adopted. by God.

The lesson
series I am beginning on December 2nd takes a look at adoption. The title of the series is simply adopted. by God. This is a significant study to me because as you may know we arrived home from China in July with our newly adopted daughter Zoe. We adopted Zoe into our now family of seven. We have been blessed by God thus far with four biological children of our own and Zoe is our fifth (and last if I haven't mentioned that yet). So why in the world would we need a fifth child and even more so why would we adopt when we are obviously capable of producing our own children? In short, because that is the Biblical story. By adopting Zoe into our family, we give the people we know and meet a tangible picture of what God has done for us. The Bible is very clear that when we accept Jesus as our savior, God adopts us into his family. God then becomes our Father and Jesus our brother. But what does that mean?

Our adoption into God's family gives us the full rights of sons. Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5 say, "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." When we adopted Zoe, she went from being a fatherless child to a child that not only has a father, but she now also has the same rights as our other four children. When Paul speaks of adoption, he uses the word huiosthesia. The word huios means "a son" and the word thesis means "a placing." Put together, the word exactly means "to place as a son." Better stated, it is the place given to one to whom it does not belong. Zoe did not belong to me. She had no right to be called my child. But once I adopted her, she was granted the full rights that being my child affords her even though she did nothing to deserve it. When God adopts us into his family, we too are granted the same rights as his natural born child Jesus. We now have the right to the Father's name, the Father's love, the Father's relationship, the Father's access, the Father's provision, the Father's family, and the Father's estate. We became the same child to Him as Jesus. All the rights that Jesus has are also now ours even though we did absolutely nothing to deserve it! What amazing grace!