“... In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (Eph 1:4-6)
There’s a lot that is covered in these verses. In them, we
can see God’s supreme plan to save His people through Jesus’ sacrifice, which
He had in place before the creation of the world (Rev 13:8, Eph 1:4). However,
here I would like to focus on one particular aspect which can sometimes be
overlooked when we read this passage. I know that when reading these verses, I
have previously overlooked it and when it was brought to my attention, I found
it really fascinating. That is where Paul talks about the “adoption to
sonship”.
This is a single Greek word, υἱοθεσία, which doesn’t really translate well to a single word in
English. It literally means placing in the condition of a son, in which we can
see the idea of adoption. When you are adopted, you are ‘placed’ into someone
else’s family, which you were not previously a part of. As we are all aware,
the family is one of our most fundamental, tight-knit, personal institutions,
so to bring another person into that is perhaps one of the highest ways in
which you could show love toward them.
And that is what God has done for us. “See, what great love
the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 Jn
3:1). Without God, our situation was dire. We read in the following
chapter of Ephesians that we were by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:3) and
that when we were separate from Christ, we were “excluded from citizenship in
Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God
in the world.” (Eph 2:13). But through Christ, we move from this
miserable, hopeless state to an incredibly high status as adopted children of
God. And in this, we can see one of the common characteristics of adoption – an
increase in status from a lower to a higher rank.
In our modern context, we may think of the adoption of
orphans, or of children whose parents cannot care for them adequately. There is
some sense of moving from a lower to a higher rank, from a poorer to a better
situation. In the Roman world, the social ranks were even more demarcated. A
child – or even a young adult, as was commonly the case for adoption in the
Roman period – might be adopted from a very poor family, into a richer family.
A non-citizen might be adopted by a Roman citizen, which would then bestow him
with Roman citizenship. We can see that alongside this increase in social
status, there would very likely be an increase in privileges.
A brief excursus here – it should also be noted that with
greater privilege and status comes greater responsibility expected of the
child. Every member of a family has certain expectations and standards which
they are supposed to meet. They are expected to “live up to the family name”.
And that is equally true for children who are adopted into God’s family. I
would also note here that these responsibilities do not make us part of the
family – it is the other way around. Rather, we have these responsibilities because
we are part of the family. Performing my responsibilities does not make me a
“Johnson”, but I have certain responsibilities and expectations of me, because
I am a “Johnson”.
Now back to our scripture of Ephesians 1:5 – why does Paul
use the word for “placing as a son” here? Is he excluding females to some
sense? We know that cannot be the case, because we read in Gal 3:28 that there
is neither male nor female, but we are all one in Christ; we are all equal in
God’s sight.
Actually, this term is generally accepted by scholars to be
a legal term for adoption in the Roman world, which would have been quite
familiar to the largely Gentile population at Ephesus. It is actually fairly
common in inscriptions which archaeologists have unearthed from around the NT
period, where the inscriber would use this word to describe who they were – “so
and so, adopted by someone else”. Even Nero, the emperor at the time the
epistle to the Ephesians was written, had been adopted by the previous emperor,
Claudius Caesar.
The “son” part is key, because the son was the legal heir of
the inheritance. When a boy – or a young man, as was commonly the case – was
adopted in Roman culture, in the eyes of the law, he ceased to belong to his
previous, biological family. Even any debts or obligations he had associated
with his previous family were abolished. Instead, he enjoyed all the benefits
of a natural-born son in his new family, including the right to the
inheritance.
So when Paul applies this phrase “adoption to sonship” to
all Christians, as he does in this passage, he is making it clear that all
believers – both male and female, both Jew and Gentile – become full children
of God and become legal heirs to the inheritance. And we read a little down, in
this same chapter of Ephesians, that we are guaranteed this inheritance by the
Holy Spirit, who has been given to use as downpayment on our inheritance (Eph
1:13-14).
In the Roman world, a son adopted into a wealthy family
might inherit the family estate, or an adopted son of a Caesar would inherit
the role of emperor. So what is the inheritance for us who are adopted by the
Eternal King? That is a whole other topic, but for a preview we can think of
Rev 5:10: “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and
they will reign on the earth.” Our inheritance is eternal life with God,
and in some sense, eternally ‘reigning’ with Him.
So, to sum up, in our adoption by God:
- Our former debts are forgiven
- We move from a low to an incredibly high position
- We receive a great amount of privilege in conjunction with this move, but also more responsibility
- We become heirs of His inheritance
· At this point, the main question I have left is why? Why has God chosen me, why has He chosen you, to adopt us and bring us into His family? The answer is in verse 6: only because of His grace.