The further revelation of our predestination unto the adoption of children in Ephesians 1 gives us access to the glory of what God counseled and purposed in Christ before the world began. God’s predestination is the ordaining of what He will work all things after. As He began to work all things after that counsel, He made man, a child of God by creation. Adam was a son of God made unto the adoption of children. Adam was not Christ, yet he was made by Christ and for Christ. Adam would need to be placed in Christ and such placement would yield adoption glories. This “adoption of children” isn’t what Christ made Adam in, but what He made him unto. When Adam fell and sin entered the world and death by sin God wasn’t caught off guard, but in His foreknowledge, He predestinated His Son to pay our eternal price to be able to redeem the souls that would proceed from Adam.

Thus, as God knew and planned for, those that would be in Christ would receive the adoption of sons through the redemption in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we would be adopted by Jesus Christ to the Father, Himself. Redemption is the depth of the riches of God’s grace and adoption is the height of the exceeding riches of His grace. Redemption is commended, shown, manifested to the world to believe and adoption is received, shown, and given to His sons and daughters that have believed. Adoption will take all ages to come, world without end, to shew toward us. Adoption is the access and privilege to experience His glory forever – all that He is and all that He will do.

Adoption was a Roman term. Therefore, seemingly a sole Gentile concept; however, Paul uses it to describe the same concept within the Jewish culture. Thus, the term bears weight for both Jew and Gentile. In Romans 9:4, Paul says,

“Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption…”

In Galatians 4 writing to a mixed audience, but one seeking to live under the law, Paul writes in verses 3-5,

“Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but 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.”

Adoption to us is the end game, but with God it was what He predestinated. Adoption under Roman law secured for the adopted child a right to the name and to the property of the person by whom he had been adopted. At the moment of adoption, the child had the legal right to claim all things, of the father, as a son or daughter. At the same time, Roman law granted to the person that adopted all rights and privileges of a father. Adoption is not the issue of nature, but rank and status, along with all the privileges that come with it. Thus, adoption is the highest expression of God’s love. Adoption is the glory of His grace and us receiving the adoption of sons is “to the praise of the glory of His grace”. Adoption is God’s grace to us to share in all glory He gave to His Son, the heir of all things, before the foundation of the world. Adoption is giving to us something that only rightfully belongs to Him and giving it to us in His good pleasure. For those in Christ we have obtained an inheritance in the fullest sense in accord with what God predestinated, thus we possess a good and blessed hope through grace. I cannot wait for God to show off the exceeding riches of His grace toward those Whom He has adopted in His kindness through Christ Jesus!

Look Up,
Josh Strelecki, Pastor-Teacher