Quote:
Originally Posted by JJ
Most Christians I know both understand that they are born again and appreciate the transfer of once being an unwanted orphan without a father that wanted them, to having a father that chose them, loves them, and gives them the full rights of sonship and an inheritance through adoption.
If one doesn’t put themselves in the shoes of an adopted orphan they will never appreciate the term adoption.
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This illustrates well the misunderstanding of "most Christians" that biblical adoption is about God taking orphans off the street and putting them into His family.
It's actually not about that. In Western culture, no one adopts their own child or a child who is wanted. But in Roman times, a father could adopt one of his own children or another child to be their heir.
So the key to understanding biblical adoption is that
God adopts His own children where adoption means to be appointed as heir, as others e.g. ZNP rightly said.
There are a few ways which Roman adoption is unlike Western adoption:
- adoption served the interests of the parents more than the child - a privileged family with too many sons might give up some of their children for adoption to other families, for money, or privilege.
- adoption could be used like marriage - to forge ties and alliances between families - a number of Roman emperors were adopted, coming from obscure backgrounds.
- adoption was not secretive, and the adopted son retained connection with their biological parents, possibly enjoying privileges from both biological and adoptive families.
From our modern perspective, this view of adoption seems rather selfish - children were used as commodities to either further the father's interests as an heir, or be sold into slavery for money. This was not really about taking a poor orphan boy off the street and giving them a home for the sake of the child.
We can see in Romans 8:16-17 the pattern of God adopting His own children, such that we become children first, and then heirs:
Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
Romans 8:17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,
Here, verse 16 is showing that we are children because of the Spirit.. "then we are heirs" in verse 17 refers to being heirs, which relates to Roman adoption.
To an ancient Gentile mind, Paul's use of Roman adoption might have conveyed to the Gentiles just how privileged and special they were to be chosen by the "God of the Israelites" as an heir. At the same time, it probably would have bothered the Jews who claimed special privileges of being "God's chosen people" to know that God had chosen gentile believers in Christ as heirs.