Adoption Matters
Superman. Snow White. Harry Potter. Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia. Peter Pan.
Why do so many inspiring stories have orphans as main characters?
These stories tap into the innate feeling that this world is not our home. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
This is why adoption is such a comforting doctrine. To be adopted is to realize you were made for another world—and for another person. Your home is in heaven—and you were made for God.[1]
Today we’re focusing on the orphans and adoption. You know, the Bible has a lot to say about what it should look like, practically, to live out the faith we say we have. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” And it’s not silent on what many of those good works are. We are to look after orphans and widows in their distress.[2] We are to visit those in prison.[3] We are to remember and help the poor.[4] We so often neglect to live out the very good works that the Bible demonstrates.
Now, the Bible does not say we are saved by good works, but we, the workmanship of God, are created by God to do good works. And as we do, we are imaging Him and what He has done for us. It is so in adoption. The Bible draws a powerful, and very real, analogy with adoption and what God has done for us in salvation. And the earthly picture of adoption, a family taking in and making their own a child who was once not their own, demonstrates to an unbelieving world what the God of love has offered for them.
So, we’re going to see some matters of importance regarding theological adoption and draw some parallels with earthly adoption, and I pray we see together through it how much God really loves us.
Adoption has mattered for eternity and will matter for eternity. Before the foundation of the world, God predestined us to be adopted.
Ephesians 1:5 - He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
Here’s what this means, and I will frame it within mine and Sara’s personal story of adoption.
(Sara and I desired and sought to adopt for our first child. We had purposed before we ever had children to adopt.)
Adoption was plan A for God. It wasn’t a plan B after Adam and Eve sinned and became, in a sense, illegitimate children. Creation, Fall, Redemption, Adoption was plan A for God.
Adoption matters for our past.
Romans 8:15 - 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!”
Children who are adopted have a past that is difficult. They are orphaned or abandoned. They may feel betrayed or unloved. I’ve read a story of a couple who walked into an international orphanage for their first of two meetings to adopt their children, and the orphanage was in dead silence although it was filled with babies. Babies eventually stop crying out when they realize nobody is coming to help. After days of playing with these two children, who would soon become theirs, and having to leave for the final time on that first trip, as they walked out the door, one of the boys fell to his crib and let out a loud guttural yell. Hear what this man said about it.
“It seemed he knew, maybe for the first time, that he would be heard. On some primal level he knew he had a father and a mother now. I will never forget how the hairs on my arms stood up as I heard that yell. I was struck, maybe for the first time, by the force of the Abba cry passages in the New Testament…ones I had memorized in Vacation Bible School, and I was surprised by how little I had gotten any of it until now.”[5]
Adoption matters in our present.
1 John 3:2-3 - 2 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. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
We are God’s children now.
Realizing the present implications of our adoption brings us hope. There is nothing worse than feeling helpless and hopeless—than feeling that nobody cares and there’s no relief for your situation. That’s what happened in that orphanage where none of the babies were crying. There was no hope. There was nobody to help. So, why even cry out?
If you fall into a pit that is too deep to climb out of, what do you do? You cry out for help! But what if nobody is around? Crying out is useless when there’s no help and no hope. But, it’s not so with God.
The reason that baby could plop on his crib and let out a deep yell was because he knew he was heard. He knew there was help. For once, he had hope, because he was being adopted. He had someone who cared.
It’s the same for us. We live in what’s called the already and not yet. Jesus has brought redemption, but it has not fully been consummated. The Revelation 21 making of all things new, where He will wipe every tear from our eyes and death, and mourning, and pain will be no more, has not taken place. But, it is coming. It is coming because He is coming. Just like those parents had to leave on that first visit. But, they were coming back. And they were going to take that baby to where they were with love and care.
It is so with us. There is death, and mourning, and crying, and pain…but not without hope. We can cry out because we have one who hears us and who cares and who is coming back for us. So, whatever you’re going through or have been through, there is hope. You have a Father who cares and will provide exactly what you need.
Adoption matters for our future.
1 John 3:2 - 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…
In the Bible, closely related to the doctrine of adoption is the notion of inheritance: we are God’s children and therefore his heirs. Galatians reveals this well.
Galatians 3:29 - And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
Galatians 4:7 - So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
There is hardship now, but soon the inheritance is ours. There’s hope in that.
Romans 8:17 - and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
This inheritance is only for those who are adopted. And how are you to be adopted?
John 1:12-13 - 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Receive Him. Believe in his name. “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”[6] The name of Jesus is the name above all names.[7] It means “The Lord saves.” The angel said to Joseph, who was to adopt a child that was not his own, “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”[8] At this name, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He, Jesus Christ, is Lord.[9] The Bible says that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”[10]
If you believe…not just some hypothetical wishful thinking, but actual belief, that the Creator of the cosmos took on flesh, lived the perfect life that you and I can never live, suffered, bled and died for your every sin, and victoriously, in real space and time, real reality, rose from the dead, He gives the right for you to become a child of God. To be adopted. To not be a child of wrath, which is our natural birthright, but instead, a child of grace and love.
Hear who we are apart from Christ, before our adoption, and you will see our incredible need to be adopted as God’s children.
Ephesians 2:1-7 – 1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Our adoption matters for eternity because without belief in Jesus, God’s wrath still rests on us, and with belief in Jesus, the inheritance of God awaits us.
[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/first-comes-love-then-comes-adoption/
[5] Russell D. Moore, Why Every Christian is Called to Support Adoption; Christianity Today (July 2, 2010). https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/july/10.18.html
