions” sums up the issue of sin perfectly. The truth is that we are not sinners because we sin. Rather, we sin because we are first and foremost, sinners. It may sound like the same thing, but it’s not. Our default setting is sin. As David wrote in Psalm 51:5, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And this is what makes us natural enemies of God, one of the results of which is that we are not, in our natural state, members of His family. We are not all children of God. In our natural, fallen state, we are His enemies.
In fact, in a conversation Jesus had with the Pharisees in John 8, He took the meaning of this truth to a whole new level. The Pharisees remember, were the spiritual elite in Jesus’ day. They, if anyone, had a claim to being children of God. “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father - even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but He sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:39-47)
So Jesus made it very clear that not everyone is a child of God. Rather, in our pre-conversion state, we are children of the devil. The apostle Paul taught the same principle in Galatians 3:26. “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”
So again, the Bible teaches that God is not the Father of all, but only those who are in Christ - those who recognise and confess their sin, turn to God in repentance, and who receive the gift of faith to believe that they are saved. Sonship of God is not a universal status which we receive just because we are born physically.
In order to be part of the family of God and to receive the rights of sonship, we must be born again. John 1:12-13 says, “To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Adoption by God is a supernatural act which only God can perform. It only comes to us by putting our faith in Jesus Christ. Those who do not receive Christ remain enemies of God, and by default, they remain outside of His family. Adoption by God does not apply to those who reject salvation in Christ.
Probably the easiest way for us to understand this principle is to look at adoption the way we usually do. The term adoption itself refers to a relationship that is not natural. You can’t adopt your biological child. You can only adopt a child who is born of someone else, and it takes a legal declaration in order to do so. An adopted child legally changes his or her relationship with their birth parents, and now has a new relationship with their adopted parents.
Getting back to the Biblical doctrine of adoption, if everyone was born naturally as part of God’s family, then the concept of adoption in our salvation is a meaningless term. To take it even further, if we assume that everyone is a member of God’s family apart from Jesus’ saving work on the cross, we have cheapened the grace of God, and it counteracts the Gospel message of what God has done for us in Christ.
The Scottish theologian John Murray wrote in one of his books, “To substitute the message of God’s universal fatherhood for that which is constituted by redemption and adoption is to annul the Gospel; it means the degradation of this highest and richest of relationships to the level of that relationship which all men sustain to God by creation. In a word, it is to deprive the Gospel of its redemptive meaning. And it encourages men in the delusion that our creaturehood is the guarantee of our adoption into God’s family.”
Our adoption by grace into the family of God is essential, because at the heart of the Bible is the message that there is one great divide in humanity. On the one side you have those who are adopted into God’s family as a result of faith in Jesus Christ who, as a result have God as their Father, and on the other side there are those who are outside of Christ and have the devil as their spiritual father, as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees in John chapter 8.
At the end of your life, the only thing that will matter is whether you are saved or lost. Those are the only options open to us all, and there is no neutral ground. You are either in Christ, or you are not.
In Matthew 13, Jesus told the parable of the weeds. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matthew 13:24-30)
Later on, His disciples asked Jesus to explain what this parable meant, and we pick up the text from verse 37: “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:37-43)
What Jesus is doing here is drawing a distinct line between the children of God and the children of satan.
He is showing us the contrast between the saved and the lost, and He reinforces the truth that there is no neutral ground. With Christ you have everything, and without Him you have nothing.
Everyone is either a member of God’s family by being adopted into it by grace as part their salvation or they are members of satan’s family as a result of being born into original sin. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:18, “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because He has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
So this idea of the universal Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, as wonderful and as flowery as it may sound, is not found in the Bible, and so each of us needs to ask ourselves which family we belong to.
Can there be a greater gift than for a sinner to be graciously adopted into the family of God? As we are redeemed and saved by grace, God not only redeems us from our sins and imputes the righteousness of Christ to us, but He also adopts us as His own. To be justified in the sight of God is a wonderful gift, but He lifts our relationship with Him to a much higher level.
Justification, by its very definition, is a legal term. You might remember when we did our series on the book of Romans, that Paul paints the scene much like a courtroom drama. In this court, God is the judge, and as He declares us to be righteous in His sight, basically He is saying that the sinner who repents will not, nor ever will be declared guilty, because of our faith in the saving work of Jesus on the cross.
But justification, being merely a legal term, doesn’t automatically imply any kind of intimate or deep relationship with God the judge. Just like in the movies, the judge bangs his gavel, declares the accused to be not guilty and says that he is free to go. The man who is declared righteous in the eyes of the law and not guilty is given his freedom, but he never has to set eyes on the judge ever again.
God the judge though, doesn’t merely declare us not guilty as He sends on on our merry way, but He adopts us. In love, He draws us to Himself. Adoption is about family. It’s about belonging to Him because of His immeasurable love for us. As He adopts us, God takes us into His family and fellowship, and He calls us His children. To be right with God the judge is already a wonderful thing, but to be loved and cared for by God as our Heavenly Father, is another thing completely.
So what does all this mean for the adopted of God? If we grasp the reality and the wonder of who we now are in Christ, what impact should this have on our lives?
Simply put, understanding that in our salvation we are adopted into God’s family should set the foundation for living our lives for Him, and not ourselves. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:14-16: “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.”
Now we have no reason to fear. The Westminster Confession of Faith encapsulates the wonder of our salvation and adoption like this: “The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the Gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and, in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to satan, and dominion of sin; from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation; as also, in their free access to God, and their yielding obedience unto Him, not out of slavish fear, but a child-like love and willing mind.” (20:1)
Now everything changes, as we are set free from the condemnation of our sin. Now we are set free to love and serve God, as we live for Him and not ourselves.
1 John 3:1-3 teaches some important truths about our adoption and how it impacts our lives. “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. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.”
Being an adopted child of God has benefits beyond our imagination. We are adopted into His family as heirs of God Himself, and He will never disinherit us. Because of what Jesus has done for us, and as we receive salvation through faith, we are promised eternal life with our Heavenly Father. For now, we have the gift of His Holy Spirit, guiding and encouraging us on our journey through this sin-sick world, as He reminds us of our promised inheritance.
Again, are you part of the family of God, graciously adopted as one of His children? If so, you have so much to rejoice over. If not, come to Him in repentance and faith, before it is too late, because this window of opportunity will not remain open forever.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Ephesians 1:3-14
How does the Holy Spirit “guarantee our inheritance?”
See verse 14
How does the doctrine of adoption differ from justification?
Some of the more modern translations of the Bible have replaced the term “sons of God” with sons and daughters, or they just use the word children.
How does this change lose the true impact of sonship and the reality that Christians are heirs of God?
(Note: In Biblical times, only sons inherited their fathers’ estate. Contrary to some false teachings, the Bible is not anti-feminist. See Galatians 3:28)
The mere fact that God adopts us into His family presupposes the truth that before coming to Christ, we are not automatically members of the family of God.
Many people believe that we are all God’s children. This is known as the doctrine of universalism, which teaches that because God loves us, all will eventually be saved.
How does universalism contradict the teachings of Scripture, and how does it cheapen the saving work of Jesus on the cross?
See John 8:39-47