Saturday, December 27, 2008

Adoption Shows Us The Glory Of The Christian Hope

"New Testament Christianity is a religion of hope, a faith that looks forward. For the Christian, the best is always yet to be. But how can we form any notion of that which awaits us at the end of the road? Here too the doctrine of adoption comes to our help. To start with it teaches us to think of our hope not as a possibility, nor as a likelihood, but as a guaranteed certainty, because it is a promised inheritance. The reason for adopting in the first century world, was specifically to have an heir to whom one could bequeath one's goods. So, too, God's adoption of us makes us his heirs, and so guarantees to us, as our right (we might say), the inheritance that he has in store for us. "We are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:16-17). "So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir" (Gal. 4:7). Our Father's wealth is immeasurable, and we are to inherit the entire estate".
J.I. Packer, Knowing God pg 217

The question is, "Are you a child of God?". Once you become a child of god you become his heir. The father will never abandon anyone who is his child, he will never kick them out of his family and he will never disinherit them. It cannot happen, it will not happen, as Packer says "our hope is not a possibility, ( something that depend on us, our ability, our doing something) but is a guaranteed certainty!"

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