Adoption and Heirship
Romans 8:13–17
We are in Romans chapter 8 and
tonight we're going to begin in about verse 12. We've worked our way
through the previous verses talking specifically last time about the whole
doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit versus the filling of the Holy
Spirit. Remember that God the Holy Spirit indwells every single believer at the
instant of salvation. It is a non-experiential event. That means we don't
feel it. It's not something that gives us a feeling of warmth or a glow.
It's not represented by any kind of activity. It's simply something that
happens along with numerous other, non-experiential things such as the baptism
of the Holy Spirit, justification, and adoption: all of these things that the
Bible talks about that become ours at the instant of salvation. The only
way we can learn about them is when we come to study the Word of God and then
we realize how much God has given to us and how much He has provided to
us.
When we think about it, that's the
way many things in life are. We're given many things in life with our
birth. We're given a certain amount of natural talents and abilities, due
to what is passed on to us through genetics, our inheritance through our
parents and we only activate those things as we make decisions in life and
decide to use them and we discipline ourselves and make many, many
choices. Ultimately it comes down to our volition and making right
decisions to pursue excellence and exploit whatever it is we've been
given. When we study the Word we come to understand what it is we've been
given spiritually and our need to exploit that.
What becomes the foundation for our
spiritual life is what Paul talked about at the beginning of Romans, which is
our position in Christ. This is the result of this event that never before
occurred in history prior to A.D. 33. That is the baptism by
the Holy Spirit, that identification with Christ in His death, burial, and
resurrection that set us completely apart unto God and part of His
family. It also involves, as a result of that, something we're going to
look at tonight and that is adoption into God's family. And because it is
adoption into God's family, it is adoption into God's royal family. With
that comes something called inheritance.
Now inheritance is one of those
extremely significant doctrines in Scripture that is not always understood by
many people. In fact, the average reader of Scripture thinks that
inheritance in Scripture is something that is common to every believer, that
all believers are equally heirs of God and of Christ, and
that heirship or inheritance of the kingdom of God is equivalent to getting
eternal life and going into heaven. And yet what we discover is that when
we look into these passages, which we'll see some of tonight and next time,
inheritance is based on behavior. Inheritance is based on
choices. Inheritance is based on works.
But salvation is a free gift,
according to Ephesians 2:8 and 9. So if inheritance is based on works and
salvation is based on a free gift, then salvation is not the same as
inheritance. They are two different things. Now there are some
aspects of our inheritance that are true for every believer and a part of
salvation but there are other aspects of our inheritance that are based on
choices and on volition and our decision to grow and mature in our Christian
life.
Now just for a little
review, let's go back to verse 6, which is an explanation of a general
principle. This is something that is true for a believer and an
unbeliever, anyone whose mind is set on the sin nature, whose life is energized
by the sin nature. The result of that is going to be death. Verse 6 says,
“To be the carnally minded is death... [The Greek word there is for the sin
nature]” Now that is a general principle. The unbeliever has no option but
to be carnally minded. He can't be spiritually minded because he's not
regenerate. He's spiritually dead.
The believer can make a
choice. If the believer is walking by the Holy Spirit, then he's not being energized by the flesh. That's what we
looked at last time. But once we determine to stop walking by the Spirit
then the result is that we go into that default mode of walking by the
flesh. I was talking with Jim Myers today because I made the decision, due
to a lot of things that happened this last fall, not to go over to Kiev
this year. If I were going to Kiev this year I would not be here right
now. I would be on my way over and I would be starting to teach there this
coming Sunday. So Jim is teaching the course on rewards and inheritance in
my place so we were going through the notes. He's added some things to
what I had originally done. We always play off of each other that
way. And so we were just going through a lot of the different passages in
the seven letters to the seven churches, just to work our way through those
because they're all about rewards and judgments.
As we were talking about that and
talking about that whole concept of walking by the Spirit, I used the analogy
of Peter walking on the water. As Peter sees the Lord Jesus Christ walking
on the water coming to the boat, Peter wanted to get out there and show that he
could do that as well. He was always extremely motivated to trust the
Lord. He was just energetic that way. That's something we miss out
on; he was highly motivated. People who are highly motivated not only make
great decisions and see great successes but they also trip and fall on their
face a lot. So often we look at the failures and we forget the great
success.
