James Buchanan
7. The spirit of adoption is associated with inward peace, comfort and hope.
Although they may be disturbed by the operation of other causes, they are its natural fruit. Springing up and growing by degrees, they may issue in the full assurance of sonship. The spirit of adoption is essentially, in its own nature, a peaceful and happy frame of mind. Everything, within and around, above and beneath, present and future, temporal and eternal, assumes a new aspect if we can call God our Father. Even the beauties of nature, always lovely, acquire a fresh loveliness to the Christian when he can look over its sublime mountains and landscapes and say, My Father made them all.
So the events of providence, the unfoldings of that mighty scheme which embraces all our interests and hopes, appear in a new light to the believer when he can say, My Father rules them all. More especially, the vast scheme of grace and redemption appears in a new light when, in the spirit of adoption, he can look to the Author of that scheme as his Father, once offended but now reconciled, and look to what God has already done for him as a pledge of what He is still willing to do, an earnest of all His promises being fulfilled. For if God “spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The spirit of adoption implies a sense of God’s love and faith in His covenant promises; so it must be accompanied with some measure of hope. Although that hope may be too weak to admit particular believers to use the strong language of assurance about either their present state or everlasting prospects, it may be sufficient to sustain, animate and encourage them in their Christian course. A childlike disposition of mind – including trust, resignation, and a contrite and tender spirit – may exist where, through remaining darkness or occasional weakness, a believer may be unable to use that language. But as this filial spirit is matured, it may grow up to the full assurance of hope; it is in itself both an evidence of his sonship and an earnest of his future inheritance; for the Holy Spirit of promise is Himself the earnest of his inheritance, and the firstfruits of the Spirit are a pledge of a glorious harvest. This may explain the difference, as well as the connection, between (1) the spirit of adoption, whereby believers cry, “Abba, Father,” and (2) the witness of the Spirit who “witnesseth with our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”.
There are two classes of people who both experience no conscious comfort, but in other ways are very different; so we must carefully discriminate between them as we offer a few observations for their direction and relief. There may be some who are conscious that they have never been enabled to look to God with any feelings other than terror and aversion. His holy character, righteous law and solemn rule have invariably filled them with apprehension and alarm. And they have obtained relief from these distressing feelings only when they succeeded for a time in banishing the thought of God, death and eternity from their minds, or in thinking of His perfections and purposes in ways they knew to be contrary to the Bible’s revelation of His character and will. But they felt these ways were more in accord with their own wishes and indispensable to their inward peace. Such people may be assured that, as often as their habitual carelessness has been disturbed by occasional convictions of conscience, or awakening glimpses of the truth, they have experienced what is meant by Paul when he speaks of the spirit of bondage unto fear.
If any who are labouring under the burden of guilt, and groaning under the bondage of fear, but are conscious of no relief, and even do not know the remedy which is provided for them in the gospel, I would affectionately remind them that much in their present condition is fitted to suggest a solemn warning and to make known rich encouragement. There is something unspeakably solemn in the thought that these convictions – these fears and misgivings of which they are conscious – have all been awakened by God’s law being applied to their consciences by the Holy Ghost. And their present experience may be the firstfruits of the Spirit’s operation, to whom it belongs to “reprove the world of sin”.
Considering them in this light, I would say nothing to allay their convictions or to remove their fears or to rebuke their misgivings, as if they were either extravagant or unfounded. On the contrary, believing that they are the proper fruits of the law when applied to a sinner’s conscience, and that, so far from being too intense, they fall far short of what the real state of the case warrants, I would seek to deepen even your deepest convictions of guilt and to impress you with the thought that your danger is really greater than your fears. We dare not offer you relief from your present bondage by relaxing the fetters or lowering the demands or tampering with the curse of God’s righteous and unchangeable law. Yet we can point to a way in which you may exchange your bondage for perfect freedom without any violation of God’s law, without any disparagement of His character, without any dishonour to His government, without any denial of either your own sin or His eternal justice. Look from the law to the gospel, from the curse to the cross; from Sinai, with its thunderings and lightnings, to Calvary, where the lawgiver became the law-fulfiller and “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”. Look, even now, under all your legal terrors, to Christ, as the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Look to God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, and not imputing unto men their trespasses. And on the instant when you apprehend the great truth that – though God is just and though you feel you are guilty – God can be, through Christ’s propitiation, the just God and yet the Saviour. On that instant you may pass from a state of bondage into the liberty of a child, and feel that a new spirit is given to you, even the spirit of adoption, whereby you may cry, “Abba, Father”.
