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The Spirit of Adoption
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2007-05-12 23:38Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2007-05-12 23:38Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-adopt1.php
The theme of Adoption is found in at least five references in the Bible, all in the writings of Paul. What is adoption? Take the word apart. Ad means to add to, and option means to choose. To adopt a child is to choose to add him to your family.
Adoption offers a powerful illustration of the relationship between God and man. No one will be in God’s kingdom on the basis of direct descendence but all who enter it will have been adopted into it. God is our adoptive Father.
Today, a look at a significant adoption passage, Romans 8:5-17a. If time permitted, we would begin at least back at the end of Romans chapter seven. There, an inward battle between mind and flesh. Chapter eight carries the discussion forward insisting that Jesus took our human nature and condemned sin in it and that none are condemned who shape their lives after the Spirit instead of after the flesh. We begin at Romans 8:5, 6.
Flesh and Spirit
There are two fundamental orientations. We either shape our lives after the flesh or after the Spirit. “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” What do these phrases mean—to be minding the things of the flesh or of the Spirit?
Paul has helped us elsewhere. In Galatians he points to the things of the flesh:
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like (Galatians 5:19-21).
You will immediately notice that the works of the flesh range from the more obviously sensual, as in the areas of sex and drunkenness, to the more intellectual and sophisticated, like variance, seditions, heresies. Remember, too, that these works are manifest. Not just hidden away in the mind, they are seen also in the open. He who minds the things of the flesh, choosing to indulge in them, demonstrates their existence in himself in his interactions in the world.
These are contrasted with the fruit of the Spirit:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Galatians 5:22, 23).
Where the flesh rules, selfishness dominates and antisocial behavior proliferates. The individual is exalted, familial connections and interests are subdued. But where the Spirit is sought for and heeded, opposite things are manifest. Notice again, in the fruit list, how there is self control with socially positive traits like gentleness, meekness, peace.
Carnal and flesh or fleshly are the same thing. Keep that in mind as our study proceeds. To be fleshly minded is death. This is a metaphor, and you will recall that in a metaphor, “A” is not like “B,” but rather, “A” is “B.” To be carnally/fleshly minded is to persist in a situation that God portrays through inspiration as death. The opposite is to be spiritually minded, to persist in a situation that inspiration is described as life and peace itself.
Operating Flesh First
Let me give you the background for every one of us. All of us were born innocent. None of us preexisted, none had chosen good or evil before coming here, for none existed before conception here. However, Adam and Eve sinned and there was a mutation in the race—a change. It was destructive. The very nature of man was modified. Since then our race has been born with a disordered kind of humanity, a clamoring, pulling, cloying urgent internal scream to place the self before all else, to make oneself the center, to filter the importance of all things particularly with respect to self. To us it seems natural. But it is exceedingly unnatural.
Before having the maturity to intelligently decide whether to indulge this clamoring or to fight it, we all at some point indulge it, confirming its claims, joining in solidarity with it, building our character upon crooked foundations. As we mature we take the path of least resistance. We reinforce, over and over again, the choices which make self the center. We are creating our own distinctive version of self, of the “old man,” of a person who is a rebel against sound moral principles. We all train ourselves to mind the things of the flesh.
God knows this and works to counteract it. He does not force us over to His side, but He works. He does not make men’s choices for them, but He does work to bring to the surface certain longings for right, desires for internal peace, that were given us as a race made in God’s image. His goodness draws us (Romans 2:4) and will guide us to the place where we can, if we choose, go over to God’s side.
The carnal/fleshly mind is at warfare with God. It has an enemy status with reference to Him. The person who has developed an inordinate love for self has a battle before him. the carnal mind cannot be reformed. It cannot be subject to God’s law. It will live or die but it cannot be smoothed down or tamed or educated or reformed. Listen to the next verses:
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:7, 8).
Those who are led by such a mind, a mind connected to the flesh, controlled by the flesh, a mind that is becoming a mere appendage of the flesh, are doomed. They cannot please God. They are still inverted, turned inside-out, operating flesh-first. Their condition, so long as they indulge and persist in feeding the selfishness that they have developed, is hopeless.
Hope!
But there is hope. Consider the ninth verse:
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His (Romans 8:9).
There is another orientation, a “in the Spirit” orientation rather than “in the flesh.” See that the difference between the person who is in the flesh and the person who is in the Spirit is the presence, not of the flesh but of the Spirit. If the Spirit of God dwells in you, then you are in the Spirit. Then you have chosen to belong to Him. But if you resist the Spirit He will not enter, will not dwell with you, not force Himself or morally right behavior upon you. He is a gentleman. He will enter and be seated only if you invite Him to enter and to dwell with you. Notice, “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” The presence of the Holy Spirit is the difference.
