I am adopted

When the New Testament was written, the Romans might adopt a child but keep it private. After a time, they would hold a second adoption in public. For this, the child was brought before the authorities and his former garments were removed. Then the adopting father gave his child new clothing suitable to his new life.

I can easily imagine how a child would feel if taken from the lower rank of society and adopted by someone like a Roman senator. He would be excited and happy in his new family situation, but would also long for that day of public adoption. Then he would put off all the old garments of his former life and be robed and seen as the child of a noble and respected father.

This is easy to imagine for it parallels the experience and emotions of those who believe in Jesus Christ. We have been adopted into the family of God and are His children. However, our new lives are only visible, as Spurgeon says, by certain moral characteristics. Our adoption is not yet openly declared. 

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23)

Sometimes I look in the mirror and laugh — what is a young girl like me doing in such an old body! Yet as a believer in Jesus Christ, the old body is not this outwardly perishing flesh so much as it is the “flesh” of my old nature. The person that I was before Christ changed my life still clings to me like old garments. I belong to a new family and have a new Father, yet so often those old clothes conceal who I am and can give me even more dismay than the mirror when they do. I have not yet been “arrayed in the apparel which befits the royal family of heaven” because I am still putting off this flesh that looks more like a daughter of Adam. 

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he (Jesus Christ) appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

Jesus is the “firstborn among many brethren” and “not ashamed to call us His brethren” so I am in His family, yet until I see Him, my adoption is somewhat hidden. I am waiting until I can be properly and fully robed, manifested as a child of God. 

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1–4)

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Oh my Father, I do “groan inwardly” at times, mostly to see You, but also to experience the fullness and freedom that will be mine when this adoption, the redemption of my body, is complete. Your Word says that will happen when I see Jesus as He is, indicating that glorious day when I step out of this world and into Yours.

However, You also give me wonderful glimpses of Him even now. You tell me that as I “with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord,” I am being transformed into the same image by the power of Your Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). Let me see more of You, that I might be more like You, the noble and glorious One that I can call Abba, Father —  because You have adopted me.