Bible Study 2023
Adoption
Let’s open to the Romans 8:14-16, that wonderful treatise of the apostle Paul on the gospel and all the aspects of it. What the Holy Spirit does in us. If you watch the current Charismatic lineup of Holy Spirit anointed people, you would have absolutely no idea what the Holy Spirit does. It seems as if they are the victims of the devil spirit rather than the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t make people carnal, boastful, outrageous, et cetera. The Holy Spirit has only one specific objective, and that is to make people holy. So if somebody says that he or she is anointed by the Holy Spirit, what should be manifest in that person is holiness. That’s why He is called the Holy Spirit. Holy is the Father, holy is the Son, and holy is the Spirit.
To better understand that, let us study Romans 8:14-16, “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.”
There is a particular work of God the Spirit with regard to reproducing holiness in believers. He works in what we call sanctification, which is separation from sin, to transform believers into holiness or into the likeness of Jesus Christ. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is not body work. It is soul work, it is heart work. The work of the Holy Spirit is to produce godliness.
In the New Testament, we would say the work of the Holy Spirit is to be like Christ. The agent of that is the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the single-most clarifying verse on this is in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord, who is the Spirit, makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into his glorious image.”
Genesis 1:26 – 27 says, “Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”
God made man in His own likeness, for one purpose, to reflect God’s glory, and to express God’s character. In Genesis 3, man falls, and that purpose is lost because now you have mankind sinful, incapable of reflecting the glory of God. And the people grew more and more wicked. So God decided to decimate them all in the global flood and start over again with new people.
God the Father then determined that eight people were going to restore the marred image of God in humanity by sovereignly and graciously transforming those sinners. It wasn’t something done on the outside. He had to re-create them to be capable of manifesting His glory. Peter describes it in words that are important and clear in 2 Peter 1:4, “You have escaped corruption.”
The very nature of God has been given to you in a rebirth. The purpose of God’s redemptive plan is to recover humanity from its inability to give Him glory. And for that, God has to re-create them. They have to be born all over again spiritually. They have to become new men. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new creation.”
That all is the work of the Holy Spirit. We celebrate the cross, and we celebrate the love of God, the greatness of God, we sing hymns of praise to God. We forget that the divine source of everything is, that we are as Christians are in fact the Holy Spirit. It is marred to such a degree that apart from regeneration, all those marred people are useless to God for which He made man.
When God does that, what does a regenerated person whose divine nature look like? The answer is in one word: Jesus. When you look at Jesus, you see the perfect image of God in human form. John 1:14 says: “We beheld His glory.” And what glory was it? “The glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” Jesus put God on display like God had never been put on display before.
In the meantime on earth, it’s a progress done by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit starts it by giving us spiritual birth. He is the one who gives us that new life. He’s the one who rescues us from our corruption, our perversity and our wickedness. And He’s the one who rescues us from being so hopelessly marred that we all should end up on the trash heap of hell forever.
Sanctification in the Old Testament is seen as part of a true covenant relationship to God, and that covenant relationship is a family relationship. You’ve come into the family of God, and the process of sanctification is designed to make you more and more like your Father. That’s sanctification in the Old Testament, godlike. That’s what godliness is. The goal is the restoration of the divine image.
In the New Testament, the emphasis is not so much be like God, but be like Christ. Is that different? No. This is a human being, fully human and godlike. He was God, He was full of grace and truth. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. He makes godly people, Christ like people. Sanctification equals godliness equals Christlikeness. Holiness is, changing sin into Christlikeness.
In Romans 8 you will see that the main theme here is that the Holy Spirit is doing the work of adoption. Verse 14, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Here is the reference to sons of God. Verse 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.”
You have the reference to adoption as children in verse 15. And then you have the reference to sons of God or children of God again in 16. This is about being in the family, about this covenant relation to God that makes you a member of the family. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to make you look like the rest of the family, like your Father and like Christ. It’s about family likeness.
Paul makes a similar reference to the urgency and the importance of understanding this in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18 when he says, “Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord. Don’t touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you. 18 And I will be your Father, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Come out from among unbelievers and be separate,’ says the Lord” and He’s quoting that from Isaiah. “Don’t touch what is unclean and I’ll welcome you and 18 I’ll be a Father to you and you’ll be My sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.” God is redeeming a family. In order to restore the image of God, we have to be re-created. We have to be reborn. And that’s what the new birth is all about.
Many think that adoption is a second-class deal.” There are people who adopt a kid and then put him on a plane and ship him back because they don’t want him. You can adopt a child but you can’t change their heart. And it may not work out well and adopted children may become a disaster. You can’t really control what they are on the inside. All you can do is look on the outside.