I wish to encourage you to avail yourselves of this gracious deliverance. I beseech you to remember that, while the calls and invitations of the gospel are all universal and free – so that they belong to sinners as such and to all sinners without exception – yet, as if with a special view to your own case, they are often particularly addressed to such as are labouring under the spirit of bondage unto fear (not that careless and fearless sinners are excluded, because all are invited, even the wicked and the unrighteous). But to meet the difficulties, fears and scruples of convinced and awakened sinners, they are mentioned as it were by name: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”; “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters”; “Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”
But there is another class, very different from the former, who may be labouring under a spirit which, if not the same, is nearly akin to the spirit of bondage unto fear. I mean the spirit of heaviness, through manifold temptations, to which many of God’s people are subject. It is often associated with, and apt to generate, doubts and fears as to their safety, and misgivings as to their interest in Christ and their participation in the privileges of sonship. Such people have previously experienced the liberty and enlargement of heart which the gospel imparts, and have known what it is to be translated out of darkness into God’s marvellous light, and to look up to God, with childlike confidence, as a reconciled Father. But now they are visited again with a spirit of heaviness, arising from a sense of shortcoming, a season of declension, or the withdrawal of God’s favour. This spirit of heaviness may, like the spirit of bondage, be accompanied with many distressing misgivings and fears; so in their present state, they may have no comfort, no childlike confidence in looking up to God, and no freedom to say, “Abba, Father”.
To such I would affectionately say by way of warning: Your present experience is a very solemn call to search and try your ways, to consider what may be the cause of God’s controversy with you, to humble yourselves on account of your sins and shortcomings, your neglected privileges, your abused mercies, your broken resolutions and vows. And you are called to make full and frank confession before God, just as a child should do when he has offended an affectionate father. But I would also say, by way of encouragement, that you are not to regard your present experience – dark and distressing as you may feel it to be – as, of itself, affording any evidence that you are not one of God’s children. You may be apt to imagine that this is not how you would be if you had obtained the privilege of sonship. But be assured that no trial has befallen you which has not been common to God’s children in all ages of the Church.
Peter speaks of God’s children: “Now, for a season, if need be, [they] are in heaviness through manifold temptations”. We have the recorded example of holy David, who said, “I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed”; and of Heman: “Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? Why hidest Thou Thy face from me? I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up; while I suffer Thy terrors I am distracted”; and of Job: “The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit; the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me”; and of Jonah: “I said, I am cast out of Thy sight; yet will I look again toward Thy holy temple”; and of the Lord Jesus Himself, who exclaimed on the cross, in words which breathe at once a spirit of heaviness and of childlike faith, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Finally, by way of direction, you must obtain relief from your present distresses and fears by exercising the same simple faith by which you first entered into peace; you must look out of yourselves to Christ and, forsaking the law, find refuge in the gospel; you must repair anew to the fountain which God has opened for sin and for uncleanness, and cast yourselves on the mercy and faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God. Be assured that, sooner or later – for you must wait the Lord’s time – He who has taken you into the wilderness will speak comfortably to you; the cloud which now keeps from you the light of His countenance will be dispersed, and you will yet go on your way rejoicing and cry, in the spirit of adoption, “Abba, Father”.
1The final extract from the chapter entitled, “The Work of the Spirit as the Spirit of Adoption”, in Buchanan’s book, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. Last month’s section had the sub-heading, “Trust, Obedience and Submission”.