Sonship by Adoption (Part One)

Sonship by Adoption (Part One)

by Jay Wegter

INTRODUCTION: It is axiomatic from Scripture that a child is to have his own father as his spiritual teacher (Deut 6:3-7ff.). Sons and daughters are to learn of God in the ‘relational space’ of deep care, and within a context of life’s daily activities (Deut 6). Our earthly fathers play a profound role in our spiritual development and a major role in what we think of God Almighty, especially His trustworthiness (Ps 78:5-8).

Our earthly fathers are to add ‘tangibility’ to what it means when love and authority reside in the same person (1 Cor 11:3-12). As Scripture says, “the man is the glory of God” while the woman is “the glory of man.” Our earthly fathers are to model what it means to provide spiritual instruction while holding us in their hearts of love. As such, it is clear that fathers not only teach about God but also image His character to us. That is why fathers are to take great care not to exasperate their children, lest they lose heart (or altogether quit trying to please their dads) (Col 3:21). The moral and spiritual impact of fathers is so great we have OT passages which speak of God visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons and daughters (Ex 34:6-7; Deut 5:9-10).

A mischievous psychologist offered this biting witticism, “If you see someone doing something antisocial, just ask him, ‘what did your father do to you?’” In other words, the question implies that something must have failed in the fathering process. Well, that comment can rip the scar off of a father wound and make a person go ballistic—it can be cruel, I don’t recommend it.

Now some of us have had wonderful dads and some of us rotten dads or absent or detached dads—yet that does not have to determine the character of our Christian walk. In even the seemingly most hopeless cases, the grace of God is so mighty, God Himself promises to be a Father to the father-less among those who know Him (Ps 68:5).

Continuing on this theme of just how much our fathers affect us, Paul Zahl suggests that the vast majority of the criticism, abuse, friction, and resistance pastors receive from church members result from ‘transference’. In other words the pastor, who is very much a father figure by the nature of his role, can be a ‘magnet’ for the negative emotions the church member has toward his own father. Zahl suggests that countless church members carry unfinished business toward their earthly fathers and then project that upon the pastor (Paul Zahl interviewed on Key Life with Steve Brown, http://liberate.org/2015/01/27/key-life-pastors-chat-on-surviving-as-dead-men/).

This can come very close to home when we catch ourselves thinking about God through the filter of our own relationship with our dad. Many believers have had very little intimate loving contact with an earthly father, therefore coming to know the Heavenly Father’s love, care, and tenderness is a new experience. I like to ask the people I am discipling about their spiritual sonship: “Have you grown in your trust and intimacy with your heavenly Father that you have learned to take joy in sharing your thought life with Him throughout the day?”

Sonship is not universal; it is a gift of God’s grace. God is only “Father” to those redeemed by grace. To the rest of humanity, He is Judge. Sonship is a distinctively Christian concept, not developed under the old covenant. Israel’s experience of God focused more upon learning to fear their Heavenly King (Is 6:3; Hab 1:13) (J. I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 202).

The holiness of God, even the dread and terror of God before Mt. Sinai was designed to teach the awesomeness of His holiness and the need of a Mediator (God must provide the way of approach). We as fallen rebels instinctively do not find God’s moral majesty attractive—His burning purity, moral rectitude, and unbending justice intimidate us, even repel us. Why? In part the answer is that He is so right, and we are so wrong. Why should we be motivated to dare to draw near when He is holy, and we are little, lousy, lustful, and lacking in His sight? Only the grace of God in the gospel can provide the answer!

The wonder of adoption embraces the fact that this gift of grace (sonship) makes Christ our elder brother and God our Father (Rom 8:29). The whole covenant of grace may be expressed in “I will be a Father to them and they will be sons and daughters to Me” (2 Cor 6:18). Adoption is the greatest transition imaginable: from alienated and orphaned by sin to cherished children of God; from God haters to lovers of the Heavenly Father (Joel Beeke, A Puritan Theology, p. 539-540).

