Spiritual Gifts part 57: Adoption emphasizes God's ability and your motivation.
Pastor-Teacher Spiritual Gifts Part 57: Adoption emphasizes God’s ability and your motivation.Biblical adoption is that grand design of God by which He confers or bestows upon us the status or the standing of adult sons and daughters. This happens positionally at the moment of salvation when He recognizes us as an adult son or daughter permanently by His placement. Spiritual adoption is an act of God’s grace whereby He brings believers in union with Christ into His family and makes them heirs, partakers of all the blessings He has provided for them.
We are also placed in permanent union with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Biblical adoption shows up in connection with the moment of salvation, yet it also shows up in God’s thoughts in eternity past, and then again at the Rapture. Adoption is something that God started in eternity past, Eph 1:5. He made a decision concerning believers in Christ. God thought about us in eternity past, and decreed the fact that He would make us His adult sons and daughters one day. We are recognized as adult sons and daughters by virtue of our union with Christ. In His grace, God supplies us the standing, nature, righteousness, and capacities that we lacked in order to make us fit to be His adult sons and daughters. The Roman father selected a capable person for the job. God the Father selects an incapable person and transforms him or her into a capable person. We are made into the heir by means of the grace of God through the pre-designed plan of God. The three English words “adoption as sons” that appear in each instance are actually translating a single Greek word. υἱοθεσία
huiothesia
huios = “son come of age”
Rom 1:1
1Co 12:18 The Greek word huiothesia means to place a son in the home who would carry on the family business, the family estate. Therefore it meant recognition as an adult son.
God’s children are born of God, born of the Spirit, and are called Adoption is not the same thing as regeneration. All God’s children, whether in the Old Testament times or the Church Age, are born of God.
huios means a child come of age; no longer deprived of the full use of his privileges and responsibilities, Gal 4:7. This recognition also occurs at the moment we believe in Christ. Your relationship as a child of God (tekna) results from the new birth. This is true for believers of all dispensations. Your relationship as an adult son of God (huios) is positionally established by adoption, and is for Church Age believers only. Your relationship as an adult son of God becomes fulfilled experientially when by the power of the word of God and the filling of the Spirit you grow up spiritually to maturity. Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, not only are you adopted into God’s royal family, but you are a royal heir of God! You are moved out of the power and authority of your natural father, the devil, by means of retroactive positional truth, being placed in union with Christ in His death on the cross, and in His burial. You are placed under the power and authority of God the Father, by means of current positional truth, being placed in union with Christ in His resurrection, ascension, and session. These imputations include (1) perfect righteousness, and (2) eternal life. Adoption emphasizes God’s ability and your motivation, NOT your ability. If your volition is negative, you will not enjoy the benefits of your adoption in time, during your life here on earth.
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