Jesus once told a story about a man who discovered a treasure in a field and sold all he had to buy the field. Ephesians 1 is a ‘treasure’ and we will do well to do whatever it takes to ‘buy’ the field, that is, to understand, apply, and enrich our relationship with God.
Ephesians 1 is filled with allusions to the various profound and beautiful truths connected with the reality of our redemption:
- we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places
- we have been chosen before the creation the foundation of the world
- God has done all this by his glorious grace, etc…
But in this treasure there is one jewel that shines more brightly than the others. That jewel is the word ‘adopted’. Ephesians 1:5 reads: In love God predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
The word ‘adoption’ has some negative nuances to it for us. Even though adoption is an amazing gift to give to a child, it is hard for us to think about the word ‘adoption’ from a purely positive perspective.
When I was a kid, the youngest in my family, my siblings sometimes teased me by joking that I was adopted, that I had been found in a ditch and brought into the family by the roundabout route of adoption. (I was not adopted, and knew it, of course, so I never took their teasing as anything but a joke.) But the humour of their teasing relied on the belief that adoption falls short of full belonging.
There is no question that people who have been adopted by caring parents into a loving family have received an astonishing gift. Adoption is a way of redeeming a bad situation, and so adoption is rightly considered an enormously meaningful and beneficial practice. But adoption is, by its very nature, a solution to a problem, and so the very existence of adoption reflects a less-than-ideal reality.
It is not unusual for adopted children, no matter how loving their family, to feel like they do not quite fully belong. That is why they often, as they get older, seek out their biological parents. They are seeking what feels like a missing piece in their identity. They will often refer to their biological parents as their ‘real’ parents.
Translate that to our Christian experience: The Bible tells that we have been adopted as God’s children. When we acknowledged Jesus as the son of God, and accepted his death in our place for our sins, and when we acknowledged his Lordship, a number of things happened: our sins were forgiven and we suddenly found ourselves in right standing with God, we found fullness of life, the reality of heaven became our guaranteed future, we entered a program of life transformation, by which God’s Holy Spirit reshapes our very character, etc.
But encompassing all of those things, what happened is that we were restored from a place of estrangement from God to a position of being his children. So the one who is Creator and Lord of all, we also call ‘Father’. Amazing! But we are not natural children. We are ‘adopted’ children.
That always nagged at me a little. I have never been entirely comfortable with my status as an adopted child of God. I want God to be my ‘real’ Dad. It might seem that what the word ‘adoption’ means is that in bringing us into relationship with himself, God brought us only 90% of the way, that I am still one shade short of full sonship.
However, some time ago I was doing reading and came across something that changed my perception entirely. It was a brief description of adoption as practiced by the Romans. ‘Adoption’ in the New Testament is a Roman, not Hebrew, practice. In writing to the Ephesians, Paul is writing to a leading Roman city, in a world that had been ruled by the Romans for over a hundred years. Paul’s use of the word ‘adoption’ is thoroughly Roman.
In Roman practice, if a man had no heir, he could adopt a son to be his heir. Most adoptions in our day are of infants. Not so in Rome. Romans would adopt an adult who he considered worthy to be his heir. This adopted son would be given certain duties to fulfil on behalf of his adopted father on the father’s death, and so would gain the inheritance.
Even if someone already had natural children, he could still adopt. And when someone was adopted into a family, Roman law was such that the adopted one would have full status as a son. The family was bound, in matters of inheritance and all legal matters, to treat the adopted one as an equal.
But here’s the thing that made me sit up and take notice: An adopted son was to some degree better off than a natural son. Adoption was irrevocable. An adopted heir could not be disowned. Once adopted, you were in the family for life. A natural son, however, could be disowned. A Roman father could legally cut off from his family a natural son. A father could say to his natural son, ‘Your choices and lifestyle are a disgrace to this family. From this point on, you are no longer my son. You have no part in this family, and no share in the inheritance of our estate.’ (The father didn’t even need to have a good reason. He could just decide for reasons entirely his own, to cast off his son, and disown him entirely.)
With an adopted son he could not do that. The position of the adopted son in the family, entitled to share in the estate and the inheritance, was actually more secure than that of the natural son.
There is a passage in ancient literature that tells of a father and his son. The father disowned the son, only to later on forgive him and receive him back into the family. But later, the father decided to disown the son again and cast him off. The son claimed that his father was not legally entitled to do this because, after having been received back the first time, he now has the status of an adopted son. He wanted to be treated as an adopted son because it gave him a more secure place in the family than his status as a natural son!
