Devotions—Romans by Pastor Kevin Skogen
Romans 8:12-17
Over the last few days we looked at Paul’s admonition to us that now that we CAN walk in the Spirit, now that we can joyfully obey the law of the Lord…let us walk in that light! Before, we couldn’t but now we can. And he continues that thought:
12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
As we said, there are two ways of life, by the spirit or by the flesh, and both have an end, both take us somewhere, one is to death and the other is to life. Sounds like an easy choice…ah but alas…
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
It would have been enough if the Lord had simply removed His wrath and forgiven us, for that, we would be eternally grateful. But grace is extravagant, and for the Lord that was not enough. Not just forgiven, but family! We are made sons and daughters. WE HAVE ACCESS to Him as our Father!
In is worth noting that Paul uses both the Greek, and an Aramaic form of the word. Paul is tying together both the Hebrew understanding of Father and the Hellenistic, or Greek understanding of Father. This is much more profound than folks realize. He is saying not that believing Jews get to come into the family of believing Gentiles, but just the opposite. That believing Gentiles are sons and daughters with believing Jews. So now we have one and the same Father, we are in one and same family.
And just so you know, those who think this means “daddy”, and who then think to pray, “Oh daddy…” have modernized the terms with contemporary sentimentalism, that is NOT the meaning of the words.
16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Along with our being children, the benefits of grace just keep piling up; We also have an inheritance! All that the Father has is also his children’s! And how amazing is that last line? We will be glorified with Him…you and me…glorified with God, God’s glory as OUR glory!
You might be wondering what that means, what will that be like? Yea…I have no idea! But as always we must read the WHOLE verse. We are fellow heirs with Christ, as long as we suffer with Him…Whoa there…what does that mean? We suffer with him, and we are glorified with him. Our relationship with our Father is one of identification and intimacy…far more than perhaps we have ever thought.
Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were often disposed of by the practice of exposure, that is they were left outside a city’s walls, or in an isolated place all by himself or herself and if the animals didn’t get to the child, the weather would. Sometimes the child was born deformed or disfigured but most often the parent or parents simply didn’t want the child, he was an inconvenience…not according to their plans and since Planned Parenthood wasn’t around they found other heinous measures.
It wasn’t until the year 374 that the Christian emperor Valentinian made this practice illegal, but for centuries prior to Valentinian there was a marginalized group of people who gained a reputation for rescuing these children…taking them into their homes, at their own expense and inconvenience and raising them as sons and daughters…do you want to guess who these people were? Christians.
The early church was known, even by those who despised them, as people who defended and rescued orphans. Christian men and women would scour outside the city walls searching for those who had been abandoned. They would take them in as their own. Why…why would Christians do that…why would they search out the outcast and unwanted children of their enemies, those persecuting them and bring them into their homes and love them and raise them? Life was hard, filled with enough problems so why would they put themselves out like that?
It is quite simple, really. As Christians, true believers, they knew that this is exactly what God has done for them…a rescue but not just a rescue and then deliver them to someone else to care for, but deliverance and then a family, a home.
Ezekiel 16 is quite graphic but it makes the point so well about Israel’s condition, what our condition was…we were alone and exposed to the world without hope and without God. Ephesians tells us that we once were strangers, we were far off but God has brought us near and made us his people and not just a people, but His sons and daughters…we are brought into the family!
I think the doctrine of adoption might provide the key for bringing together brothers who have found themselves on opposite sides of a theological debate that has unfortunately turned quite ugly.
The Bible presents what we call the gospel, the good news, the wonder of God’s rescue of sinners, under all kinds of headings and concepts. The Holy Spirit doesn’t always use the same language at every point. For example, in Romans we have seen the language of the gospel described to us using the term justification, but we have also seen that the goal of Christ’s coming for us was our holiness, so sanctification.
We would never say: Is the gospel justification by faith or is it sanctification by the Spirit? We wouldn’t ask because it presents a false dichotomy. Those two things need to be distinguished but never separated.
