in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself
Among the truths which Paul expresses great amazement over as one spiritual blessing after the next gushes forth from his pen, is the matter of adoption. Paul is ravished with joy over being a son of God. Just a bit of reflection on the doctrine of adoption will bring us a great thrill. We have been adopted into a better lineage than one who is able to trace his genealogy to an uninterrupted line of princes and kings. Luther said that if we but knew what this privilege [of adoption] was, all the riches of all the kingdoms of the world would be but filthy dung to us.
William Brakel beautifully writes on the glory of adoption, “From being a child of the devil to becoming a child of God, from being a child of wrath to becoming the object of God’s favor, from being a child of condemnation to becoming an heir of all the promises and a possessor of all blessings, and to be exalted from the greatest misery to the highest felicity—this is something which exceeds all comprehension and all adoration.”
Christians are not sons of God by nature; we lost our status and privilege as God’s image-bearers with Adam’s fall in the garden. But as God chose us in Christ, in eternity past unto adoption as sons, our status and privileges are returned to us based upon the merits of our older brother, Jesus Christ. As adopted children we belong to a family with which we have no right to belong, but because of a legal transaction which has occurred, we are freed from the obligations of the family from which we came, having become vested into a new family, with all of its rights, privileges and advantages.