As Peter starts to walk on the
water, his focus is on the Lord. As long as he is focused on the Lord, he
is walking by faith on the basis of the power of the Lord Jesus Christ to
enable him to walk on the water. But before he sank, he took his eyes off
the Lord. Now taking his eyes off the Lord wasn't in and of itself a sin
but it put him in a position where he quit trusting and he put his eyes on
something else. And that's what happens when we quit walking by the Holy
Spirit.
Jim made this great observation,
saying, “We always focus on the fact that he took his eyes off the Lord but
Peter walked on the water!” We forget that great success. He trusted the
Lord and walked on the water. We always tend to go to the negative and
say, “Yeah, but he took his eyes off the Lord.” But he trusted the Lord
and he did walk on the water and that's just incredible. So anyway Jim and
I had a great conversation about that this morning.
This illustrates what every believer
can do. We can do the spiritual equivalent of walking on water, something
supernatural, something miraculous in our everyday life, when we walk by the
Holy Spirit but we have to keep our eyes on the Lord. We have to keep
focused on the Word and we have to understand those dynamics of the spiritual
life at having that focused, faith-rest mental attitude. And if we don't
have it then we're just going to look at the waves of testing and slip beneath
the waters of carnality and that ends up in death, not eternal condemnation but
in a temporal death that is non-productive in the Christian life.
So Paul says, “For to be carnally
minded is death but to be spiritually minded...” Here he's talking about
being focused on God the Holy Spirit. “... to be
spiritually minded is life and peace.” That's the result of being
spiritually minded. We have that abundant life that the Lord promised
us. And then he explains that. Notice the 'because'
in verse 7. All through this chapter it’s important to notice those
initial words because it tells us it's either an explanation...that would be
'for', or 'because' or it gives a result or conclusion with 'so', 'then', or
'therefore' or in some cases, like verse 9, it builds a contrast. So Paul
then gives the reasoning behind this in verse 7, “For the carnal mind is enmity
with God...” The carnal mind, the mindset energized by the sin nature is
always hostile to God. It's not just a little bit hostile to God, it's not
partially hostile to God; it is completely hostile to God no matter how it
dresses itself up in all kinds of legalistic works and in going to
church.
Someone can go to church, be
involved in prayer meetings or prayer groups and they can in many cases share
their testimony and they can do all kinds of things, all though the energy of
the flesh and it has no eternal value whatsoever. They can be completely
energized by approbation lust, by power lust, by various different kinds of
lust patterns that manifest themselves. They can be energized by jealousy,
envy, a desire to show themselves better than others but none of that has any
value eternally. But on the outside to you and I they appear the
same. The person on the right side of the room with their head bowed and
their eyes closed and the person on the left side of the room with head bowed
and eyes closed looked the same. But which one is in fellowship and which
one's not, you can't tell. The person on the left that's witnessing to
somebody; the person on the right that's witnessing to somebody; one person is
doing it in the power of the Holy Spirit and the other is doing it in the power
of the flesh. You and I cannot discern the difference. One person is
giving, another person is giving, we can't discern the
difference. Only God can. And that which is done in the power of the
flesh is hostile to God because it's man depending on the arm of the flesh for
success.
As Paul says,
When I was in seminary and many
other times I have had professors and instructors who just failed to understand
this. In fact, they failed to understand how you could recover from sin
and they didn't teach the significance of 1 John 1: 9 and confession, which is
covered in many other ways all through the Scripture. But here we have a
clear description of the believer who is operating in the sin nature, which is
hostile to God who can't submit to the law of God. That's not the Mosaic
Law; that's the mandates in the New Testament. They're not able to submit
to the law of God because they cannot please God when they're out of fellowship.
Now how in the world can you recover
from that? You can't. And how in the world can you think someone can
be a little bit carnal and a little bit spiritual because they have mixed
motives. Let's look at that concept a minute. Mixed motives are like having
something with a little bit of leaven in it. It's good but it has a little
bit of leaven. Paul says in Scripture that “a little leaven leavens the
whole lump.” It doesn't take but a little bit of wrong motivation, wrong
attitude, being out of fellowship and no matter what you're doing that's good,
it's done from a wrong motivation and done from a wrong way. A right thing
done in a wrong way is wrong. It never will be right.
