Legal Privileges

A couple stands in court completing every legal formality to adopt a child. They now have every legal privilege of parents, but the mother does not yet have the warmth of the baby in her bosom and the father does not yet have the glow of the father-look. Later they collect the child and only then do the experiential dimensions of parenthood meet the legal ones.

First of all, we want to examine the legal privileges of adoption. Consider a couple who, for one reason or another, have decided to adopt a child. And for months, they've gone through all the legal process, and the time has come when, in a court of law, this particular child whom they've decided to adopt is officially, legally, the recipient of the name of that family. He is now to be regarded by the law, and by society, as the son of that particular family.

6:27 - 7:01 Read in full sermon

In Greek and Roman law a wealthy person would formally take a child (usually an adult or teenager) from an alien family, place him as a son, and invest him with every privilege of a natural-born son. Martin explains that Paul's word for 'adoption' is borrowed directly from this legal practice.

He was not a son. He was not a son. He was not a son. He was not a son.

15:01 - 15:01 Read in full sermon

The point: When you struggle with assurance of sonship, do not probe around with the Spirit's work in you; immediately engage in fresh actings of faith in Christ's objective work for you.

If you gauge your sonship by the Spirit's fluctuating work in you, one day you will come running into your Father's presence, and the next day cringe in the yard as though you had been booted out on your ear. Only grounding sonship on Christ's work for you steadies the experience.

Without the work of the Spirit in us, we would never embrace Christ and thereby receive the benefits of His work, one of which is adoption. But you see, the moment we begin to think of adoption in terms of the new birth, that is, having the Spirit and the attitude and the disposition of a son, and do not start where John starts with the legal title and right to become a son, we put the cart before the horse.

18:55 - 19:26 Read in full sermon

The point: Take comfort that the deed of adoption, signed in the blood of Christ, is riveted to the throne of God and cannot be altered.

If you have received Christ, God has held a family court and drafted a deed of adoption soaked in the blood of His own dear Son. That deed is riveted to the throne of the Almighty and can no more be altered than God can be budged from His throne.

It is grounded in what Christ has done.

22:14 - 22:18 Read in full sermon

Revelation 21:7 is God's capstone over the whole biblical teaching of adoption. It is as though God says: 'You have a thousand questions about heaven - if this is not enough, I have nothing more to say. I will be his God, and he shall be my son.'

Well it probably has two prongs of meaning. We are heirs of God in the sense that it is by God's gracious activity that we are constituted heirs, but probably more profoundly, and this seems to be the heart of the teaching, that we are heirs with an inheritance of which God himself is the supreme element in the actual inheritance.

28:48 - 29:19 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Without the mushy, spineless, wrathless, hellless, crossless, propitiationless theology of liberalism, in the midst of such theology we have this precious statement, and not ashamed to call them brethren.

Pastor Martin was the oldest son in a family of ten. He reflects that he always secretly wished he had an older brother, especially when the bully on the block was around. The comfort of a big brother is precisely what Christ is to his adopted brothers and sisters.

He says, Who is my mother? Who are my brethren? They who hear the Word of God and do it. But after the resurrection, He's very clear.

41:29 - 41:37 Read in full sermon