Just over 14 years ago, on a warm summer’s morning, we placed an 8-month-old baby into a car seat, with all his worldly possessions packed into two small ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ bags. We drove him home – to our home – to join our family. Five years later, we repeated the process with another little one. These days, one of them is the same shoe size as me, and the other wears glasses like I do, but our connections are so, so much deeper.
This week is National Adoption Week. It’s wonderful to hear of Christians compassionately caring for children who desperately need families, and to join the call for others to meet such great a demand. If you or someone in your church is in the process of fostering or adoption (or would like to be) we have a dedicated page of over 30 resources for you, based on our Family Care research among many parents and carers. Do take a look.
As well as being a time to encourage awareness and action, this week can also be a great time to reflect – as Christians – on our identity as children of God, how it has come about, and what it means in our lives. As J.I. Packer has famously written:
Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification…To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater…If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.
(Packer, Knowing God, chapter 19)
Relating to our two boys over the last 14 years, with all their needs (and ours), has taught us much about the family welcome we enjoy from God the Father. Questions of identity, belonging, names, background, and more have enabled us to more accurately understand the privileges of being God’s children. We’ve spotted how important it is to be careful in our use of language concerning adoption and our sons’ identities. Reflecting on this, I wonder if similar care and accuracy can also reap benefits in our spiritual lives, and in the experiences of those we minister to. Having been adopted, we are now called children.
Having been adopted…
If you know us well or spend a bit of time with us, you will notice that we never refer to our boys as ‘our adopted sons’. I can understand why others may want to use that label. Sometimes it is employed in well-meaning ways to highlight something good – the noble task of adoption itself, or the special relationship that comes from being ‘chosen’ in some way by your parents.
As good as those things are, we have found it more helpful to use ‘adopted’ as the past-tense verb that it is rather than a label that sticks in the present. This helps to communicate a sense of security, permanence, belonging, and a depth of love and commitment.
We see this in our spiritual lives too. According to the New Testament, Christians have been “predestined for adoption to sonship” (Eph 1:5), we have received this adoption (Gal 4:5), which has been brought about by the Spirit (Rom 8:15). Yes, we eagerly await the full experience of this (Rom 8:23) but that process of adoption is now complete. Through Christ’s redeeming work on the cross, we now belong to God our Father, and we express this new relationship through the Spirit, who God has sent into our hearts (Gal 4:6).
So then, what is our true identity – if not ‘adopted’?
…we are now called children
Sadly, it has also been the case that some ill-meaning parents and carers have used the ‘adopted’ label negatively, to single a child out as ‘less-than’ in some way, giving rise to insecurity and relational distance. And so, instead, we simply refer to our own sons as just that – our children. After all, one day the judge in his fancy wig declared that to be the case, and we have the certificates to prove it!
In the same way, Scripture invites us (gloriously) to consider ourselves as children of God, and to refer to ourselves as such. Jesus has come to all who receive him, and believe in his name, and has given us this right, this status, this privilege (John 1:12). One with Christ, we now enjoy the full status of being God’s child and being an heir with Christ (Gal 4:7).
This status has been accomplished. It is done. There is no shared parental responsibility for us (spiritually speaking). We belong to God through Christ, expressed in the familial joy of the Holy Spirit. And we are now called children. So, let’s call one another that, because the Bible does. Let’s call ourselves that – especially on the days our sin is before us, and our struggles with identity surface again. And let’s help one another to grow into that identity more and more.
As John writes elsewhere (with emphasis added):
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)