It doesn't matter what the results
are and so you have today a lot of people running around with a lot of God talk
and a lot of Jesus talk and yet they have nothing going on that is Biblical,
spiritual, or is really of the Holy Spirit. It's extremely sad because
what these churches and pastors and groups have done is completely deceive
people in thinking that their emotions and all the feelings that are generated
going to those kinds of churches means they're somehow closer to God and
they're as far away as they could possibly be. They may be saved but
they're not getting anywhere in their Christian life. They don't know how
to go forward. They're stuck and they're baby Christians, they're still in
diapers, and we all know what babies do to diapers. That's all they're
doing through their life and they don't know how to clean anything up by
confession.
So verse 7 says, “Because the carnal
mind is enmity against God [this is an extremely strong word], for it is not
subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” In verse 9, you have a big
contrast, “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit
of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he
is not His.” So the starting point in verse 9 is being a believer and
being indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Then he says in verse 10, “And if Christ
is in you ...” Here he's talking about a shift here towards the abiding
relationship or fellowship with Christ because that's the purpose for the
indwelling of the Spirit. “... the body is dead because of sin, but the
Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit who raised
Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also
give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
Then we come to a conclusion in
verse 12, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live
according to the flesh.” So we are in a position of indebtedness because
everything has been paid for us and we accept that as a free gift but we are in
debt to the grace of God. This states the principle: we are debtors not to
the flesh [which means to live according to the flesh]. Then we have an
explanation, which starts with that word “for” and then begins a series of
first class assumptions. So it's an assumption of the truth of the first part,
which leads to the result of the second part. “For if you live according
to the flesh [assuming you're living according to the flesh], you will die ...” Not eternal death.
Remember there are seven different
kinds of death in the Scripture. There's physical death, there's spiritual
death which is true of every person who is born, we're born physically alive
but spiritually dead. There is carnal death, there is positional death
when we're identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, there
is eternal death [eternal condemnation], there's sexual death. These are
some of the different deaths in Scripture. There is operational death for
the believer who lives according to the sin nature. He will die; he will
not be able to produce anything that has eternal value.
That's the focus here: if you live
according to the flesh you will die, you will live a death-like
existence. You have eternal existence and justification but you will have
this temporal death-like existence. So you have the first part of this statement,
the protasis, which is basically a grammatical term
for the first part of a conditional clause, “if you are living according to the
flesh”. If you are living your life on the basis of the sin nature you
must die. You will die. It's an imperatival result there
indicating the consequences of that death. “... but
[in contrast] if by the Spirit [first class condition] you are putting to death
the deeds [practice] of the body, you will live.”
Both of these statements 'you must
die' is an infinitive and indicates the natural consequence of living according
to the flesh and 'you will live' is a future passive that shows the result of
living by means of God the Holy Spirit. And the phrase there for the
Spirit is just your normal dative use for the Spirit there indicating He's the
means whereby we do what? We put to death the deeds of the
body. Here's another way in which death is used here. A central idea
in death is often separation. For example, when Adam and Eve sinned, they
were separated from God. When Adam and Eve believed, that restoration of
relationship occurred and was restored. So we have a separation that
should occur here from the deeds of the body. This is another way Paul
uses to talk about the deeds of the flesh, or the sin nature.
So believers are to be putting to
death, that is, separating themselves from the works of the sin
nature. And that only comes about by what? By making decisions such
as, “I'm not going to react that way. I'm not going to respond that
way. I'm not going to give in to those feelings of anger or resentment or
I'm not going to follow through with that lust pattern, I'm not going to let
that control my life right now. Right now, if you're a baby believer it
may last a nanosecond. Right now if you have a little time in grade, it
might last two or three minutes, maybe five or ten minutes. As we mature
spiritually then it lasts longer. But what we're supposed to be doing is
putting to death the deeds of the flesh, not saying, “Well, it's really
hard. I'll just confess my sin later.” That's not how it's
done. We should be putting to death the deeds of the flesh, removing that
from our life. That's the focus of the metaphor, “separating that from our
life.” We are to put to death the deeds of the flesh.
And then there's an additional
reality here that we have to understand in terms of this distinction with
children that comes in the next verse. The next verse says, “For as many
as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” Now let's stop a
minute and think about this. Now we have a further issue. There are
believers who are not led by the Spirit and what this means is they're not
following the Spirit. They're not walking by the Spirit. The Spirit
may be objectively leading but they're saying, “I'm going this way. I'm
going that way. I'm not following your leadership.”
