Adoption

I am going to speak from Paul's letter to the Galatians 3:26 - 4:7. I don't know about you, but the older I get the more I appreciate what my mother has done for me. I should say I am pretty heavily indebted to my father as well, but for today, at least, he gets sidelined. In any case, I do have a bone to pick with him about one or two physical attributes that I'm not overly happy about, and for which he is entirely to blame. But about my mother I have nothing bad to say. [And, I assure you, that is not because my mother is here is this morning.] What a mother does for her children is awesome. One of the Pryke family legends, which I am sure you will find very hard to believe, is that in the last few weeks before I was born I grew to such proportions that when my mother sneezed on one occasion, she cracked a couple of ribs. The pain that a mother suffers on behalf of her child begins early. I do not have a very clear recall of that incident. What I do remember vividly is when my wife Vivienne was in the latter stages of carrying our twin daughters Hannah and Katy. She would lie down on her back. There was no other way she could lie down. And then she would be quite incapable of getting up again without someone being at hand to act like a human crane. I don't think my back has ever been the same again, let alone hers. But these are just the beginnings of the trials of motherhood, as far as I can see. How much children take for granted! Only when mum is not there, for whatever reason, do we begin to understand all that she does. What a mother does she does out of love for her children, and not with an eye on being repaid. A mother invests her life in her child, but the capital gain goes to the child, not the mother. The investment is in the child, for the child, by the mother. Once grown, the child is up and off, reaping the benefit of all those years of selfless service. What does the mother get? Phone calls hopefully. Letters? Probably not any more. More likely, she will get some free advice on how she could have done better, and some comments about how much older and how worn out she seems nowadays. I wonder why? As someone put it: children are a great comfort in old age, and they help you reach it faster, too. Today, at least, children offer flowers to their mothers as a very small token of love and gratitude for endless sleepless nights and worry filled days. Beautiful as daffodils in springtime are, we do not imagine that they amount to much. They are not a payment for services rendered. Nor are they a down payment to ensure our mother's love in the future. As if we could begin to repay the debt! As if a mother's love could ever earned by good behaviour, like parole from a prison sentence! The very notion is offensive. And yet that is how so many of us treat God, our heavenly Father; we treat him in a way that would be deeply offensive in regard to our mothers. We completely misunderstand the nature and the basis of our relationship with him. We lose sight of his love and boundless self-sacrifice, which is infinitely greater than that of even the most devoted mother. Some come to him with little offerings of good behaviour, or church attendance, or common decency, and it is as if they say to him:

"Here you are God. I'll give you this, and then you must forgive me for any misbehaviour (not that I have done anything much wrong) and you must give me a happy life now, and let me live with you forever. I've paid, so these things are mine by right. And by the way, God, I will be watching closely. Be warned that if your performance does not come up to scratch, then I may well take my little bunch of daffodils and give it to some other god who promises more than you seem to be delivering. Keep on your toes, God, or else you will never hear from me again."

That is the equivalent of saying: "Mum, scrub my boots, and be grateful you've got me for a son." Others, of a different and less brash cast of mind, come to God with their little offerings of good behaviour, or of church-going, and it is as if they say to him:

"Here you are God. This is all I can manage. Is this good enough for you? Will this suffice? Does this cover the cost? Here are my daffodils. Will you take them and, in return, give me eternal life? I am trying, God, to be as good as I can be. I am quite decent really. Let me in."

That is the equivalent of saying: "Mum, if I scrub my boots, will you love me? Will you let me be your son?" We would not treat our mothers like that. Wonderful as they may by, our mothers, like us, are flawed. Self-sacrificial as our mothers may be, what they give us is infinitesimal in comparison to what God gives. You will see from my outline that my title this morning is 'Adoption'. Over the last few weeks in these morning services we have been learning from the Bible about what God has done for us. That, after all, is what the Christian faith is really all about. The heart of the Christian faith is not what we should be doing for God. It is what he has done in the past and will do in the future for us. So my purpose this morning is not to talk about adoption and fostering as one of the pressing social issues of today. My purpose is to talk about what God has done and will do for us, in adopting us as his children. What is God saying through his messenger Paul to those Christians in the church of Galatia? What is God saying through him to us? Well, my first heading is this: WE WERE IN SLAVERY ... We will never understand and appreciate what God does for us if we do not realise what he is rescuing us from. Take a look at the passage, and verses 1-3 of chapter 4, which go like this:

What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world.