Some want to teach that you can accept Christ but reject the Spirit. Not so. Accepting Christ means accepting Father and Spirit as well; rejecting Him means rejection of Father and Spirit as well.
But notice:
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you (Romans 8:10, 11).
Before we proceed, let’s notice something in this passage of scripture. We have several names given for the Holy Spirit. In 8:9 He is the “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ.” In 8:14 He is the “Spirit of God” again. In 8:15 He is the “Spirit of adoption.” All these refer to one and the same Holy Spirit.
Can Christ be in you? Yes, through the Holy Spirit. Verse 10 and 11 are parallel. Ten begins with the idea of Christ in you, 11, of the Holy Spirit in you. In 10, the body is dead because of sin, in 11, Jesus is raised from the dead and He will quicken—make alive—our mortal bodies. The Spirit is life because of righteousness. The presence of the Holy Spirit not only lights our conscience, but empowers us. His presence in us leads us to right behavior. And while our right behavior earns us no salvation, His presence in us strengthens us morally so that the world is blessed by the good that God would do through us to help others draw close to Him.
Specialists in Mortification
Now on into verses 12-14:
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
We are debtors; we owe God who gives us life that life returned to Him through service. But we are not debtors to the flesh. We owe nothing to that flawed character that we have built up in rebellion towards God and righteousness. We may, for many years, have indulged it, strengthened it, built up habits exactly as it clamored for us to. But we owe it nothing. Indeed, it is headed directly for death and will mean our death unless we veer off from its inevitable outcome.
The opposite path is clear: “but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” If by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body—the self-centered behaviors that arise from the solidarity of the rebel character we have built up in common with the dour disordered human organism—then we will live. Notice that the Spirit is necessary, and stern resistance that breaks the flesh’s hold, mortification as we have it in the KJV, is necessary. The end result is life, not because we thus merit it, but because Jesus’ sacrificial death for us on our behalf merits it, and because in connection with Jesus’ work the Holy Spirit works and that work is in us and that work is effectual.
The next line is very helpful. It says that as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Sonship is not only on the basis of what Jesus did there on the cross for us, important though that is. Sonship is on the basis of whether or not we are led by the Spirit. Leading is not static but active. As many as are moving toward heaven as the Spirit leads them towards heaven, they are the sons of God. You cannot have Jesus and not have the Holy Spirit. The Bible puts them here together.
The Spirit of Adoption
Now on into 15-17:
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:15-17).
What spirit has the believer received? Certainly, before his conversion he had been in bondage, in slavery. The trend of his life was toward evil. Whether in the grosser sins or the more sophisticated. Don’t miss that. Many would object that this was the trend of their life, but without considering the more intellectual sins.
Remember the man described back in 7:23. He felt trapped, captive in himself. Now, here in 8:15 Paul reminds us that in coming to Christ we have in no way renewed that bondage. Far from it. In Luke 4 Jesus pointed out that His mission was to free the captiives, to open prison doors. He comes as deliverer from bondage.
The fear here is the fear of destruction. You see, when we act in rebellion, and our conscience causes us to know we have worked against Jesus, we know it. Jesus’ mission, according to Hebrews 2:15 is to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” The lost person has no future, only a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, a knowledge that the adversaries of righteousness will be permanently consumed in the near future. He has no positive identity outside himself. He is part of a vast army of rebels who will be destroyed in their self-decorated prison cells.
But we have not received that spirit of fear, that sense of continued bondage. Instead, for us it is the Spirit of adoption. Remember, it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes us His, that those only who are led of the Spirit are children of God.
The word for adoption in Greek means placement as a son. And our contemporary meaning for adoption is also true, to add by choice to a family. The Holy Spirit works in us, changes us, as we seek, modifying our allegiances. More and more we sense inside ourselves the peace and harmony of the sonship we have found in God.
Remember, while we have not received the spirit of bondage, there is something here that we have received. We have received the Holy Spirit. Through this Spirit we cry Abba, Father. Abba is an Aramaic word of intimacy for father. To one person someone is Mr. Jones, but to his children, he is daddy. Abba is that kind of term. It signifies closeness, family connection. Satan does not call God Abba. But we can.
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” This increasing harmony, this developing closeness, this experience of trusting Him no matter our situation, remains. Consider this from The Great Controversy, p. 477:
While the Christian’s life will be characterized by humility, it should not be marked with sadness and self-depreciation. It is the privilege of everyone so to live that God will approve and bless him. It is not the will of our heavenly Father that we should be ever under condemnation and darkness. There is no evidence of true humility in going with the head bowed down and the heart filled with thoughts of self. We may go to Jesus and be cleansed, and stand before the law without shame and remorse.
