The Grace of Adoption (3) by Rev Donald MacLean

Rule by a patriarch.

Webb mentions another form of government as well as the two we have already mentioned. This he calls the patriarchal form, in which rule by a master and a father is combined in the one head. The administrator of this form is at the same time ruler and father. This system is to be seen in the households of the patriarchs, such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As already noticed, God inaugurated the human race in Eden, and this was under the patriarchal form. Adam was created at once a servant in God’s kingdom and a son in his house and, after his creation, God stood in relation to him as ruler and father at one and the same time. Under this patriarchal form, Adam fell by his sin. He thereby lost his servanthood and his sonship. Adam was now the object of both judicial and paternal wrath. And, in order to be restored, he would need justification and adoption.

Due to his folly, Adam was now an outlawed servant and a repudiated son. In his heart he was a vicious servant and a depraved son. The whole human race fell in him. As the Saviour testified to the Jews, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (Jn 8:44).

Restoration for man.

Having commented on the first Adam and the low state of the human race on account of his sin, we now come to consider the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. There could be no restoration of any of the human race to paternal and filial favour, apart from the mediatorial work of the second Adam, the Son of God. The Word of God tells us: “It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings”. The purpose of the Father, arising from His everlasting love to some of the human race, was to bring them to glory as sons.

This great work was to be carried out by His beloved Son, the appointed and anointed Captain of salvation. He is the eternally begotten Son of God, the second Person within the Godhead. His relationship to His Father is altogether unique; it is incommunicable. He is the Son of God by eternal generation. In a way that is inscrutable to the human race, the Father communicates the fullness of the divine nature to His Son by a necessary and eternal act. We cannot comprehend an eternal act being necessary, but we can understand that, if it was a necessary act and therefore not determined by the will of the Father, then the Son is in no way inferior to the Father. He is the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

In order that it would be possible for many sons to be brought to glory, it was necessary for the Captain of salvation to be made perfect through suffering. As God, it was impossible for Him to suffer; therefore the Son of God became the Son of man so that, in His holy human nature, He could meet the claims of God’s law and justice as a result of the sins of the many sons.

By the power of the Holy Ghost, a sinless humanity was conceived in Mary’s womb. By a personal act of His own, the Son of God took the holy humanity thus conceived into union with His divine person. Mary was instructed by the angel, not only to call this Child’s name Jesus when she would bring Him forth, but also that He would be called “the Son of God” (Lk 1:31,35). We usually call this the theanthropic sonship, as distinct from His trinitarian sonship.

Thus, in the fullness of the time, the Son of God became the Son of man and yet continued to be the Son of God. The Son of man was a title in which He evidently delighted. The Son of man, He said, came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk 19:10); “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28). After His incarnation He abides for ever a theanthropic person; so The Shorter Catechism states that He “so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person for ever”.

It is of this Person that the Father says, “Behold My servant, whom I uphold; Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth” (Is 42:1). So we see in the second Adam, as we see in the first Adam, servanthood and sonship meeting in the one Person. In the case of the second Adam, it was for the purpose of bringing many sons to glory through the suffering of the Son of God in our nature. These sufferings, as we have already mentioned, were to satisfy the claims of the holy justice of God in atoning for the sins of all who were loved with His everlasting love.

The chief end of the Person of the trinitarian Son is the happiness of God, which consists in the communion of love between the Father and the Son in the communion of the Holy Ghost. If there was no trinitarian Son, then the Father would have no son answering to the relation of Fatherhood. But the chief end of the theanthropic Son, the God-man, is the happiness of men, for it is through Him, and Him alone, that they can enjoy the happiness of having fellowship with the Father.

The many sons who are to be brought to glory are by nature in the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of Satan. The work of the Captain of salvation was to open up the way for the many sons to be delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son. With the claims of divine justice satisfied, the many sons can be brought into Christ’s kingdom. The Holy Spirit is represented as the great agent in bringing them into the kingdom, and He uses the Word of God as His instrument.

Justification and adoption.

Through His effectual call, a soul is united to Christ by faith, and is justified through the righteousness of Christ being imputed to it. Justification is a judicial act of God; it is not a change of nature but a change in the sinner’s state in relation to God. In this act of justification, the sins of the justified sinner are pardoned; he is reconciled to God and received into His favour. Those who are justified are made partakers of the grace of adoption, whereby they are taken into the number and enjoy the privileges of the children of God.

Adoption also is a change of state and so is completed at once. It also is the privilege of all who truly believe in Christ. “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12,13).

The meritorious cause lying behind the privilege of adoption is the obedience and satisfaction of Christ. “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal 4:4,5). The adoption of sons differs from the privilege of justification in that it brings the Christian before God in the new relation of a child to a father.

The privileges of the children of God:

1. They obtain a new name, for they are taken out of the family of Satan and adopted into the family of God. They are now known as the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty (2 Cor 6:18).

2. They receive the spirit of adoption. By the grace of regeneration, the Spirit implants in them a new nature, so that they have the disposition of children; He begins to transform them into the image of God’s dear Son. He gives them grace to cry, “Abba, Father,” and He witnesses with their spirits that they are the children of God. He is also the earnest of their inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

3. They have access and boldness to the throne of grace and can pour out their hearts before Him.

4. They are the objects of God’s fatherly sympathy and pity – “He knoweth our frame”.

5. They enjoy God’s protection from their numerous enemies.

6. Their heavenly Father provides for them, both in providence and in grace.

7. They enjoy the privilege of God’s parental correction or discipline.

8. The Father will not cut them off. He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”.

9. They are heirs to a glorious inheritance, being “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ”, so they look for His glorious appearing.

10. Christ is their elder brother.

This is the final part of a paper given at the Theological Conference in 1999.

R A Webb, an American professor of theology, wrote a “useful book entitled, The Reformed Doctrine of Adoption” (Mr MacLean’s description).

See the first part of this paper, printed in the May issue, which speaks of the rule of a master over a servant and of a father over a son.

The sonship of the God-man.