Sonship is a new relationship with a new factor—the adopted child of God has bold and confident access to God through the blood of Christ (Eph 3:12; Heb 10:19-22). The children of God now bear the ‘spiritual DNA’ of the family of God—they belong to God’s ‘forever family’. Sons of God have a loving Heavenly Father to whom they belong and who cares for them; this is the heart of the NT message. Now some of us have had wonderful earthly fathers, and some of us disappointing or absent fathers. But, every child of God now has a Perfect Father in heaven (Packer, Ibid, pp. 203-204).

Consider the Father’s infinite generosity. He gives us Himself in Christ—‘exporting’ the truth, life, light, love, joy, and belonging of the Holy Trinity into our lives by the Spirit through union with Christ. That is part of our inheritance, possessing eternal life now. Our relation to the Father is described as both privilege and responsibility: those who serve Christ will be honored by the Father (John 12:26; 14:23). The Spirit of sonship is sent from the Father and the Son (Jn 14:16). To those who love Christ and keep His Word, the Father will love them (Jn 14:23). Ask the Father in My Name and you will experience the joy of answered prayer (Jn 16:23-24). The Father Himself loves you—ask of Him (Jn 16:25-28).

God wants us to be a reflection or reproduction of Jesus’ own relationship with Himself not only in intimacy but in obedience. “. . . but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’ ” (Jn 20:17). The sons of God love the brethren and they do not practice sin (1 Jn 2:29; 3:9-10; 5:18) (according to Scripture, obedience is the rock solid evidence that a person is truly one of God’s children) (Ibid.).

Like Christ their Head, the sons of God have a resolve to do their Father’s will. They submit to their Father as the One who commands and who in His sovereignty brings to pass what shall be. We could say that salvation and with it adoption ‘recalibrates us’ to God’s omnipotence (we have filial fear of God); to God’s omnipresence (we walk with God and commune with Him); to God’s omniscience (we trust God and wait upon Him). We could summarize this by looking at Christ’s relation to His Father.

AUTHORITY: Christ lived to do His Father’s will (Jn 4:34; 5:19; 6:38; 17:4).

AFFECTION: Christ lived in the Father’s love (Jn 5:20; 15:9-10).
FELLOWSHIP: Christ was constantly abiding in His Father (Jn 8:29; 16:32).
HONOR: Christ served to honor and glorify His Father (Jn 5:22-23; 17:1).

As God loves His only begotten Son, so He also He loves His adopted sons (Jn 12:26; 16:27; 17:23-26). Our sonship is modeled and patterned after Christ’s Sonship (Ibid.). Our mandate is, like Christ, to imitate our Father in character and in so doing to ‘prove to be sons of God’ (Mt 5:44-48; Eph 5:1-2; 1 Pet 1:14-19) (Ibid, 211).

Before salvation we viewed God’s commands as invasive and restrictive. We hated the rigor of God’s law and viewed His moral claims upon us as restrictive—the very opposite of freedom. But, now by the regenerating power of God’s grace we have a new desire and a new ability to please our Heavenly Father.

Obedience as the clear mark of adoption is the first sign of adoption. Because God’s ‘seed’ is implanted in us at the new birth, the child of God will not and cannot live in habitual sin (1 Jn 3:9-10). Obedience springs out of a principle of faith, thus sonship is the motive for obedience—“gracious souls believe God and [therefore] obey His commands” (Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, pp. 235-236). Sons of God love the Father’s presence and have a lifestyle of continual childlike obedience (Ps 63:1-2; 106:3). Their obedience is informed by the Word of God (Jn 16:13; 17:17; Ps 119:6) (Ibid, 236-239) (Demonstrate yourselves to be sons of God.)