In the 1st century, if you were adopted, that made you a first-class child. Now reality is you get what you get. And that’s okay because you understand that, you love those children. But in the ancient world, if you adopted somebody, you were adopting a son. You adopted a son because you found somebody who exceeded in capability the ones that you already had.
An adopted son was deliberately chosen by an adopting father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate. No way was that adopted son inferior. On occasions it might have been a daughter, but for the most part it was a son. This adopted son may well have been the apple of his father’s eye. He may have received the best of his father’s affection and education more so than a born son.
A Roman adoption was a formal event. In Roman law, there was this rule called the father’s power. It meant that he had absolute power over the family. He had absolute right to dispose of his children, kill his children if he wanted. No matter how old he was, he was always under the absolute power of his father. If you were a son or a daughter, you were under absolute control of your father.
This made adoption very difficult because if you found a son that you wanted, how are you going to get the other father to let him go? Well, some negotiations were involved in that. He had to formally pass out of the father’s power of the man to whom he was born and pass into the Father’s power of the adoptive father. Two steps. Step one was called mancipatio, from which we get emancipation.
This was carried out by a symbolic sale where three times an increased amount of money would be offered. And the third time there would be an agreement. Then there followed a ceremony. The adopting father would go the Roman official and present a legal case for the transference of the son from one family to the next. When it was all complete, adoption was complete.
Four very important things took place. One, the adopted person lost all rights in his former family. Secondly, he became heir to his new father’s estate. Thirdly, the old life of the adopted person was completely obliterated. And fourthly, in the eyes of the law, the adopted person was permanently and absolutely the son of his new father. Does that sound like salvation to you?
That’s exactly depicting God’s concept of adoption. All our rights to our former family and our former father, the devil, are cancelled. We gain all the rights, fully legitimate sons in our new family, heirs of Christ, joint heirs with Christ of all that the Father possesses. We are the inheritors of His estate. And aren’t we the true sons and daughters, everlastingly of our new Father?
You have to realize that when you adopt a child, you can’t change that child’s nature. And you couldn’t change the heart. That’s where the biblical work of the Spirit of God is so different from adoption we become sons/daughters by adoption but we also become sons / daughters by regeneration. Adoption gives us the name and the title and the rights, regeneration gives us the nature of our new family.
The emphasis on our adoption is to show that we were chosen. And it’s the analogy that all the past is cancelled. It’s as if we were born again and just started to live. That’s why adoption is such an important thing because it speaks of selection, election and choice. And then it speaks of cancelling everything in the past and a new family but not to the exclusion of regeneration.
How does the Holy Spirit demonstrate this adoption? One, all who are being led by the Spirit of God, are children of God. Their lives are controlled by the Holy Spirit. He leads by changing our desires. All of a sudden we love what the divine nature loves. We love the law of God, Paul says in Romans 7; we delight in the law of God, Psalm 119 – 175 times, David says it.
How does He lead us? Two ways. Externally by the Scripture. Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things from Your law.” Internally by sanctification. What do you mean, the Spirit stirs the heart? I don’t know, that’s a miracle. It wasn’t just a miracle that you’re saved, it’s a miracle that you’re being sanctified, and it’s a miracle when you’re glorified.
Secondly, the Holy Spirit gives you intimate access to God. Verse 15, “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again.” When you were an unregenerate person, when the image of God was so marred that you were doomed, you lived in fear. You were in bondage to sin; therefore, you were in bondage to guilt, anxiety, fear, trepidation, judgment. That’s how you lived.
When the Spirit began a work of sanctification is this: You received the Spirit of adoption. Is there anything more precious than little children throwing their arms around you as a parent or a grandparent in those times of basically unlimited, unquestioning affection? “Papa.” We just rush in without fear to the presence of God because the Holy Spirit has made us sons by birth and sons by adoption.
Thirdly, the Holy Spirit is assuring us. Verse 16, “The Holy Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.” The Holy Spirit comes to us, takes up residence in us, and confirms to our hearts that we belong to God. In the adoption process in ancient Rome, seven witnesses had to be there. We don’t need seven. We just need one, the Holy Spirit who has sealed us.
Someone might say, you don’t have any right to inherit God’s kingdom. I have seen your behavior, the way you act and the way you talk. You are not a Christian. Or you might think, I have failed so many times, maybe I’m not a child of God. And the Holy Spirit says, I was there. You are a Christian. I am the witness with your spirit. Again there is this mysterious ministry of the Holy Spirit within us.
Peter says, no one can ever take our inheritance, it’s reserved and set apart for us. The Holy Spirit is the seal, the guarantee, and the Holy Spirit is the first fruits. That is what verse 16 is saying. He testifies with us that we are the children of God. He bears witness along with our spirit. This is called hope. And that’s the work of the Holy Spirit, to give us that strong hope. Let us pray.