I see this thread was created a few years ago to track through comments on the general Quotes and Quips. So I'm bringing it forward to comment on today's quote by J.I. Packer:
Quote:
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Adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel. The traitor is forgiven, brought in for supper, and given the family name. To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.
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Adoption. One item that Lee seemed determined to eliminate from the record of the NT. But a term that carries very important information about our relationship with God. And isn't that what the Bible is — the revelation of God and his relationship with man?
There is much to be said for the aspects of salvation that describe us as obtaining the life of Christ. That we are actually "blood brothers" in a sense. And those aspects cannot be described by reference to adoption. But in the same way, adoption tells us a lot that simply being blood brothers cannot.
For starters, no one chooses who is part of the family in terms of the natural progression of things. If you are born to Bill and Nancy Jones, you are a Jones. No choices on the part of the child or the parents. They can't predetermine gender, hair color, ultimate height and physique, etc. Yes, the DNA of the parents provides much of what will be, but it is still not evident because of all the possibilities from those joined DNA sequences and the fact that they don't get to decide which will prevail. In short, blood birth is what it is.
But with adoption, someone starts elsewhere, the child of other parents. He/she (they) may not be entirely the adoptive parents want. If the child's history is known, it might be that they are the offspring of a conquering army that destroyed the family home of the adoptive parents, or even was responsible for the death of one or more of their extended family.
Yet at this moment, all of that is ignored and the child is intentionally brought in to be a full part of the family. All the rights and privileges of a blood birth.
Adoption is a very informative descriptor for the relationship of God with man. He not only put his life into us, but he also did it despite the fact that without it we were already his enemy. Yet he chose to take us anyway.
To miss or dismiss this aspect of our relationship with God would be a travesty.