Since universal obedience is the clear mark of sonship, it is beneficial to investigate our claim to true religion. For true religion is living as a son of God in relation to the Father. Here are self-examination questions from J. I. Packer’s Knowing God:

1. Do I value my adoption and the privileges of being a son of God as a daily reminder?
2. Have I sought full assurance of my adoption?
3. Do I treat God as Father, honoring Him and seeking fellowship with Him?
4. Do I think of Christ’s authority as well as His divine sympathy, knowing He perfectly understands me and cares for me as my Kinsman Redeemer?
5. Have I learned what displeases my Heavenly Father and am I sensitive to avoid them?
6. Do I look forward to the hope of heaven?
7. Do I glory in the privilege of God my Father in filial fear (reverence) consciously caring for His reputation by my behavior (Packer, p. 229)?

Sonship is the believer’s core identity. The ramifications of our sonship are comprehensive—over all of life. We must learn to understand the Christian life in terms of our adoption, for Christ has given us His own right-relatedness to the Godhead. Now everything from forgiveness to supply to obedience to transformation to destiny is tied to our sonship. We are to live out our sonship as our most important defining relationship. Thus practical holiness will be seen as living life in God’s ‘forever family’ by the family relationship and rules (i.e. the holy, moral, righteous order in God’s family).

This gracious gift of adoption is the greatest change imaginable—to go from defiled enemies to adopted sons is a greater miracle than a clump of dust becoming a star. Whereas justification is a legal term for ‘right standing’, sonship describes a close relationship of tenderness, love and belonging. The cost to God to adopt us as His sons was infinite. It is adoption through propitiation, Christ’s atoning sacrifice—the work of Christ is the source of our adoption. Therefore adoption shows the greatness of God’s love (1 Jn 4:10). In Christ we are sons of God who enjoy safety, certainty, and belonging (Ibid, pp. 206-210).

Sonship lived out means reckoning our Father’s care for us (His love, supply, and concern). That involves a life of faith and trust in which we say ‘no’ to anxiety (Mt 6:25-26, 31-33). For, what we view as ultimate source will be what we serve (Ibid, 213). Sonship is a life of exulting in God—we marvel at the privileges we have received (Rom 5:1-5).

Consider the dimensions which are touched by sonship; we rejoice in communion with the Lord as sons. We rejoice in our spiritual liberty having been freed from the rigor and condemnation of the Law. We rejoice in the countless restorations we experience by gospel grace. We rejoice in the fact that this is our Father’s world (Beeke, p. 550) (EX. note my Sierra Mountains experience—before salvation I thought of nature as an ‘autonomous creation’ and suppressed all of the ‘glory pointers’. After salvation I saw every star, glacier, hummingbird, and wildflower as a ‘glory pointer’ to my Heavenly Father. What changed? By His grace I became an adopted child of God Himself who is Divine Owner of all creation, Psalm 24; 89:11).

But the enjoyment of our sonship is not automatic. At times by laxness and unbelief, we tend to take sides against ourselves and thus define ourselves by our performance and emotions rather than by the covenant of grace. Thomas Hooker, one of the most pastoral of the late Puritans gives us a powerful diagnostic by which we may identify and remove obstacles to the enjoyment of our sonship:

1. Put off secret murmuring against circumstances.
2. Cease secret delight in complaints against yourself (don’t side with the accuser).
3. Stop ingratitude for the Spirit’s sanctifying work in your life.
4. Cease disqualifying yourself for the promises of comfort to God’s children.
5. Stop speculating that you are irrecoverable—deduced from the threats in the Word.
6. Put off limiting God and entertaining low expectations of Him and placing undo dependency on the creature.
7. Stop forming prejudices against God based on your negative emotions.

8. Remove slackness and heartlessness in your spiritual duties.
9. Cease over scrupulousness (over analyzing every flaw) and skeptical questioning about the state of your soul (Ibid, p. 552).

Sonship is our controlling destiny, our hope of glory. Sonship means that our complete redemption still awaits: “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it” (Rom 8:23-25). We groan inwardly now as we are afflicted by the remnants of sin and by suffering in our bodies in a frequently hostile world. But, our eager expectation is to receive our glorified bodies so as to be like Christ at an event known as “the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19).

