THE blessed benefit of Adoption, received and enjoyed by all who are saved, is an act of God’s grace towards such. The Confession of Faith, chapter xii, on Adoption, states: “All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God.” The act of adoption in the day of regeneration, when they were enabled to believe in Christ, marked the commencement of a new and spiritual life and new relationships toward God and His believing people, in their personal experience.
Their personal state, and condition morally and spiritually, during the period of their history in the world prior to their adoption, appears to be somewhat relegated to the background in an unfortunate manner, in statements which we have read having reference to the children of God, and emanating from sources where we doubt not, the fear of God is known. Some years ago we came across a positive assertion to the effect that the people of God had always been the children of God. And recently, we read a negative statement, that they never were the devil’s. It seems that these observations have been expressed by those whose minds have been unduly under the influence of a misplaced and unscriptural emphasis respecting the New Covenant relationship between God and His elect people. We put our “Amen” to the precious truths which we quote: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will . . .” (Ephes. ii, 4, 5). Those made partakers of the grace of adoption were chosen indeed by God, in divine and sovereign love before sun, moon or stars, earth or man, were created. They were given to the Eternal Son of God in the Everlasting Covenant of grace. “Thine they were and thou gavest them me,” (John xvii, 6), and the Confession of Faith on “Christ the Mediator,” declares, “… Unto whom he did from all eternity give a people to be his seed; and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified and glorified.” May we observe at this juncture, that they were, and are, in the transactions of eternity a people, a people, destined to become children of God.
This great and gracious choosing and giving on God’s part, has in view a glorious end, the adoption of those chosen into His ransomed and spiritual family. They were predestinated from among the foreseen and innumerable posterity of Adam, a sinful, fallen and ruined race. They were marked out for adoption, as those who had sinned and were as vile, lost, dead and hell-deserving as all other human beings born into the world. Prior to their adoption and in their own persons, nature, character and conduct, and in their intimate relationship to Adam, their First Covenant Head, there was absolutely no difference between them and the rest of the fallen, corrupt human race.
Their being predestinated unto the adoption of children was heavenly procedure which did not, and does not, of itself constitute them, in their actual and personal experience and character children of God. The sovereign and loving transactions of the Everlasting Covenant are secret as affecting individuals of our sinful race, until these purposes of the heart of God are unfolded and become effective and saving realities in the souls of those thus chosen, by the effectual and regenerating operations of the Holy Ghost through the Word of God; and of course, in God’s own determined time in the case of each one concerned.
If God’s children were never the children of the devil, whose children were they in actuality, when they were without God, without Christ and without hope in the world; when they were dead in trespasses and sins; when in times past they walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience? They were elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; predestinated to be delivered from the guilt and reign of sin and from the power, kingdom and slavery of the devil. As Paul indicates to Timothy, Gospel instruction when blessed to sinners according to the will and purpose of God, brings about their deliverance from the snare of the devil; and Paul writes thus: “In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will,” (II Tim. ii, 25, 26). Paul solemnly declaimed against Elymas the sorcerer, thus, “Thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, when wilt thou cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?” And was not Paul himself, prior to his conversion and adoption into God’s family, a child of the devil in his character and conduct, when breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the followers and disciples of the blessed Jesus, whom he (Paul) was chosen from all eternity to know later, love and serve as an outstanding child of God?
The glory of God’s electing and marvellous love, shine infinitely bright in this respect, that it lays hold upon the vilest of sinners, many of whom served the devil conspicuously; but who became godly and meek children of God from the day they were made partakers of the grace of adoption.
The greatest happiness of a creature is not to have the creature for its happiness.—Dyer.