7/57 Welcome to the Family – Adoption
We now begin STAGE 4 in our Series: Welcome to the Family!
We have travelled from a slave to the world’s way of doing things into being a Steward. However, we found that being a Servant in the Church or religious system is still not enough for those who have been truly touched by the living God.
We then step into learning what it means to be a growing child of God. For most of us, we must face and grow through an Orphan Spirit. We can leave behind the abandonment and rejection that marks the life of an orphan as our next step is to become that adopted child.
There are many people who have been adopted in this world, and for many reasons. For many, it was a happy and life-giving events; for others less than great. However, when we are adopted into our Heavenly Father’s family, we are set apart and blessed as His own precious offspring.
As we grow from an Orphan – one who feels lost and without security – finding a loving Father God is a great treasure. Being adopted by God means that we are accepted and welcomed as we enter into His family. This Stage of our following Jesus brings a multitude of blessings and responsibilities.
Christians are legally adopted as sons into God’s family. Being legally adopted by God means that we receive new rights.
“…..But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”
For us, this means that we have been given the name of Christ and have the right to be called Christians. Our inheritance is nothing less than the the property of our Heavenly Father—all the spiritual riches that are in Christ, both in the present life and in our life to come.
Unique to Paul’s writings is the term huiothesia, the process or act of being “adopted as son(s).” It occurs five times in 
three of his letters, where it functions as a key theological metaphor. Paul uses the term ‘adopted as sons’ to write to the believers in Rome, where they would have understood this in a specific context. Under Roman law, if you were an adopted son, you had identical legal rights to a son born naturally in the family. An adopted son had the right to the family name of the person who adopted him and the right to an inheritance of the father’s property, Galatians 4:4-7.
Under Roman law, the adopted son also had the right to the father’s citizenship of the Empire. We also obtained a new citizenship when our Father adopted us and we have become citizens of heaven—our true home.
The father who adopts was also granted full rights and responsibilities of a natural father—he had complete authority over the adopted son and also had the legal role of caregiver. With full, loving authority over us, our Father has accepted His responsibility to care for us and He also has the right, and desire, to correct us when we are wrong and to correct and discipline us when we step out of line.
Being adopted by God means that many relationships will change Even the roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the moral implications of adoption, and its relationship with honour are changed from a babe in Christ to a growing, maturing son.
Remember just as males are being transformed into the Bride, so are we women being transformed into heirs and receiving authority as sons. We, as Christian believers, live in the tension between the “now” and the “not yet” of our adoption into God’s new family.
Our Father God is infinitely patient, wise and loving and the Bible tells us that the fact that God does discipline us is proof in itself that we have been adopted into His family.
Susanne Fengler, Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info
Tags: adoption, from servant to adoption
Filed under: From Slave to Sonship
Leave a Reply