This promise of glorification is inseparably linked to the hope of seeing His face and coming home to our Father forever (Mt 5:18; 1 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 4:17; Heb 2:10; Rev 21:21; 22:4). These sonship promises of hope are to have a stabilizing sanctifying effect upon us (Ibid, pp. 217-218). Adoption ends in coronation (Rev 1:6). This confidence cultivates tranquility in us now—the ability to wait on God in trust and hope (Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, p. 234).

Adoption is the key to understanding the ministry of the Spirit. In ourselves we frequently feel our barrenness, our unspirituality, and our carnality. We sense this to be a barrier that distances us from God’s affection for us—we feel ‘ineligible’ for His intense love. But the Holy Spirit indwells us to actualize the reality of our sonship. He gives us the consciousness of our adoption so that we are able to ascertain our sonship (Rom 8:15-16). He is the Spirit of adoption (Gal 4:1-6).

The Spirit persuades us that we are the children of God by free grace. And, this is not for our comfort only (Rom 15:3). His actualizing of our experience of sonship is designed to lead us to a deeper response—calling for an echo of holiness in us (1 Pet 1:14-17ff.)—and a love of the brethren (1 Pet 1:22-23). And, a jealousy for the Name of our Father (a deep concern for our Heavenly Fathers’ reputation) (Num 25:11ff.).

Every genuine child of God is aware of the fact that he or she carries a portion of the Father’s reputation in the world. For by the testimony of our words and our deeds we declare that we are His children and we reveal something of His character before the watching world. Thus, the inescapable consciousness of our sonship issues forth in the ethical obligation of consecration in which we seek the honor and glory of our Father by our obedience and by our sanctification (Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, pp. 219-220).

The Father sent the Son so that we could become adopted by means of Christ’s vicarious work for us. Grace is relational from top to bottom—we are created for this primary relationship of knowing God personally as Father. Christ cultivated ‘Father hunger’ in His disciples (Gordon Dalbey, Healing the Masculine Soul). Think of the numerous references that Christ made to the Father in the Upper Room Discourse (John 13-17). Christ announced, “I go to the Father.” “I won’t leave you orphans.” In other words, I will come to you in the Person of the Comforter—the Holy Spirit (Jn 13:1, 3; 16:5, 28; 17:11, 24).

The Holy Spirit does this work of causing us to ascertain our sonship by showing us who we are in Christ. “In Christ” is the sphere in which we were qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. The Father ‘qualifies’ us to be sons of the Kingdom through the work of Christ on our behalf (Col 1:12-14) (Col 2:11-14). The awareness of our sonship is like ‘true north’ on a compass. The circumstances of life can cause the needle to vibrate and spin, but the compass always points back to true north—our sonship. We are frequently tempted to walk by sight; but the Spirit keeps taking us back to our spiritual pedigree so that we are to reckon our unchanging sonship in Christ.

Now, our radical identification with Christ means that He Himself as Substitute is the ‘sphere’ in which our cleansing and acceptance and sanctification have taken place. So fully is He our vicarious Substitute that John Owen observes the following when speaking about Christ’s solidarity with His people: In all of the righteousness and grace Christ purchased and procured by His suffering, we have communion with Him (in His work for us). Because, there is almost nothing that Christ has done (as the source of grace) that we are not also said to do it with Him. Whether crucifixion, being made alive, rising, sitting in heavenly places—in all of this the believer is ‘in the Son’ (Owen in Joel Beeke, A Puritan Theology, p. 110).

When we consider the grace that Christ purchased, it falls into three categories of blessing: 1) Our acceptance with God through justification. 2) Sanctification from God so that we are His holy possession. 3) Our privileges before God (our adoption and all of its benefits). God’s love is not a benign wish. He sends His Holy Spirit to the elect so that we: 1) Hear His voice and live and have a faith response to the gospel. 2) We grieve over our sin, departing from it and forsaking it. 3) We abandon all hope in our own righteousness and rejoice in the righteousness of Christ—consciously exchanging the source of righteousness so as to approve and embrace the divine way of salvation revealed in the gospel (Ibid.).