The idea of our adoption is the jewel that shines most brightly in Ephesians 1. You might be surprised to hear that: More brightly than forgiveness of sin? more brightly than the hope of heaven?
Yes! For when Paul writes about things like salvation, forgiveness, the grace of God in our lives, and so on, these things culminate in the fact that we have become children of God. This is the pinnacle, the high point of God’s redemptive activity in us. J.I. Packer, the great theologian and author of the classic book ‘Knowing God’, writes in that book that ‘adoption is the highest privilege the gospel offers’.
He is right. Adoption completes the gospel.
Forgiveness takes it halfway by removing the negative (ie. ‘mercy’). Adoption completes it by giving us the positive (ie. ‘grace’). If you were to sum up the good news of Christianity – that is what the word ‘gospel’ means: ‘good news’ – by saying that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and that we might no longer stand guilty before God, you would have only half of the gospel. After a criminal is released from jail, his crime dealt with, having paid his debt to society, society may still not give him their good will.
But God does. Not only does he not hold our sins against us, he actually draws us to himself in a love relationship of Father/child. He not only forgives our sins, he calls himself our father. He not only cancels our sin-debt, he gives us a share in his estate. The full gospel is that Jesus died for our sins so that we might enter into full relationship with God.
To quote J.I. Packer a second time: ‘What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father.’
The reality of this Father-child relationship is probably the least understood Christian reality of them all. If Christians understood it – not just understood it theoretically or theologically, but really ‘got it’ and ordered their lives according to it – things would be very different for us than they are. We would live differently. Worship differently. Teach and disciple differently. Evangelize differently.
There are three implications inherent in the fact that God has adopted us as his children: First, adoption tells us something about God. Second, that we have full status as children, with all the rights, advantages and privileges that go along with that. And third, that our position as children of God is unchangeably, eternally secure.
First, that God is our Father tells us something about him, that God’s fundamental feeling toward us is one of affection. Christians have always affirmed God’s love, but the phrase ‘God loves you’ rolls off the tongue so easily that we seldom stop and think about what an incredible truth that is. For most of us our Christian practice, our experience of prayer, our thoughts about worship and our whole approach to the Christian life as a whole, would reveal that, deep down, we really do not believe that God loves us as a Father. So we keep trying to perform for him and try not to mess up too badly so that he does not cut us off. We think he is an absentee landlord, who keeps tabs on us from a distance to make sure our rent is paid up and we are not wrecking the building. We recognize (rightly) that he is the supreme, eternal, glorious, holy Creator and assume (wrongly) that his primary orientation toward us is as king to subject.
The truth is that God’s primary orientation toward us is love, affection, and fondness.
When my children were little – 2 or 3 years old – I really delighted in them. To me they were the cutest kids ever. I loved how they talked, their mannerisms and expressions. I loved to have them on my lap reading a book together. I loved watching them conduct classical music, or talking on their toy phone, or pretending to read. I loved the sound of their ‘Dad home!’ when they heard the back door open.
I loved what they did. But I did not love them because of what they did. I loved what they did because I loved them, because they were my kids. And even if they do not do what they once did, to paraphrase Paul when he says, ‘When they grew up and put their childish behind them’, I still love them.
When will we finally grasp the fact that God’s love for us is of that nature? God doesn’t love you grudgingly. When he looks at you his heart beats faster. He is tender toward you. Most of us would readily affirm ‘God loves us’, but few of us would as quickly say, ‘God loves me’. If you as a Christian do not know God loves you, accepts you, then it’s like you are standing in a room but looking through the window at the outside. Sure, you are ‘saved’. That has to do with the death of Christ and your professed faith in him. But you have stopped short of the fullness of what God has for you. You have gained access through Christ to the kingdom of heaven, but you are hanging around by the door with your shoes still on, instead of entering into the very living room of God’s home.
God loves you. He is your Father.
J.I. Packer describes God as a parent:
‘He is faithful in love and care… generous and thoughtful… interested in all we do… respecting our individuality… skillful in training us… wise in guidance… always available… helping us cultivate maturity, integrity and uprightness.’
You do not have to somehow gain God’s goodwill. He has already given you that. Remember, Ephesians says that it was ‘in love’ that we have been predestined to be adopted as God’s children and that he did this out of his own good pleasure and will. You are adopted because God loves you and sought you out.