Let me tell you a true story that I heard the other day. It is the story of a girl we shall call Sally. Sally was born in 1898, here on Tyneside. You could say that her mother gave her life for her children, since she died giving birth to her ninth child when Sally was four. Sally's father was a sailor, away most of the time. Neighbours cared for Sally and her eight brothers and sisters. But one day friends of these neighbours who had offered to look after her for a short while kidnapped Sally. The kidnappers took her with them to America, where they settled in a rough mining town. Her natural family had no idea where she was, and no means with which to try and find her. She never saw them again. Instead, the young Sally, hardly more than a toddler, found herself effectively in slavery to this family of whiskey bootleggers. They abused her. They beat her with belt and buckle; she slept on the floor of the shack that was home; she had only one dress which soon hung on her in rags; she had to walk the local railroad looking for any dropped coal and hauling it home in a bucket. "We were in slavery", says the apostle Paul. But what is the nature of this slavery to which we are subject before Christ came? First, we were in bondage to the law. 4:5 says that Christ came "to redeem those under law", and back in 3:23 he describes how we were "held prisoner" by the law. Now don't get this wrong. The law in itself is not a bad thing. Paul makes this perfectly plain in the previous chapter, in 3:21 : "Is the law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not!" The law was like a guardian, a trustee. It was God's way of protecting us, and preparing us, until Christ came. But the effects of the law are twofold: it shows us our sin; and it makes clear the hopelessness of our own attempts to justify ourselves before God. Isaiah 64:6 says,

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

We do all we can to spruce ourselves up and get rid of the dirt and look immaculate and smart but the light of God's law comes on and shows us to be standing there in filthy rags. And worse than that, it shows us to be living under the curse of death. 3:10 :

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.

So we were "under the law" dirty and damned. Secondly, Paul says (4:3), "we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world". What does that mean? It could again refer to the law, but the word has two senses, and probably a better translation would be "we were in slavery under the elemental spirits of the universe". That fits with v8:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.

In other words idolatry is a kind of slavery. We find ourselves under the authority of forces and powers that are far more than we can handle. Sinful relationships become vice-like in their grip and it becomes impossible to escape them. Greed becomes unstoppable. At first something may seem so exciting but then the trap shuts and we have no way out. "We were in slavery". But the good news is that we were not left there, lost and hopeless. Which brings me to my second heading: GOD SENT HIS SON ... Verses 4 and 5:

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Let me take you back to the story of Sally. Sally had to go on errands, often after dark, running the gauntlet of the saloons and the drunks. But when she did, at one point on the route she would pass a large, lovely house, with an inviting front window. She would peer in, and be captivated by what she saw. As she put it later:

"It was so beautiful - a huge fireplace, a fire going, people sitting. They were so beautiful. I had never known anything like that."

One day Sally was sent out again, in the rain, to check on a horse. Her return route took her past this haven. Later she recalled:

"As I was coming back, I got to this here gate, closed and latched. I remember I stood there, and I opened the gate, and I walked up."

The house belonged to a couple we shall call the Parkers. Seeing the state that Sally was in, the Parkers took her in to their home. They heard her story. They immediately took to appear before the local judge. He took one look at her lice-ridden, matted hair, and the weals on her back and legs from the beatings, and ordered a custody trial, leaving Sally in the care of the Parkers. The kidnappers raged and threatened, but the Parkers arranged a guard. Two weeks later Sally appeared in court, her hair cleaned and cut, and with new clothes. She was frightened of what would happen to her if she were returned to the custody of her abusers. But the Parkers won custody, and Sally became their adopted child. Christians, says Paul, have two things to rejoice in. We are redeemed; and we are adopted First of all, we are redeemed. That was the first part of the work that Jesus came to do to buy us back from that slavery; to rescue us from the trap of sin and the grip of idolatry and the curse of condemnation. He paid the price of humiliation, suffering, and death so that we could go free from all that. Jesus has done what it takes to rescue us from slavery. And he did that in order to open the way for us to be adopted. And that is the second thing Paul says Christians can rejoice in: we are adopted as sons of God into the Father's family. By the way, you may wonder why Paul speaks of us becoming sons of God. Why not daughters as well? One thing to say in answer to that is that the term is inclusive, as is clear from 3:28. Though there are differences between men and women, when it comes to relating to God our Father, there is none. There is neither male nor female in Christ. But, in this case it is in fact appropriate to speak even of women becoming sons of God, and that is for two reasons. First, we are adopted into God's family by being united with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through faith in him. There is no other way to the Father but through the Son. Whether male or female, we identify with him. Secondly, we are all sons in the sense that we all share equally in the inheritance that in the ancient world would have gone to the male child. There is no male or female when it comes to the children of God inheriting all that their heavenly Father has in store for them. As verse 7 says:

So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

We are not by nature sons of God. By nature we are slaves. But Jesus came (v5) "that we might receive the full rights of sons". This is God's great gift to those who believe; to those who cling to Christ like a shipwrecked sailor clings to the winch man lowered from the air-sea-rescue helicopter. The Bible says in John 1:12:

