Divine adoption

“ It is our duty to serve God with the disposition of children. We must be his sons, must by a new birth partake of a divine nature, must consent to the covenant of adoption and partake of the spirit of adoption. And we must be his servants; God will not have his children trained up in idleness ”

“ It was through the human will of the Lord that the Divine will of the Eternal Son uniformly worked and used the whole of His human nature.
It is in this perfect Sonship of Christ we first learn what a son should be. It is by His perfect loyalty to the Father’s will, by His uniform adoption of it as the best, the only, thing He can do, that we begin to understand our connection with God, and to recognise that in His will alone is our blessedness. Naturally we resent the rule of any will but our own; we have not by nature such love for God as would put His will first. ”

“ Merely to get a boy to enter a family circle does not imply adoption, for this last has a distinct meaning with a distinct purpose. If, then, we are the heirs of God we are really possessed of a right to His Divine Inheritance. Heaven has been made indeed our home. ”

“ LOVE FOR THE BRETHREN. 5. OBEDIENCE. E. ADOPTION. Regeneration begins the new life in the soul; justification deals with the new attitude of God towards that soul, or perhaps better, of that soul towards God; adoption admits man into the family of God with filial joy. Regeneration has to do with our change in nature; justification, with our change in standing; sanctification, with our change in character; adoption, with our change in position. In regeneration the believer becomes a child of God (John 1:12,13) ; in adoption, the believer, already a child, receives a place as an adult son ”

“ But according to those who suppose two persons or two hypostases or two supposita in Christ, no reason prevents Christ being called the adopted Son of God.
Reply Obj. 1: As sonship does not properly belong to the nature, so neither does adoption. Consequently, when it is said that "carnal humanity is adopted," the expression is metaphorical: and adoption is used to signify the union of human nature to the Person of the Son. ”

“ We have before observed, in treating on the former of these, viz. justification, that when God forgives sin, he confers on his people a right to life, or to all the blessings of the covenant of grace, in which are contained the promises that belong to the life that now is, and that which is to come. These are the privileges which God’s adopted children are made partakers of; and in this respect some divines suppose, that adoption is included in our justification. ”

“ Therefore God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestinating us to the adoption of children, not because we were going to be of ourselves holy and immaculate, but He chose and predestinated us that we might be so. ”

“ We have the nature of sons by regeneration: we have the title, and spirit, and right to the inheritance of sons by adoption. This honour have all the saints. 2. The discovery of the bliss belonging and suitable to this relation is denied: And it doth not yet appear what we shall be, v. 2. The glory pertaining to the sonship and adoption is adjourned and reserved for another world. The discovery of it here would put a stop to the current of affairs that must now proceed. The sons of God must walk by faith, and live by hope. ”

“ But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are." From what has been said, it is manifest that our supernatural adoption is an immediate and necessary property of sanctifying grace. The primal concept of sanctifying grace is a new God-given and God-like life super-added to our natural life. By that very life we are born to God even as the child to its parent, and thus we acquire a new filiation. This filiation is called adoption for two reasons: first, to distinguish it from the one natural filiation which belongs to Jesus ”

“ Now I admit that it is necessary for the human family to be thus adopted; there would, however, have been no need of this adoption if mankind had never become wicked and corrupt. If there had never been any sin in the world, I do not think that adoption would have been necessary. According to my views, and I believe, according to the views of the Latter-day Saints, and also of the ancient Saints, we were at one period legitimately his sons and daughters independent of adoption, and this will carry us to the first ideas manifested by revelation, in regard to the origin of man. ”

“ Oh, when will the children of God in the regeneration experience and manifest the same spirit of adoption which animates dear children as an instinct of nature toward fathers of their flesh! These two rules, following each other in a circle, would make the outspread field of a Christian’s life sunny, and green, and fruitful, as the arching of the solid system brightens and fertilizes the earth. ”

“ Angels are called sons of God by adoptive sonship, not that it belongs to them first; but because they were the first to receive the adoption of sons.
Reply to Objection 3: Adoption is a property resulting not from nature, but from grace, of which the rational nature is capable. Therefore it need not belong to every rational nature: but every rational creature must needs be capable of adoption. ”

“ ADOPTION. The Spirit cannot, after he hath come to the soul as a Spirit of adoption, come again as a Spirit of bondage to put the soul into his first fear, to wit, a fear of eternal damnation, because he cannot say and unsay, do and undo. As a Spirit of adoption, he told me that my sins were forgiven me and I was included in the covenant of grace, that God was my Father through Christ, that I was under the promise of salvation, and that this calling and gift of God to me are permanent and without repentance. ”

“ Since, indeed, He participated just as we ourselves do in blood and flesh and became man, while we too through Him became sons of God, being adopted through the baptism, He Who is by nature Son of God became first-born amongst us who were made by adoption and grace sons of God, and stand to Him in the relation of brothers. ”

“ The generality of mankind are ignorant of the real relationship that exists between them and Heaven. They do not understand that God is our Father. By adoption? No; but we are his children by a legal inheritance. ”

“ Who makest this most sacred night illustrious by the glory of the resurrection of Our Lord, preserve in the new offspring of Thy family the spirit of adoption which Thou hast given them; that, being renewed in body and soul, they may serve Thee with purity of heart, through the same Lord Jesus Christ ... ”

“ Theophilact on John 3, says: “It is not enough for the preservation of purity, to be baptized; but one must also use great diligence, that the image of the sonship of God, which is represented in baptism, is kept unspotted. There are many who have received, in baptism, the grace of adoption as children of God, but who, through negligence, have not remained children of God unto the end. ”

“ How could the Revisers choose this last reading, 'an heir through God,' and keep the word adoption? From the passage it is as plain as St. Paul could make it, that, by the word translated adoption, he means the raising of a father's own child from the condition of tutelage and subjection to others, a state which, he says, is no better than that of a slave, to the position and rights of a son. None but a child could become a son; the idea is—a spiritual coming of age; only when the child is a man is he really and fully a son. ”

“ The competing existence of Adoptionist and Pre-existent Christology does much to explain the early development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Starting with the Father and the Spirit-son, Adoptionism added {101} a third to the sphere of divinity, namely, the glorified Jesus. ”

“ God chooses to be our Father by a special adoption. He has an only Son Who is equal to Him, and in Whom He is well pleased, but He adopts sinners. Men adopt children only when they have none of their own; God, Who had such a Son as this, nevertheless adopts us. Adoption is an effect of love, for we choose whom we will adopt; Nature bestows other children, but love alone makes adopted ones. God, Who loves His only begotten Son with the whole of His love, and to infinity, extends to us the love He bears to Him. ”

“ God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. ”

“ He answered that in order to be saved it was enough to die in habitual or sanctifying grace, that is to say, in habitual charity; seeing that those who die in this state, as for instance newly-baptized infants, though they may never have performed a single act of charity, obtain Paradise by right of inheritance, habitual charity making them children of God by adoption. ”

“ Yet it must also be admitted that this sonship of God, which is the common property of all just souls, and is the result of the indwelling of God in the soul, does not mean that we are so by nature, but only by adoption. Now adoption, as it is practiced by law, implies that the child to be adopted is not already the son, that the new relationship is entered upon entirely at the free choice of the person adopting, that the child becomes the legal heir to the inheritance of the adopting father. ”