Another facet of God’s deep love and genuine affection for us has to do with his discipline of us. It puts it in a whole new light. Discipline happens in our world in various contexts. Teachers discipline students in order to maintain order for the sake of the class, bosses discipline employees in order to keep productivity up for the sake of the company, the law disciplines offenders in order to remove threats to order for the sake of society.
We tend to think of God’s discipline of us as belonging to one of those categories: disciplining us to keep us in line for the sake of …. what? the church? his own moral standard? his own obligation as judge?
We discipline our kids in order to form character in them, and we do it for their sake. To be sure, we fail too many times. But we want them to be the best people they can be. We discipline them for their safety. Our voices take on a harsh tone – that is discipline – when they try to touch the stove, or when they leave our yard and run down the block without us. We discipline them when they deliberately disobey us. We want them to grow up with a healthy understanding of authority and how to respond to it. They get time-outs, stern talking-to’s, and removed privileges. They do not know it, but this discipline really is for their benefit.
The Bible in Hebrews 12 says that God disciplines us ‘as sons, as daughters’. God’s discipline is always as a loving father, not as a policeman or judge, not as a coach or teacher, even, but as a good Dad. God never disciplines us for the sake of cracking down. He never delights in it for its own sake. He is not a harsh judge who is more concerned about our toeing the line than he is about us. God always, only acts according to what is best for us. He loves you and will never allow anything in your life except what he will use for your good. His discipline is always intended for our safety, or our character.
God disciplines us from a place of love and affection. I need to highlight that because most of us tend to think that if things get tough it’s because we have blown it somehow and God is saying, ‘Fine, then. Take that!’ God is not petty or reactive. Now, it is true that when we ignore God or drift from him, bad things happen. We feel lost. We make poorer choices. But that is not God ‘spanking’ us. It is a natural consequence of being out of touch with God. Even though that is not discipline, strictly speaking, God allows even those things in order to help us learn from our mistakes and draw near to him again. (It takes great strength of faith to approach God and to encounter silence! But even God, in his goodness, uses those times to strengthen us for our good.)
God is a good, good Father. He only desires what is good for you. He wants to be with you, for its own sake. He loves you, even likes you. That is the first implication of our adoption.
A second implication is the security, the assurance that is ours as his children. Adopted children, in the Roman world, could not, under any circumstances, be put out of the family. Even if a father wanted to (and God certainly does not!), once a child was adopted, he could not be cut off from the family. They were part of the family for life. Their sonship was not at risk.
The Bible testifies abundantly to the security that is ours as a child of God:
- Romans 8 says, I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any power, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Jesus said, Anyone who comes to me I will never cast away.
Paul’s use of the word ‘adoption’ is deliberate because it emphasizes the security of our relationship. God has embedded us into his heart and, to use the Biblical phrase, carved us onto the palm of his hand. We have become a part of him, in an intimate relationship that eternity cannot sever.
How many Christians live in fear – often subconscious – that their status in God’s eyes is at risk? How many assume that God doesn’t love them any more?
Jesus told a story of a young man who abandoned his family. He asked his father for his inheritance now, instead of waiting for his father to die first. That request alone was an unconscionable insult to his father in that culture. He went to a far country and used his riches to live it up. But his money ran out about the same time as a famine hit, and he found himself destitute, friendless. He decided to return to his father but not as a son. He knew he’d blown it too badly for that. But if he could just get hired on to work for his dad’s estate, even that would be better than nothing.
Imagine his shock, when he came within sight of home, to see his father rushing down the road and smothering him in an embrace, weeping all over him with the pure and simple joy of having his son back. That Father in Jesus’ story is God, and Jesus portrayed him like that to give us a picture of what God is like.
Be secure in the love and Fatherhood of God.
So, first, the love of God and second, the security of being his child.
The third implication of adoption has to do with how we relate to God. Because most of us do not realize how God relates to us as a Father, most of us do not then relate to God as his children.
I do not most of the time. I still find myself feeling like I have to perform for God. I feel like more of an employee than a child. I feel like I’m working for God and if my job performance is poor I’ll get sacked. (Sometimes I feel like I have been already sacked!) Many people think of their Christian life in those terms. Or as employees, we want to do a good enough job to get the benefits, but not more than we have to. We’ll punch out promptly at five every time.
