Why does Husband want to Adopt?

So, why have I [Matt] been eager to adopt? In thinking about what it means that Christians have been given “the Spirit of adoption” (Ro. 8:15) I’ve had the following milling around in the brain for about the past decade; all from J.I. Packer’s chapter “Sons of God” in his Knowing God [it would be more than worth your while to get a copy].

The three sentences below sum it up for me. If you like longer explanations check out the larger block below them.

1) “What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.”

2) If asked to focus the New Testament message in three words Packer proposes the following: adoption through propitiation [by the blood of Jesus]. I say amen.

3) Adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel; higher even than justification. Justification is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel because it addresses our most basic need and therefore everything else in salvation rests on it. Adoption is the highest privilege for the Christian because of the sweet intimacy in which we are brought near to God as Father. Not everyone can call God Father. Only sinners who know that Jesus is the only Savior of sinners know God as Father.

More on this later, but if you’re still reading this then you may be interested in the following…I don’t think it’s exaggerated in the least:

“You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. 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. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God.”