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

So, in our passage, 3:26 says that it is "through faith in Christ Jesus" that we are sons of God. What does that mean? It means, as 3:27 puts it, that we are "baptised into Christ"; we have "clothed" ourselves with Christ. In other words, we identify with Jesus as the only one who can save us out of our slavery. He is our Saviour. And faith also means, as 3:29 has it, that we "belong to Christ". He has absolute rights over our lives. He commands and, with his help, we obey. He is our Lord. We were in slavery, but God sent his Son to die for us, so that through faith in him we could be adopted into his family. How, then, does that effect our lives? That question brings me to my third and final heading: YOU ARE NO LONGER A SLAVE, BUT A SON ... Look at verses 6-7: Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. What is the effect of becoming a child of God? It transforms our lives, both now and forever. When Sally was adopted by the Parkers, the warmth, togetherness and beauty that Sally had longed for outside the window of that big house were brought into her own life. She recalled her first meal with them: the piano in the pretty parlor; supper set on the table; the invitation to sit down at the table with them; the grandness of the occasion which for them was an ordinary meal. She remembered also her first Christmas with the Parkers. She said later:

"I didn't know there was a Christmas. I'd never heard of it When I woke up [on Christmas morning], in my bedroom was one or two things, and they told me, 'If I were you, I'd go look in other rooms there might be something else.' And there were things all over the house!"

Later she was to marry, and become the mother of six children herself, forever grateful for being rescued from brutal slavery into that loving home. J.I.Packer has written:

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well.

Adoption, he says, is "the highest privilege that the gospel offers". Justification by faith is the fundamental Christian blessing - everything else rests on it, and on the forgiveness and acquittal that it declares are ours in Christ. But justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge. By contrast, adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, viewing God as Father. As children of God we can at any time share our needs and fears, our hopes and joys directly with the Lord of the Universe. That is the extent of our privilege. As we begin to trust in Jesus, and obey him and serve him, we are redeemed, we are adopted, and we can rejoice that we have been given the Holy Spirit. As verse 6 of our passage says:

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

It is the Spirit who brings alive for us all that it means to have God for our Father. Before God comes into our lives by his Spirit we are like the bulb of one of those daffodils: as good as dead, buried in the ground, away from the sun, a thing of no beauty. What the Spirit does is to make us sprout and grow and flower and finally open out like a flower does to the sun. At first we only have an inkling of how great God is and how tremendous are his blessings. Bit by bit, he makes them plain to us. It is the Spirit, who enables us to understand all the implications of the good new of Jesus. If we have received Christ into our lives and believed in him, then we can rejoice in where we are today. We are redeemed. We are adopted. And we have been given the Spirit of God. But the future holds even more in store for us. Verse 7 again:

So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

The sons of God are fellow heirs with Christ. What the future holds for each one of us is not at all clear in many ways. But the destiny of the child of God is clear. And that makes all the difference to our perspective on what happens to us in the meantime. We have a hope that is not wishful thinking. It is a guaranteed certainty because it has been promised by God. And he keeps his promises. What we will have is a share in the glory of Christ. Everything he has will be shared with us. What will it be like? We don't know the details. We don't need to. But it will be a family gathering; face to face with the Father and with Jesus. In Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan's Mr Steadfast stands half way into the water of the Jordan and says:

"I see myself at the end of my journey, my toilsome days are ended. The thought of what I am going to, and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart I have formerly lived by hear-say, and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him, in whose company I delight myself.

C.S.Lewis, at the end of his final allegorical Narnia story, The Last Battle, attempts to make a start at putting into words what it will mean for the children of God to come into their inheritance:

The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Let me just say, in conclusion: Maybe you know full well that you have been rescued by Christ out of slavery to sin and idolatry and death; when the Bible talks about God sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts who calls out, "Abba, Father", your own hearts leaps in recognition; you are confident of your eternal destiny. If that is so, then be grateful. Do not take God's goodness and grace for granted, like the privileged child who never says thank you to his mother. Give thanks to God with the whole of your life. Maybe, on the other hand, you have lost sight of the fact that you are a child of God. You have wandered from the family home into which you were adopted. You have neglected your privileges and ignored your heavenly Father. If that is you, then it is time to come home again. The door is always open to the child of God. It is just a matter of saying:

"Father, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I'm home again, and this time for good. Please take me in."

And he will. Jesus said, to just such people as you,

"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" ( Revelation 3:20).

If we come home again to Christ, he will come home to us. Maybe, on the other hand, you are aware that you have never known what it is to be a child of God. Like Sally standing in the rain outside that big house, looking in at the glowing lights and the blazing fire, you are still in slavery. But now you know that another life is possible. And God the Father is inviting you:

"Come in out of the cold. Trust me. Become a part of my family. Everything I have will be yours as well."

Will you give no reply, but turn your back, and walk away, into the darkness? Or will you step over the threshhold? However timid and out of your depth you may feel, will you say to God "Yes, please. I know I don't deserve it. But I believe that Jesus has died for me, so that I can become your child. For the first time in my life, I'm coming home. Please take me in."? If that is what you say to God today, it is only the beginning. Tell a Christian friend that you have made a start with Christ. Ask them to give you a hand as you learn what it means to belong to the family of God.