This isn't talking about the reality
that God the Holy Spirit leads every believer. But God the Holy Spirit
doesn't make every believer follow. Remember, last week I talked about
Galatians 5 that there are two different passages or two different words that
are used in Galatians 5 for walking. At the beginning there's the command
that we're to walk by means of the Spirit and we won't carry out the deeds of
the flesh. That word for walk is peripateo
[peripatew]. It's a word that simply
focuses on the mechanics of walking and putting one foot in front of the
other. You walk along one step at a time, taking one decision at a time,
not looking down the path to the chasm that's coming up or the rough patch
that's coming up but just focusing on one step at a time right now.
At the end of that segment we have stoicheo in verse 26, which talks about
following in the steps of the Spirit. There's an order to it so it's
emphasizing another aspect of walking, following in the steps of the
Spirit. See, there are a lot of Christians who don't want to follow in the
steps of the Spirit. They want to follow their own path, not the path laid
out by the Spirit, which is the Word of God. They want to chart their own
course. They want to use all the God-words, all the Jesus-terms, wear the
little bracelets that say, "What would Jesus do?” and all the little
witness wear and all this other stuff but it's superficial. It doesn't go
any deeper than their clothing because they don't understand any of the
mechanics and the stoicheo
believer is the one who is following in the footsteps of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is always leading but
Christians are not always following in those footsteps. The ones who follow are actively
being led by the Spirit, they
are doing what the Spirit says to do and they are following those steps, those
verses, those protocols laid down in the Word for us to go forward. The
ones who do this over a period of time reach maturity and they're called 'sons
of God'. It's a technical word in the Greek, huios. It's not a baby, it's not an infant, it's not a
child but it's a mature son. And so what Paul begins here in verse 14 is
to lay out a chart of two different courses of action
in the lives of believers. You can have a destiny as a believer that is
mediocre or a failure or a destiny as a believer who is a success and
identified in the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation as an overcomer believer.
The problem is we take a verse like
this as equivalent to the phrase 'sons of God' or actually 'children of God' in
John 1:12 but it's a different term. John 1:12 is
talking about teknon which is a
term for children, not sons. These are mature sons. We have to
realize that at the instant of salvation, every believer is regenerated and
adopted into the royal family of God. We're regenerated and become a new
creature in Christ but we're just a little whiny baby
in diapers and we don't know anything. What Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:2
is that we are to desire or hunger for the Word like a newborn baby. If any of y'all have been around newborn babies
when they get hungry, they just start screaming for food. They want
food. They want somebody to feed them. They want that right
away. I'm seeing some heads nod out there. Yeah, they want to be
fed. A lot of new believers are that way but if you don't feed them, then
their appetite starts to go away after a while and their systems start to shut
down and they quit demanding food. This is where 98% of American
Christians are today. They've been starved for so long that they don't
even know that they're hungry.
Years ago I went on a long outward-bound
type of experience with Honeyrock Camp, which is
Wheaton's Camp up in the north woods. At the end of two weeks of canoeing
and backpacking, we did this three-day solo. We weren't to have food for a
number of reasons. That was part of the goal, to go three day without food
and to fast. One of the most significant reasons was because there were a
lot of bears in those woods. If you had any food with you, the bears would
come in at night and roust your little camp. We were all spread out about
a hundred or two hundred yards apart from each other so there wasn't any way to
get any help. Nobody had any 1911s in their backpack to protect themselves
from any marauding bears, no 357 magnums or anything like that, so you knew you
had to make sure you didn't have any food.
After about the first day or so your
appetite began to naturally suppress. We were drinking a lot of water, we
were right on the shore of Lake Superior which keeps a mean temperature of 33
degrees year round so that's too cold for bacteria to develop so it's perfectly
good to drink all the time, at least it still was at that time. This was
about 1980, I believe. So we had all the water we could drink and I
couldn't believe it. By noon of the second day I had no desire for
food. By the end of the third day the appetite's completely gone. You
don't care about food. You're not interested in food.
The next day we all were gathered
up, talked about our experiences, got loaded up on a couple of trucks and vans
and were taken back toward the base camp about thirty miles away. Then we
were dropped off about 13 miles, half a marathon, from the base camp. After
three and half days of no food, preceded by two weeks of backpacking and
canoeing with very little food, then we had to run the last thirteen mile back
to the base camp. When we got there, there was a sumptuous, sumptuous meal
for us. You really didn't want to eat that much. But once you started
eating that appetite kicked into high gear.
