“We are all God’s children,” were the first words out of Susie’s mouth as she tried to comfort a grieving friend. Sorry Susie! Not all who attend GCC are God’s children and not even all the citizens of New Danville are God’s children. Susie didn’t tell the truth.
CREATIONS VERSUS PARENTAGE
We are not naturally God’s children. Only by understanding this concept does this passage in Romans make sense. It is true that God is the Creator of all people. Thomas Edison is called the “Father of the Lightbulb” because he was the creator of the lightbulb. Lightbulbs were not part of Mr. Edison’s family; they are his creation.
Many creations of God will spend eternity in hell. Jesus said to the religious crowd, You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)
ADOPTION OUR ONLY HOPE
“All creations of God, but not all children of God” can a hard truth to swallow. However, one only becomes a child of God by being born-again. We all enter this world as enemies of God because we are born with a sin nature. This separates us from God and aligns us with Satan. Our only hope is through adoption.
MEANING OF ADOPTION
J. I. Packer in his classic “Knowing God” reminds us in the ancient world, “Adoption was a practice ordinarily confined to the childless well-to-do. Its subjects . . . were not normally infants, as today, but young adults who had shown themselves fit and able to carry on a family name in a worthy way. In this case, however, God adopts us out of free love, not because our character and record show us worthy to bear His name, but despite the fact that they show the very opposite. We are not fit for a place in God’s family; the idea of His loving and exalting us sinners as He loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild – yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means”
JUSTIFICATION DIFFERENT THAN ADOPTION
When you are justified by faith in Christ, you stand before God as Judge and He declares: “Not guilty! Righteous through faith in Jesus!” Adoption is different from justification. Sam Storms writes: “God the Judge steps down from behind his legal bench, removes his stately robes, stoops down and takes you into his arms of love and says softly: ‘My son, my daughter, my child!’ God rescued me from the terminal condition of sin and made me his child. Divine adoption isn’t concerned with physical health or financial wealth or potential or one’s past history.”
DECREE SEALED BY CHRIST
That Spiritual Adoptive Decree is sealed by love with the blood of Christ and signed by the God who cannot lie! Thomas R. Schreiner preached: “As adoptees, we inherit God himself! Imagine the reading of the divine will: ‘I God, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath to all my children, Me!’ Simply put, believers are heirs not merely of what God has promised . . . but of God himself.”
OUR INHERITANCE
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion [my inheritance] forever” (Psalm 73:25-26) Only the adoptees receive God’s inheritance.
Who’s your Eternal Daddy? I pray your “Spiritual Adoptive Decree” is sealed with the blood of Christ and signed by the God who cannot lie.