In other places the gospel is described as regeneration, election or union with Christ. Interestingly in the book of Colossians justification is not ever mentioned, rather there the gospel is described under the heading of “redemption”, that is, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to deliver us from bondage. Justification by faith describes the gospel from one vantage point, that is the granting to guilty sinners a righteous standing before God based on the righteousness of Jesus.
However, the fact is the phrase justification by faith, or justified by faith occurs only a few times in the bible and as we have seen at least once in Romans can also be a reference to our lives of holiness! There are other ways to look at and to describe our great salvation that are given to us in the Bible such as reconciliation, or peace made between us and God. The forgiveness of sins…all our transgressions wiped away, cast into the sea, thrown behind God’s back. Or transformation, meaning we have been taken from death to life, from enemy to friend, from ungodliness to righteousness.
There are so many words, phrases and concepts that the Holy Spirit has used to try and communicate to us the wonder of what this great salvation is and I think we can see how it is not helpful to settle on one at the expense of all or any of the others. And here in this chapter, it is adoption. We were once NOT part of the family but grace has changed that and we are now full sons and full daughters.
The debate that I referred to is with regard to how our relationship with God is grounded. I am going to over-simplify this a bit, but I beg you to stay with me, because this does matter. One side argues that it is justification by faith. God’s legal declaration that we are not guilty. Like a judge making a legal verdict God has made a legal decision about us and said ‘not guilty’. Remember, in this, God does nothing in us, he just makes a declaration about us.
It is legal.
The other side says that the foundation to our being right with God is union with Christ and by that, they mean that since by grace we are in Christ, we are therefore in relationship with God. It is not, from their perspective, so much the legal declaration as it is God’s entering into a relationship with fallen man in union with Jesus.
Now, what you need to know is that the gulf between these two is immense and awful things are written from one side against those on the other. Lots of theological name calling and divisions.
And I tell you that so that you might see how the bible’s teaching about adoption could be just the thing to bring family back together.
As I mentioned Paul needs many metaphors if he is in any way to do justice to what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Adoption is an especially rich metaphor because it involves both confessing family membership and conferring legal status. Again, it is both legal, the judge must declare it so, and it is relational, as adoptive sons and daughters we have a Father!
In fact, adoption is a lens through which one can view the whole history of salvation: “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:4-5); So there, God’s decree, before he created is linked to the relationship he has with us as he adopts us and brings us into His home! “God sent forth his Son . . . to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4); In that verse it is redemption and adoption…saving but that is not enough, saving and then making us sons and daughters. And then here in our text, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons. . . . The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:15).
Adoption compliments justification with the notion of family status. And it adds to union with Christ the note of legal status. So, both sides of the debate can be satisfied. Here is one theologian, read this slowly it is a bit thick, but it is gloriously uniting while exalting what grace has and is doing in adopting us.
Might it be that the law court in which the justifying verdict is read out, (this is the not guilty verdict) is also an adoption court, such that in declaring men and women his children God assigns them all the rights pertaining thereunto, including the incalculable privilege of calling God “Father” and the concomitant eschatological privilege of having the Spirit of the Father’s Son dwell in our hearts (Gal 4:6)? The salient point is that adoption is one way of expressing what it is to be “in Christ” that bridges present and future, the forensic (or legal) and the familial.
I am not sure that is going to help the debate, but I for one have decided to embrace both and that bridge that allows for that is the Biblical doctrine of adoption…we are now part of God’s family!!!
Prayer: Father, I think of how many times I have taken all Your gifts and graces for granted and chiefly, I have failed to realize the glory of my adoption! I have participated in worship and the sacraments but my heart has been far away, quite forgetting that I am Your child! Forgive me. Help me to see the glory behind the means of grace, and how it is that You work through them and with them for my sanctification, to the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Hymn: How Sweet and Awful is The Place