Does this describe your experience? Are we living up to our privileges? Are we living such that we have a continuing sense that God approves us? We should not ever be under condemnation and darkness. We are to stand before God’s law without shame or remorse.
Beware Fatalism
But Christians emphasize a continuing sense of dread and self-condemnation, even to see ourselves as being wicked to the core, that our every thought and feeling is laced with all selfishness and arouses the divine wrath. This great devaluation of self is supposed to have a positive effect by causing us to sense our need of God.
We do need to maintain a strong sense of need. But is feeling bad about ourselves any real help in this? We want to be conscientiously activated, we want to be meticulous in doing right and not doing sin. But a continual sense of condemnation won’t lead to this. What it will lead to, is fatalism, an I-can-do-nothing-to-please-Him attitude toward God. That would be unhealthy. Are human relationships between parents and children helped by such attitudes? No. Then why would relationships between men and God be helped by them?
Feeling guilty about specific sins and addressing those specific sins with repentance and abandonment of them is one thing. But feeling guilty at the drop of a hate, guilty over every thought and every place where we feel we are coming up short with God, is spiritually unhealthy. Being human does not make us guilty or evil. But what do you do with your humanity? Do you join the Father’s family or do you choose another family?
Joint-Heirs With Christ
Our text goes on to speak of us, saying that if we are God’s “children, then [we are] heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” An heir is one who inherits. As an heir of God, we experience the privileges of sonship. In this case our Father never dies and we never inherit His riches separately from Him. But in our case we are like the son in Luke 15, to whom his father says, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31). (Hopefully we are not like this son in other respects, like his joyless servitude.)
All that our Father has becomes ours when we receive Him. All this is possible, however, only through Christ. We are joint-heirs through Christ. As we will see in an upcoming message, all that we have we have through Christ. He is the Seed of promise, the one through whom God’s promises to Abraham are realized.
As perhaps you all know, Pam and I are adopting a little boy on Monday. He’s been with us as a foster child for almost 15 months. But his rights are limited. He never went home with his birth mother, but three days after his being born he came home from the hospital to live with us. He was in our home as a licensed foster care facility, but he was in the custody of the state. On Monday that will change. We will become his legal guardians in the place of the state. His name will change. He will receive my last name, a new name. He will become an heir of myself. We are going to write him into our will. If Pam and I should die, he will be an heir. In our case, he is unlikely to become wealthy, but he will be an heir.
We tend to think of inheritance as a financial matter. In the world, lawyers are hired and battles ensue over how dollars are distributed amongst the surviving siblings. Or perhaps we think of inheritance in terms of genetics. People inherit from their birth parent’s body shape, hair and eye color, different deficiencies that may lead to heart disease, cancer, etcetera. But we should think of another sense which is much more significant.
No, it is not strictly inheritance that I have in mind, but you see what I mean. A child receives nurture. He is in an environment in the home and that environment surrounds him through all his childhood years. These influences have a powerful effect in shaping what he becomes. If he is dropped in front of a television screen for 15 years, then at the end of those 15 years he will very largely be a product of all that viewing. If he spends the bulk of his childhood immersed in video games, again, his life will be significantly shaped by that.
If he goes to church every seven days, that will help him be shaped in a different direction, but if the pattern that develops is six days as a worldling and one day at church, then the 6/1 ratio is unlikely to produce a strong positive spiritual outcome. A child needs to be surrounded by the right kinds of influences daily, in the home. Worship together as a family, modeling right parental and spousal relationships in front of him, treating him kindly, disciplining him with supreme thoughtfulness so that he is neither spoiled nor treated harshly, these things are supremely important. He will learn to love others or he will learn to indulge self, in our households.
The most significant impact on the shaping of lives is in our homes. In our boy’s case, he already lives with us, he won’t have to move in. But after Monday morning, he will live in his father’s house as a son.
Conclusion
Today we looked at a Bible passage that shows us that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption. We see that His work in us changes us so that we become like our heavenly Father. As God’s adopted sons and daughters, we are part of His household. The influences of His kingdom are to be upon us daily. As God models His loving parent parent nature to us, we become like Him, and we model that loving parent nature back into the world. It is a world filled with orphans, filled with children who need to be adopted. As joint-heirs with Christ, we can tell what things are like in our Father’s household. We can model the love of our Father. All of us who enter heaven will ourselves enter as adopted children. May God help us to know our heavenly Father better and thus better share with the world His beauties. Still there is room in His house! GCO
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