But God’s not a boss. Are there things he requires of us? Absolutely! – character, humility, prayer, seeing lost people saved, involvement in a church, and so on. There were things we require of our kids: respect for their mom and dad, certain chores, brushing their teeth and going to school. But do you think our love for them as our children depends in any way upon those things? Of course not! So it is with God.
We need to stop relating to him as a boss and start loving him as a father. We need to stop performing for his approval and being lovingly obedient, and serving him because we want to respond to his love by showing him our love.
Sometimes people lament the fact that we don’t dress up for church any more. ‘We’re too casual!’, we complain. ‘We should look good out of respect for God.’ I understand and appreciate that perspective, I really do. But the argument I most often hear in favour of dressing up for church is this: ‘If you were going to see the King and formerly, the Queen, you’d dress up.’
That’s true. But the thing is, how did the royal children dress when they went to their parents before going to bed? In uniforms and suits, like the VonTrapps before the coming of Maria? Sure, I’d dress up to see the king, because he doesn’t know me, and would relate to me purely as a king to a commoner. And he would form his impression of me based on my external presentation of myself. Our relationship with God is entirely different. You say, ‘Well not entirely different.’
Yes, entirely different. God is glorious and supreme and awesome and Sovereign over heaven and earth and history. No question. But the whole good news of Christianity is not that the one who is our Father is Lord of all and should be related to as such, but the opposite: the one who is Lord of all is our Father and we can relate to him as such.
I am not saying we shouldn’t dress up for church. As a pastor, I did every week, but frankly I do it out of respect for the congregation, not out of respect for God. God is more concerned about the condition of my heart, not the knot in my tie. And again, I understand and even affirm the fact that many of you try to look good on Sunday morning out of respect for God. I think God does honour that. But not if that perspective keeps God at arm’s length. Whether we wear shorts and come drinking coffee, or whether we come in a sports jacket or a nice and stylish dress, God is more about the heart.
In truth, I feel like we are more comfortable thinking of God in terms of holiness, glory and majesty. I think we have a harder time approaching him freely as children. We need to really understand that God is our Father.
Connected with this whole matter is the question of access to God. Part of being God’s children means free, unlimited access to the very throne room of God. When you tug his pant leg in prayer he immediately bends down and picks you up and says, ‘Yes, child. What is it?’ You are guaranteed – hear me: you are guaranteed – to have the attention of God. The Bible says because of Christ we can – and should – come confidently into the presence of God. His throne is a throne of grace, and there is an unlimited account of mercy and grace that he has given us the PIN for.
How often we hesitate to come to him! Prayer becomes less of a duty and more of a joy when we begin to grasp just how much God really does delight to be with us.
When my kids came to me and said ‘Up, please!’, I loved that. When they said, ‘Dad’s home!’ or ‘Dad read it’, I love it. Prayer is not homework! It is relationship. It is a discipline, yes, but the only reason we need discipline to pray is because we lose sight of the fact that God really does want us to come to him; sharing our sorrows, thanking him for life’s good things, interceding for someone else, and so on.
And you will never, ever approach God in prayer only to find the line busy, the door closed, or God too distracted to care. As children, we have free, unrestricted access to God. Let us remember that.
The relationship we have with God as Father and child is the normative orientation around which the whole of Christian experience is built. When we are relating to God primarily as a child to a Father, we are closest to what he wants for us.
Two more verses of Scripture:
Romans 8: 15 You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, and by the Spirit we cry, “Daddy! Father!” The Holy Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children!
1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called his children. And that is what we are!
In love God predestined us to be adopted as his children. As Christians, we enjoy full, unreserved status as children of God, and we enjoy all the privileges and benefits of that relationship.
The next time you pray, come from the perspective of a little child to a father who is genuinely fond of you
In the next Sundays, come to church as a child to your father
Practice thinking about your Christian life in those terms: think of your own children, if you have them, and understand that God thinks of you as a parent to a child
Learn to orient every facet of your life around the reality that your fundamental identity is that you are a full child of God: loved, accepted, with all the privileges and benefits that are a part of that.
For those who are in Christ, let me assure you that you have been adopted and share in all the rights and benefits and share in the love of God, the sovereign maker of everything, that he is your Father, that you are co-heirs with Jesus and that he calls you, ‘My sister! My brother!’, and that you will experience that way all eternity.
Amen.