Salvation and Adoption

Under the umbrella of the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is the doctrine of adoption.  One will see the doctrine of adoption especially in both the books of Galatians and Romans.  God does adopt believers into His family as sons.

Adoption is an only New Testament doctrine.  It begins in the gospels.  You should think John 1:12-13:

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

The apostles received this doctrine from God.  Jesus taught:  “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).  John 1:12 sounds more like adoption than what Jesus said, but both “born again” and “adoption” make someone “sons.”  Both can be true.  Someone can be born again and be an adopted son, since it is a spiritual reality.

The Apostle Paul does not refer back to the Old Testament in his teaching on adoption.  Adoption is not an Old Testament teaching.  Paul uses the Roman understanding of adoption to illustrate what occurs in adoption.  People would have understood it in Rome and in Galatia.  Jews could understand it in their culture too, because of bar mitzvah.  The Romans called it toga virilis and I and others believe that is seen in Galatians 3:27 with the metaphor of “put on Christ,” referring to water baptism.  Immersion in public is putting on the robe, like graduation.

The Portrayal of Adoption in the New Testament

Galatians

I also believe that Paul mixes his metaphors in Galatians.  Paul uses the “schoolmaster” in Galatians 3:24-26 as a portrayal of “the law.”  Adulthood, becoming sons instead of slaves, pictures “faith in Christ.”  In the next chapter of Galatians (4), you can see that the metaphor adds some layers.  Roman patricians would provide guardians for promising plebeian boys for discipline until these boys could become adults.  At least eight of the Caesars did this, including Julius and Augustus Caesar.  Julius adopted Octavian (Augustus) and Augustus adopted Tiberius.

In Galatians 4, the guardian or tutor (4:2) trained the potentially adopted son until adulthood.  Roman patricians may not have sons or they had an unfit one or all inept ones, who were unworthy of leading or taking the reigns of their family.  Paul used these tutors to describe the place of the law in bringing someone to faith in Christ.  The slave would leave one family for another family for the purpose of becoming an heir (Galatians 4:7).  Paul deals with the same in Romans 8:14-17.

Jesus

Jesus tells his Jewish audience, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:44).  The Lord describes salvation as leaving one family for another.  The only true comparison to that is adoption.  A person is born into one family and then changes families through adoption.  The first family does not have an inheritance and the second one is an heir of all things.

The Holy Spirit’s Witness

Roman adoption and probably most adoption, if not all, required seven witnesses.  This hearkens to the seven seals on the inheritance in Revelation 4-5, seals Jesus undoes in Revelation 6-16.  The Holy Spirit, whom scripture calls the sevenfold Spirit (Isaiah 11:2, Revelation 1:4-5 — 7 witnesses), bears witness that we are the children of God (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:16).  For the audience of that day, that fulfilled the authority (cf. John 1:12, “power” is exousia, “authority”).  Moving from one family to another meant authority changing someone from one family to another.

What does the Holy Spirit use to bear witness?  A person manifests clear marks of having left one family for the other.  The first family, Satan’s, reveals easily discernable characteristics, that are quite different from those of the second family.  The law would distinguish one kind of behavior from another.  It couldn’t change the behavior, but it differentiated law-breaking from law-keeping.  The guardian or schoolmaster could point out misbehaving not characteristic of the adult or the new family.  It wasn’t just a new family, but also a different way of living.

Adoption and Separation

Leaving One Family for Another Different One

Leaving one family to another was a separation.  By authority, you were not the first hopeless family any more.  When someone left one family to another, he was not moving to the same kind of family.  He was changing to a family with completely different characteristics, goals, purposes, and futures.  The gap between the first family to the adoption family was a vast, incomparable chasm.  The point was not to bring everything about the first family to the second one, the one to whom the father adopted you as a son.  It was leaving behind the first family.

2 Corinthians 6:14-18

With everything I have said so far, look how Paul uses this same picture or depiction in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18:

14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,

18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

When you read this text as a whole, notice how it ends.  Paul says this unrighteousness to righteousness, darkness to light, Belial to Christ, infidel to believer, temple of idols to temple of the living God, and unclean to clean is separating from the first family to the second.  Someone who left the first family, what Jesus calls the one with your Father the devil (John 8:44), separates from that family.

The Changes Between Families in Adoption

Adoption is not just getting all sorts of cool, amazing benefits, like inheriting a great deal of cash.  It is going from a garbage family to a very, very good one.  The second Father is way, way different than the first one and with way greater expectations.  You don’t get adopted if you don’t see the second family as morally and righteously superior than the first.  Adoption is separation.

Salvation does not come by changing your behavior, but by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  Adoption pictures this authoritative transfer from one family to the other.  You leave the one for the other.  Someone can’t change his own behavior, but adoption expects the change.  Someone knows the change is coming.  That is how the law is the schoolmaster in the portrayal.  It points out a problem you can’t change, but it still implies or assumes change.

People don’t like teaching on separation, but they would say unequivocally that they like adoption.  You can’t and shouldn’t separate those two doctrines.  They are the same.

Not Separating Separation from Adoption and Salvation

Even today, when parents or a family adopt a child.  Adoption services keep the separation between the families.  The second family wants the adopted child to be its child.  It doesn’t want a straddling of two families.  They even know this doesn’t work.  This has always been the case in adoption and is engrained in the concept of adoption.

A salvation that does not include separation is a different one from start to finish than what scripture teaches.  So-called evangelists give the wrong impression that adoption gives eternal life, but doesn’t describe the different life under a new and different Father.  It adds something to the old life, but doesn’t see a change.  You get the old family and the new one.  This is not true.  Adoption brings and is separation.