God’s grace enables us to perceive true treasure; for Christ our life and Christ our righteousness is a truth that is spiritually discerned. “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:30-31).

Our adoption shows itself in ‘gospel holiness’ as opposed to legal holiness. Gospel holiness means that our life of sonship is solely grace-based in terms of our standing and acceptance with God. Our souls must have an ‘interface’ with Christ in His unconditional love. Our status and righteous standing before God is the result of being in Christ, in union with Him. Every child of God is first and foremost ‘righteous by faith’ (Phil 3:9; Gal 2:16). “Sonship is [therefore] the motive and meaning of gospel holiness” (L. S. Chafer).

The Father contemplates us in the Son, our perfect High Priest, Advocate and representative (Eph 1:3ff.). Our progressive sanctification is the outworking of this truth of gospel holiness through union with Christ (2 Pet 1:5-8). Legal holiness, by contrast, places the focus on the individual and his performance. Thus in contrast to the gospel, legal holiness features a righteousness that is man-centered (Packer, p. 221).

Gospel holiness begins with the Father’s sovereign grace making a deep impact upon our souls so that we are profoundly humbled by the truth that “by His doing you are in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:30). As our Substitute (by the Father’s appointment and the Son’s volition) Christ is our representative and our ‘eligibility’ for endless blessing. As such, Christ is our ‘Source Person’ (2 Pet 1:2-3) and our Lord (Rom 10:9-10; Eph 2:7).

The Father is faithful in disciplining every son He receives. “It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons” (Heb 12:7-8). As Packer notes, careless naughty children provoke frowns. In other words, we will only experience the “full fruition of this crowning grace of sonship” if we are seeking to please God with all of our heart (Ibid, pp. 222-227, 228).

The Father’s discipline embraces the comprehensiveness of His providence so that in His wisdom, He makes our life circumstances work to conform us to the image of Christ (Rom 8:28-30). God’s purpose according to Romans 8:29 is to conform us to the image of His Son. That is the goal of grace.

Sometimes that truth is neglected—the early church had to reject antinomian trends which threatened the real meaning of God’s grace (Titus 2:121-14). For, God is glorifying His grace by making former rebels into saints. Thus, law-keeping (in terms of the moral law) is a major part of the believer’s ‘filial fear’ of his Heavenly Father (2 Cor 6:14-7:1). “. . . but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘you shall be holy, for I am holy.’ If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth” (1 Pet 1:15-17). Christ is our source of righteousness, sonship is our motive for holiness, and the law is the shape of our godliness (Ibid.).

The Father’s plan is to glorify His grace by making us holy like Christ. To become holy is God’s purpose for us—it is the only pathway to happiness in the Kingdom of God. When we are holy, we are happy, but when we are happy, we are not always holy. Our holiness expresses itself in love to God and to the brethren and a love of righteousness.

When our progress in conformity to Christ is interrupted by complacency, heart idols, disobedience, or unbelief, the Father is faithful to correct us. There is a tendency in Evangelicalism to separate faith from practice. When that disconnect takes place between truth and life, God’s love gets separated from His holiness in our minds. But we must remember always, our Father’s love for us is ‘holy love’. God is relentless in His purpose to make us like Christ. How we need to remember that He is working from eternity, and for eternity—lest we become impatient and discouraged. Psalm 32:9 reminds us that the Spirit urges obedience with gentle nudging. If we resist repeatedly, God as a faithful disciplining Father may have to fashion a ‘bit and bridle’ for us so that we can be led into obedience. Pain is a very effective teacher which produces rapt attention and alacrity in its students (Ps 119:67). Fools reject the response called for from moral instruction (Prov 26:3).

A very encouraging Conclusion in Part Two