Every once in a while, I am asked, “What’s it like to be adopted?” I was two days old when my parents chose me to be their son. Being adopted is an amazing thing. I was taken from a situation that probably would not have turned out well and was given the opportunity to grow up in a loving Christian home. I became a member of a new family. I had a new identity, a new name, a new opportunity, and eventually a new inheritance. I was chosen! Adoption into God’s family is all of that and infinitely more.
—Rod Martin—
In ancient Israel slavery was permitted but regulated by Old Testament law. God never intended for people to be mistreated or abused. Among other things, the regulations included a limited time frame for servitude. Exodus 21:1-6 and Deuteronomy 15:12-18 highlight this limitation, but in these passages is another provision that absolutely arrests our attention. In Deuteronomy through Moses, the Lord declared,
Moses received the law from God and then gave it to the Israelites.
12 “If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13 And when you send him away free from you, you shall not let him go away empty-handed; 14 you shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your winepress. From what the Lord your God has blessed you with, you shall give to him. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this thing today. 16 And if it happens that he says to you, ‘I will not go away from you,’ because he loves you and your house, since he prospers with you, 17 then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear to the door, and he shall be your servant forever. Also to your female servant you shall do likewise. 18 It shall not seem hard to you when you send him away free from you; for he has been worth a double hired servant in serving you six years. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.”
Imagine having been a servant for six long years. The day of your release is near, and this is a date on the calendar you looked forward to, especially in the early days of your time of service. Yet now, as you think about leaving your master, you wonder if you really desire your freedom more than serving him. Your master is a kind man who’s been good to you and treated you extremely well. He even loves you, and you have grown to love him. In the end, you come to realize that while you once couldn’t wait for the day when you would be set free, you now want to serve your master the rest of your life.
It’s difficult in our culture to imagine being willing to remain in service to a master and to choose that life over freedom, but Old Testament law made a provision for such a choice. The key to understanding the choice isn’t in contrasting freedom to servitude; we’ll hit a dead end there! The key is in understanding the heart of a master who creates and maintains a loving and warm environment from which even his servant cannot walk away.
Who means so much to you—who has treated you so wonderfully and so well—that you want to serve that person forever? For Christians, this shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. Christmas, which we just recently have celebrated, reminds us of the Lord’s great love for us—a love that is without parallel in the world. For the past two weeks, we have considered God’s great overture of love as presented in Galatians 4:4-5 (NKJV).
4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Two weeks ago, we explored the meaning of the phrase “the fullness of the time.” Last week we examined the truths that “[1] God sent forth His Son, [2] born of a woman, [3] born under the law [4] to redeem those who were under the law.” This week we want to discover something of what God ultimately intended when He initiated Christmas— “that we might receive the adoption as sons.” This is the glorious, wonderful, aftermath of Christmas! On what more wonderful theme can we reflect as we transition into a new year?
As we explore this topic, keep in mind that the spiritual truths we will examine are absolute, concrete realities for those who believe in Christ. We are not considering something we want to happen or imaging a scenario that is “too good to be true.” No! Instead, it is true, and we as Christians need to live accordingly!
Consider these passages that showcase the theme of adoption into God’s family. Links have been added for clarity and to enhance personal study.
- [D]ear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. 13 For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. (Rom. 8:12-17, NLT).
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The Apostle Paul by Rembrandt
- [Y]ou are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. 28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you (Gal. 3:26-29, NLT).
- All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure (Eph. 1:3-5, NLT).
- See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. 2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. 3 And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure. 4 Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. 5 And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. 6 Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is.7 Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. 8 But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. 9 Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. 10 So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God (1 John 3:1-10, NLT).
This last passage is a powerful reminder that being adopted into God’s family changes everything about the believer’s perspective. The world cannot understand a Christian’s motivation to live a pure life, but the Christian knows: Anyone who is in Christ “is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17 NKJV). The Christian isn’t reformed, but transformed because of being made alive in Christ and being adopted into God’s family! In a small way, in the language of our opening illustration, it’s like the difference between your serving your master because you have to, and choosing to serve him because no one else in the world ever has loved you as he has or treated you so well.
One evening, a fire broke out in a home where a grandmother lived with her young grandson. The fire spread rapidly, trapping the young boy in his room. The grandmother attempted to save him but perished in the fire; and it appeared the boy, too, would not survive. Then a man broke through the crowd of onlookers. He grabbed hold of the iron drainpipe that ran down the side of the house next to the boy’s bedroom window. Climbing up, rescuing the child, and climbing back down again as the lad held tightly onto his neck, the man brought him at last to safety.
The child’s life had been spared, but who now would be his guardian? He had no other living relatives. Two months after the fire, a hearing was held. Several people in the town asked to be considered, including a professor at a nearby college, a restaurant owner, and one of the community’s wealthiest couples. All of them presented compelling cases for the boy to come live with them, but the judge noted he seemed indifferent to each one. Then a man walked to the front of the room and said he wanted to adopt the orphaned youngster. He held up his hands before the crowd so everyone present could see they were badly discolored and scared.
The boy looked up when he heard the man speak. Beaming with delight, he ran into his arms. He knew this man had rescued him from the fire. The hot iron pipe had burned the man’s hands, leaving them permanently blemished. No one needed to say anything more. Those scars demonstrated to the judge and to everyone else present that the boy’s rightful place was in the home of the man who had saved him.
After relating this story, Dr. Bill Bright writes that just as the rescuer’s scars ended the debate over whom should have custody of the young boy, Jesus’ nail-scared hands demonstrate decisively that we belong to the One who died for us on the cross. Realizing no one ever could love us more or in any better way than Jesus has, we understand that living for Him and serving Him are the greatest privileges of our lives.
It makes sense, then, that these will be the greatest privileges we will have in 2017, as well.
Copyright © 2016 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
image credits: looking down the road (top image) and Christmas tree: lightstock.com
Scriptures marked NKJV have been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scriptures marked NLT have been taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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