Now I think spiritual hunger is
something like that. If you don't feed newborn
baby believers, then they're not hungry after a while. Their appetite gets
suppressed. That's what happens in all these churches. You don't hear
whiny babies crying to their pastors that they need more doctrine, they need
more teaching, they need to learn something because they've been starved so
much, they've been put on a spiritual fast, so they don't want to hear
anything, they don't want to learn anything, they don't want to eat any
spiritual food. But those who haven't gone too far when they start hearing
the truth, a lot of times, all of a sudden they wake up, and they become spiritually
energized and they want to eat. That's the idea Peter has in 1 Peter 2:2
when he states “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk
of the Word that you may grow thereby.” We grow by the Word, not by
singing, not by fellowship, but by the Word. We grow in the grace and the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we're regenerated but then we
have to grow. We start off as babies. Brephos is the Greek word for
infant, teknon can be a child from
infancy all the way up to they are an adult mature son. Then we have the
word huios, which describes an
adult son. That's the word we have here. Those who follow the leadership
of the Holy Spirit, these are the ones who become sons of God, adult sons,
mature Christians. You only get there by walking by the Spirit and
following the leadership of the Spirit. Now several passages in the
Scripture are important references to this. One that I mentioned earlier
is John 1:12. John 1:12 talks about the fact that we're saved as
children. “But as many as received Him...” a synonym for believing at the
end of the verse. The previous verse says, “He came to His own, and His
own did not receive Him”, meaning the Jews. “... but
as many as received him [accepted Him as Messiah], to them He gave the right to
become children, teknon, of God
even ...” This is an ascensive use of the
conjunction kai, which means that
is, “to those who believe in His name.” So how do you become a child of
God? You believe in His name. At that instant you become a child of
God.
You're not a child of God because
you are a creature of God's. That is the teaching of liberalism. In
my first church I had some people who liked to watch Robert Schuller
on Sunday morning and they also liked to watch the broadcast of First Methodist
Church in Houston. I was down near Galveston. There were a lot of
great people in the church, too. It was a mixed bag, a great learning
experience. You want to have a church like that when you're young and when
you're just getting started because you need to learn and go through those hard
knocks. To get that kind of congregation at the end of the run is
tough. You don't want to do all that head knocking that needs to come
along. You're too tired after forty years of dealing with
sheep.
There were many people in that
church who believed everybody was a child of God. That's the so-called the
Christian belief of many Americans who believe we're all children of God but
what this teaches is that the only way to become a child of God is to believe
in His name, which in the context of the gospel of John is to believe Jesus is
who He claimed to be, the eternal Son of God and the Promised Messiah. So
we're saved to become sons, not to stay as babies.
The fifth thing we learn here is
that several passages indicate sonship is a result of character, not simply
faith. In case you got lost on some of those points, the first point was
that at the instance of salvation every believer is regenerated and adopted
into the royal family of God. Second, at that instance of salvation,
everybody is a baby. Everybody is a little crybaby, a little whiny
baby. Then the third point is that huios
is an adult son. There has to be growth. It doesn't happen
automatically. It only happens as a result of decision, after decision,
after decision to partake of spiritual food. Fourth point: John 1:12 shows
that we're saved for this ultimate purpose. Then fifth, several passages
indicate that sonship is a result of character, spiritual maturity, not simply
the result of believing the gospel.
That's really important because some
people want to make sonship equivalent to the gospel. But what is the
gospel? The gospel is that salvation is a free gift. Ephesians 2:
8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest
anyone should boast.” You don't work to earn a gift; it is something
freely given but these passages that talk about sonship talk about something
being earned: something that's the result of character
change, something that's the result of growth. For example, Matthew
5:44-45 says, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who
curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who
spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in
heaven.” This should be a sign over everybody's doorway in times of
political persecution.
