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What is adoption?
A. Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory.
Numbers 6:24–27
24 The LORD bless you and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
27 “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Psalm 103:13
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
Proverbs 14:26
26 In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence,
and his children will have a refuge.
Amos 9:12
12 that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations who are called by my name,”
declares the LORD who does this.
Matthew 6:32
32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
John 1:12
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
Romans 8:15–16
15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
Romans 8:17
17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
2 Corinthians 6:18
18 and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”
Galatians 4:4–6
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Ephesians 1:5
5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
Hebrews 6:12
12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Hebrews 12:5–11
5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
1 Peter 1:3–4
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
1 John 3:1
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Revelation 3:12
12 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Welcome to the Reformed Standard. I'm Tony, let's get started. Question 74 of the Westminster Larger Catechism reads: What is adoption? And the answer is: Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory. So we're in this section here of the Westminster Larger Catechism that is talking about the different benefits of salvation. It's also giving us a reformed Ordo Salinas, which is just the order the logical order of things in in the way salvation unfolds. Even though we acknowledge that some of these things temporarily happen simultaneously, we recognize that there is a certain kind of logic within the Ordo salute is that we have to understand. And so here we see that adoption, being an act of God's free grace, we talked about in question 71 and question 70, that when the Westminster standards here uses the term act, they're talking about something that happens in a moment once for all, not a process which will see what We get to sanctification. But here what we see is that adoption being an act of God's fruit grace happens in a moment in time at a punctilious moment in time, that it is in his Son, Jesus Christ, and it is for his Son, Jesus Christ. So ultimately, adoption serves for the benefit of Jesus Christ, for the glory of God and for his name. And so we see that in passages in Romans where it says that he predestined us, in order that Jesus Christ might be the firstborn among many brothers. He conforms us to his image for that purpose. And so in eternity past, the sun was promised by the father to have a people who would be his who he would be the head and brother and spouse of, and then next it says, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children. So we understand from this that in the order of salvation, those who are adopted are always Ready justified. And so as I said that this all happens at a single moment in time, but in the logic of salvation, God gives us gives us freedom from the penalty of sin, He makes us legally righteous in His sight. And then he makes us his children. And so this happens in a certain order. And then here it also says that there's a number of his children and so we also see overtones and, and notes revolving around limited atonement or particular definitely Tony here. He puts His name on us. So this this also has to do with becoming his children. When you think about how adoption works in the human realm in the human world. Part of the adoption of a child is that he or she adopts the last name of their father, their new adopted legal father. And then here, this is something that's interesting, I think that we don't often see, or we don't often understand that the next part of this is that the Spirit of God's son and the Spirit of his Son is given to us. And so there's often discussions about the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the the is there an increase in in dwelling. And what we see here is that in a single moment in time, the Spirit of God is given to us in our adoption. So we understand that even though our subjective experience or understanding of the presence of the Holy Spirit is something that grows and increases over our lifetime, and then culminates when we are in full fellowship with Him,
when we understand here is the Spirit of God is given to us in our adoption. So God imputed Christ's righteousness to us in justification. And then he gives us His Spirit and adoption and makes us his children. And then because we are His children, there's this series of consequences as a series of results that obtained from that. He says we are under his fatherly care and dispensations So, even though we know prior to our justification and our adoption, that God is active in our lives and is working towards his ultimate end, we can't say that those things are necessarily part of his fatherly care dispensation, because he's not our Father in this sense in that temporal time period. And so this is where it comes in after, you know, in Romans eight where it says all who all things work together for good for those who love Him who are called according to His purposes. Here is what we're talking about is that God's fatherly care and his dispensations or his his gifts or His providence is oriented toward us, and in a fatherly sense, after we are adopted as his children. And if you think about that, that just makes sense, if God is not, if God is adopting us, and becoming our Father in this sense, that it wouldn't make any sense for us to say that he was acting as our father prior to that. And then it says he We are admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God. And so oftentimes Christianity is seen from those outside and then even from some inside to be a restrictive religion, that it it imposes a bunch of rules on us. And there are laws there are rules that we have to fit, but ultimately those rules, and those laws serve towards our freedom and our benefit. And so because we are God's children, we have freedom in Christ, freedom from man made religion, freedom from sin, freedom from all sorts of things. And then we also have certain privileges as the sons of God. And then finally, here were made heirs to all of the promises and were made fellow heirs with Christ and glory. And so the promises here could refer to a lot of different things but God, God made promises to his people, he made promises to give them a land to give them an inheritance to be his God, to protect them to to provide for them and so all of the promises that God has ever made any of his people we become the heirs of. And ultimately, this is kind of one of those catch all phrases where we have a set of specific benefits or promises given to us. And then there's this catch all phrase that kind of means anything else that God has ever promised to us. And then we're made fellow heirs with Christ and glory. So what Christ inherits and the glory that is, the sun's the human glory that is given to the sun, in in the in heaven now and then in the New Earth in the future. We become fellow heirs with Christ in that glory. And so just as Christ reigns and rules as the head of the church, the church also reigns and rules with him. We see overtones of that in First Corinthians where Paul says that someday we will be judges even over the angels. So ultimately, the the point of this question here the point of this answer is to say that we become God's children, we become children of the King of the universe. And because we are too Return of the King of the universe and brothers with his glorious Prince Jesus Christ. Then we, we share with Jesus and all the blessings that obtained from that status.