The adoption.
"Having predestinated us to the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to himself." "Adoption" in Scripture expresses more than a change of relation—it includes the change of nature as well as the change of relation. It thus combines the blessings of justification and sanctification, or represents the complex condition of the believer as at once the subject of both. In a word, it presents the new creature in his new relations. This passage teaches—
I. THAT ADOPTION ORIGINATES IN THE FREE GRACE OF GOD; for we are predestinated thereunto. By nature we have no claim to it. "It is not a natural but a constituted relationship." The idea is not of sonship merely, but of sonship by adoption. None can adopt into the family of God but God himself, and therefore it may be regarded as an act of pure grace and love. "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!" (1 John 3:1). He may ask the question, "How shall I put thee among the children?" but he has answered it graciously in the line of covenant promise: "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord" (2 Corinthians 6:18).
II. THAT ADOPTION IS IN CONNECTION WITH THE PERSON AND MEDIATION OF CHRIST. He is not merely the Pattern of sonship to which we are to be conformed, but the adoption is "by Jesus Christ." The apostle declares elsewhere that "we are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26), and that "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" (Galatians 4:4, Galatians 4:5). It is evident from these passages that we do not receive the adoption merely in virtue of Christ's incarnation. Some modern divines hold that the adoption springs, not from the death, but from the birth of Christ; that its benefits are conferred upon every member of the human race by virtue of the Incarnation; that Christ being one with every man, the Root and Archetype of humanity, all men are in him adopted and saved, and that nothing remains for faith but to discern this oneness and his salvation as already belonging to us.
1. This theory makes Christ, and not Adam, the Head of humanity. Yet Scripture makes Adam the true head of humanity, and Christ the Head of the redeemed. Christ is no doubt called "the Head of every man" (1 Corinthians 11:9), in so far as he is "the Firstborn of every creature," and as "all things were created" by him and for him; but the allusion is not to the Incarnation at all, but to the pre-existent state of the Son, and to the fact that, according to the original state of things, the world was constituted in him. But the whole race of man is represented as in Adam (Romans 5:12). How else can we understand the parallel between the two Adams? "That was not first which was spiritual, but that which was natural." "The first man was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Is it proper to regard Christ as the Archetype of fallen humanity alienated from God, and needing to be created anew in the Divine image (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24)?
2. This theory is inconsistent with Scripture, which makes the Incarnation and the cross inseparable. They are both means to an end: the expiation of sin, the vindication of Divine justice—the meritorious obedience to be rendered to the Law. Jesus was born that he might die. The event of Golgotha not only explains but completes the event of Bethlehem. Our Savior came to save the lost (Matthew 18:11); he came to give his life a ransom (Matthew 20:28); he came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15); he took part of flesh and blood to destroy death (Hebrews 2:14); he was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8); it was on the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). There are a hundred passages in Scripture which ascribe our salvation to his death to one passage ascribing it to his birth. It is a suggestive circumstance that he should have appointed a festival to commemorate his death—the Lord's Supper—and should have appointed no similar festival to commemorate his birth. The effect, if not the design, of this theory is to destroy the necessity for the atonement, and thus to avoid the offence of the cross. The Incarnation is presented to us as a remedial arrangement by virtue of its connection with the cross, and the connection of man with Christ is represented as corrective of his connection with Adam. Our primary connection is with the first Adam, and we only attain to connection with Christ by regeneration.
III. THAT ADOPTION IS FOR THOSE WHO ARE UNITED TO CHRIST BY FAITH. Scripture is exceedingly plain in its testimony upon this point. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26); "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his Name" (John 1:12); "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14). Yet it is said that faith does not make the sonship, but discerns it as already ours. The proper office of faith, however, is not to recognize the blessing of adoption as ours, but "to receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel." The blessings of salvation are not conferred on all men prior to their faith or without their faith. The union between Christ and believers, of which the Scripture is so full, is not accomplished by our Lord's assumption of our common nature, but is only realized through an appropriating faith wrought in each of us by the grace of God.
IV. THAT THE ISSUE OF THE ADOPTION' IS TO BRING BELIEVERS AT LAST INTO COMMUNION WITH GOD HIMSELF. "Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." We are brought into the Divine family—"the family in heaven and in earth" (Ephesians 3:15)—of which God is the Father; for "adoption finds its ultimate enjoyment and blessing in God." If we are thus brought to God and belong to God in virtue of our adoption, ought we not with a profound earnestness to aim at a high and spiritual tone of living?—T.C.