Wait a minute. I thought over
in John 1:12 that John said it's by faith. That's to become a child of
God. This is becoming a huios
of God, a son of God. In order to be a huios, to grow to maturity, we have to
be obedient. We have to enact in our lives the mandates of
Scripture. So Jesus says that in order that you may be sons of your father
in heaven “for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the just and the unjust.” That's grace orientation. This is
talking about common grace. So how do you become a son
of God? You have to grow to spiritual maturity. You have to have
unconditional love toward those who love you as well as those who are enemies. Another
verse is Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called
sons of God.” This isn't talking about world peace. This is talking
about peace between fallen human beings who are born in a state of enmity with
God and God who is reconciling the world to Himself through
Christ. Reconciliation is a term that always related to peace. The
way we are peacemakers is through exercising our ambassadorship, representing
God and announcing the gospel that there is peace between you and God. You
need to believe in Jesus Christ and this peace becomes a reality in your
life. So the peacemakers are those who are witnessing to and evangelizing
those who have never trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior. So the peacemakers
are blessed because they're growing to maturity. They shall be called sons
of God.
Then when we go to the end of the
New Testament, to the end of the book of Revelation, we have one of those
passages that people always get confused about. I encourage you if you've
never gone through the Revelation series, take some time and at least go look
at the passage in Revelation 21: 7 and 8 because this is so very important to
understand. Revelations 21:7 talks about inheriting and Revelations 21:8
talks about losing an inheritance. So the context here is talking about
inheritance, not justification or getting eternal life. In 21:7 we're
told, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things...” So that means if you
want to inherit everything from God you have to do something. Wait a
minute. I thought salvation was not by works. Right. That's why
overcoming can't be equivalent to gaining eternal life. Gaining eternal
life is a free gift. So inheritance is the result of overcoming.
The one who overcomes grows to
spiritual maturity and Jesus promises, “I will be his God and He shall be my
son.” But then we have the contrast of the person who spends his life just
living in his sin nature as much as he did before he was saved in verse 8, “But
the cowardly, the unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral,
sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which
burns with fire and brimstone and is the second death.” Now the key word
there is that word 'part'. We've studied this before. There are many
people who take that to mean they have their destiny there, they shall have
their role in the lake of fire. That's not what the word means. It's
a Greek word meros which is used
to designate that part of a will that specifies the inheritance to an
heir. So it should be translated, “they shall have their portion of the
inheritance”. It's not talking about them. It's talking about their
portion of the inheritance. So the picture here is that here is an
inheritance that was set aside for this individual but because they failed to
mature and qualify for the inheritance, rather than receiving the inheritance
that would be distributed at their majority or when they become mature, they're
disqualified from receiving it.
They're still in the family of
God. They still enter heaven but the inheritance is thrown into the Lake
of Fire and destroyed for eternity. They're never going to qualify for
it. It's not talking about losing salvation; it's talking about
losing inheritance. This is seen throughout many, many passages. I
did a lot of in depth study of that whole concept when we went through the book
of Revelation. So the overcomer is the one who
grows to spiritual maturity; the non-overcomer is the
one who lives according to the sin nature. So the one who overcomes will
be a son. It's works again in the sense of pursuing spiritual growth and
spiritual maturity.
Now back to Romans. When we
look at Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
the sons of God.” These are the mature ones. Now in verse 15 we have
another explanation “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear ...” What he means by “spirit of bondage” is that
he means bondage to slavery to sin which we were set free from at the instant
of salvation through the baptism by the Holy Spirit. “For you did not
receive the spirit of bondage again to fear but you received the Spirit of
adoption by whom we call out 'Abba, Father.'” Now abba is the Hebrew or Aramaic
term that's equivalent to daddy. It's a term of endearment between a son
and a father. You go around Israel and you always hear the kids calling to
their father, “Abba. Abba. Come look at this.” Abba and daddy are
equivalent. It is a very intimate term between a father and a
child. So we are adopted into the family of God and He becomes our
Father.
This introduces us to the doctrine
of adoption. It's a fundamental doctrine. I want to look at it two
ways. First of all we have to understand something about the historical
background and that may be as far as we get this evening and then we'll look at
its doctrinal significance. We're adopted into the family of
God. This means that now for all legal purposes we are part of God's
family. We see this under the sealing of the Holy Spirit. He
basically puts his brand on us. This is a good Texas doctrine so we're
identified forever and ever as His. We can't lose that. It is a
permanent adoption. When Paul talks about adoption, he covers it both in
Romans 8 here as well as in Galatians, chapters three and four. He builds on
the Romans and Greek ideas. He sort of borrows from both. When you
use metaphors you're not using everything in the comparison. A metaphor or
simile always compares one thing to another. A simile is a stated
comparison such as, “White as snow.” There are a lot of different characteristics
of snow. White is the one characteristic that's the focal point of this
comparison and it's a stated comparison using the word “as” or
“like”. White as snow and then you have the
literal sign of its reality.
When you look at adoption it's a
metaphor, not everything related to either Greek or Roman adoption would apply,
just certain features of Greek or Roman adoption would apply. In Greek
adoption, the practice of adoption emphasized the family relationship. A
man during his life or by a will after his death [isn't that interesting?]
could adopt any male citizen into the privileges of his family. So a male
could adopt someone at the time of his death. You'd never even know them
actually. They may already be dead but according to the terms of the will
you're adopted into his family, which gives you all of the privileges that
pertain to that particular family.
So that is a point of comparison
with the family of God because Jesus Christ dies on the Cross and because of
His death on the cross we can be adopted into the family of God and given all
the privileges related to family membership. So the adopted son, in the
Greek model, would accept all the legal obligations and the religious duties of
a real son. So he becomes the son in reality by choice and he has all
these legal obligations that are set upon him. So when Paul emphasizes the
family aspects of our adoption, he has the Greek model in mind. The Greek
model focuses on those family realities and that's especially true in Romans.
Paul, in Romans 8, emphasizes the
reality of our adoption as part of what happens with the baptism by the Holy
Spirit at that same instant in time, and all the
different things that happen. One of those is that we're adopted into the
family of God. So the emphasis here in Romans 8 is on the impact that
should have on the way in which we should live. Now we have a new
obligation because we have been adopted into the family of God.
The Roman custom was much more
severe and demanding. Roman law emphasized a severe authority of the
father over the son. The father in the Roman system could just at the snap
of a finger put everyone into slavery for the rest of their
lives. He is the complete tyrant over the family. He is a tyrant over
the son so that the son is no better than a slave until adulthood. Now
that fits more the model of what Paul is illustrating when he's talking about
adoption over in Galatians. The reason the Romans gave such authority to
the father is that they were trying to protect the inheritance and protect the
purity of the aristocracy.
If a natural son is a loser, a
failure, if he's incompetent, if he just can't carry the banner for the family,
then the father can disinherit him and he can bring in an adopted
heir. Can you think of an illustration of this? Ben Hur. Judah Ben Hur, that's
where the name comes from, he's a Jewish aristocrat who is framed for an attack
on Roman soldiers by accidentally knocking some tiles off the roof and they
fall down and hit soldiers and as a result he's put into prison. He's sold
as a slave and he goes into the galleys and is a galley slave. Then he's
involved in this huge battle at sea and he saves the life of a Roman tribune
who then adopts him as his son. When he shows up back in Jerusalem he goes
by the Roman family name, he has the family seal, he represents everything in
the family even though he's not a blood relation. He is an adult when he's
adopted. That film shows a great illustration of the history of Roman
adoption.
In the Roman system, there's a
ceremonial purchase of the one who is going to be adopted, which is referred to
as 'redemption'. He's purchased through this ceremony. So if the new
son was a slave, like in the case of Ben Hur, then an
actual purchase price is paid for his freedom. He's redeemed from slavery
and then as a free man he's then adopted into the family. Roman adoption
emphasizes inheritance or the possession of certain things, not a blood
relationship, and it can relate to a blood relationship, as well as an unrelated
heir.
Now in the Roman system, in the
first fourteen years, a son is put under a pedagogue or tutor. This is
what Paul talks about in Galatians. He's put
under a tutor and he's basically treated as a slave, inferior to the slave who
is the tutor. The role of the pedagogue is to discipline and to train the
child of the aristocrat. So in those early years there are no rights for the
son for the first fourteen years until he is old enough at the age of fourteen
to receive the toga of youth which indicates his new position. Then this
indicates even for a blood son there is a sort of adoption ceremony where he is
recognized and made part of the family. When the father announces that the
son is now accepted into the family.
That's all the time we have but you
can see where we're going. Now what Paul does is he's going to draw from
the historical analogies that are familiar to his readers to show that there
are privileges that we have as believers because we've been adopted into the
family of God and we now have to live up to that family name. We carry
that banner forward and so there's an obligation put upon us, as believers, to
live in a way that brings honor and glory to God and this is because we are now
adult sons. We'll come back next time and look at that and then connect it
to the doctrine of inheritance.