The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, November 4th, 2007, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now I would invite you to turn with me to that portion of the Word of God that we have just sung back to the Lord, 1 John chapter 3, and follow as I read in your hearing the first three verses 1 John chapter 3. When we see the word behold in a context like this, we ought to envision next to it an exclamation point. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God, and we are. For this cause the world does not know us, because it knew him not. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is. Let's pray and ask God's help as we come to the ministry of the Word of God. Holy Father, once again as we take up our Bibles and place them in our hands and on our laps and will be setting its truth before our eyes, we hear the words of your servant, John the Baptist, that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. And while we are so slow to unlearn the ways of self-confidence and creature confidence, we would together as a company of people acknowledge that unless you give us understanding, and with that understanding a heart to embrace in faith, affections to be kindled by the truth, Our time together will be to no profit whatever. So, Lord, come to us in our need. Help Your servant, help each one seated in this place, that we may be conscious of the presence and ministry of Your Holy Spirit with the preaching of the Word, we plead in Jesus' name. Amen. From this passage that I read in your hearing, it's obvious that for the Apostle John, the contemplation of the status of the people of God as children of God drew forth from his heart expressions of utter amazement at the kind of love in God's heart that would confer such blessing upon any of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam. Hence his words, Behold, stand back and gaze with me in wonder at the kind of love God would exercise that would issue in our being constituted here and now the children of God. Further, John says, rise higher in your amazement for what we are and what we presently possess as the children of God is but the first fruits of the full harvest of the grace of adoption. He says it does not yet appear what we shall be. And what we shall be is nothing short of perfect replicas of the Lord Jesus, not in His divinity, but in His sinless humanity, in His glorified bodily existence, we shall be totally conformed to our elder brother in the family of God, even our Lord Jesus. Now as we come to this, our second study of this marvelous provision of salvation in Jesus Christ that the Bible calls adoption, I trust it will be with the prayer that as we study this truth, God will bring us not only into a fellowship of shared understanding of what it means to be adopted, but into a fellowship of shared amazement and astonishment with John at the love of God that would ever move him so to move toward us in redemptive grace that we could justly be designated children of God. Last the Lord's Day, we began our study, not of this doctrine as I told you, but of this wonderful, amazing provision of God's salvation in Jesus Christ. First of all, seeking to establish some crucial distinctions that we must understand if we are to appreciate the biblical teaching concerning what it means to be adopted as God's children. And there were three of these crucial distinctions that I set before you. I simply mention them by way of brief review. First, adoption is distinct from, but never separated from, justification. Secondly, adoption is distinct from, but never separated from, regeneration. And thirdly, the fatherhood of adoption in Christ is different from all the other fatherhoods of God revealed in the Scriptures. It is different from His Trinitarian fatherhood. He is father of the eternal Son in a way that he is father to none other. There is creative fatherhood. There is theocratic fatherhood. That is the fatherhood of God over the nation of Israel. And then there is that fatherhood of the new covenant privilege of adoption in Christ. And then I gave you a serious pastoral warning and exhortation. I pleaded with you not to allow the realities that we will come to grips with in this study The realities of our adoption, our relationship to God as our Father, don't allow it to erode, to distort, or to displace the other biblical truths that describe our relationship to God and to His Son, the Lord Jesus. What God is to us as a Father is not to erode, distort, let alone to replace, what we are to Jesus Christ as His bond slaves. We can both be happy slaves and happy sons at one and the same time. We can, in the language of Peter, We can pass the time of our sojourning in fear as we call upon God as our Father while recognizing we must yet appear before Him as our Judge. He does not cease to be our Judge because He is our Father. He does not cease to be a Father with whom we are comfortable in His presence because He is our Judge. Well, that's a very brief review of what we considered last Lord's Day. Now this morning, with our Bibles in our hands, we're going to seek to back up and adjust the lens of our minds to the widest angle possible and consider together the central place of adoption in the entire plan of God's saving mercy from eternity to eternity. Now, when you want to see a large landscape, you adjust your lens to the widest angle possible. On most standard cameras, that's 35 millimeters or 28, but you can get a specially constructed wide-angle lens that will enable you to take in everything. You get a fisheye lens that takes in 365 degrees. So what I want to do this morning is to open up those scriptures that will enable us to appreciate the precise place of adoption in the entire scope of God's redemptive purposes in Christ for his elect from eternity to eternity. If indeed, as I asserted last week, our adoption in Christ is the crowning blessing of salvation in Christ, we should expect this fact to be made clear in the Scriptures. And when we open our Bibles to consider the place of adoption in the scheme of redemption, we are not disappointed. We'll consider together the centrality of adoption under three headings. First of all, the central place of adoption in redemption purposed. Secondly, the central place of adoption in redemption accomplished. And thirdly, the central place of adoption in redemption applied. Where does redemption fit? in, I'm sorry, adoption fit, in redemption purposed, in redemption accomplished, and in redemption applied. First of all then, our first heading, the central place of adoption in redemption purchased. If the Bible makes any truth as clear as the shining sun at noonday in a blue cloudless sky, It is the fact that God's gracious work of rescuing a multitude of hell-deserving sinners and making them fit for heaven is not a helter-skelter, unplanned, uncertain, afterthought activity. Nowhere does the Bible hint that God looks at the mess in the Garden of Eden brought about by our first parents and then scurries about to somehow tidy up the mess. If the Bible makes anything clear, it makes clear that God's purpose of salvation, both in the Old and the New Testament, is a well-planned, sovereignly executed, and an infallibly successful operation. And one of the main passages which witnesses to this truth is Ephesians chapter 1, and I ask you to turn there with me, Ephesians chapter 1. As many of you will know in this opening chapter, after a standard greeting to the saints at Ephesus, the apostle breaks out in this eulogy. He's going to speak well of God. And he's speaking well of God in terms of his great salvation accomplished by the entire Godhead. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And as he begins this eulogy, follow as I read, verses 3 to 5. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love, having foreordained or predestined us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. When the Apostle begins to identify the specific blessings with which God has blessed us in Christ, we are taken back beyond our individual conversion. We are taken back beyond the work of Christ that secures our salvation. We are taken all the way back into the bowels of eternity. This phrase, before the foundation of the world, is God's way of saying something was done by God the Father for which we are to bless Him that predates Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But before He created the heavens and the earth, He did something else. And what did he do? What he does is embodied in these two key words. Look at your Bible. These words were not discovered, invented, and injected into the Bible by John Calvin or Reformed theologians or by the Puritans. They are placed here by God through the Holy Spirit to reflect realities concerning our salvation. And Paul says that God whom we bless, concerning whom we speak well, who has blessed, who has conferred upon us every spiritual blessing, those blessings conferred upon us take their contours from something that was done with respect to us before the world's were ever birthed. Back beyond the beginning, back beyond Genesis 1, and what are the two things? Even as He chose us in Him, even as He elected, selected all of which are legitimate ways to translate the original Word even as He chose us, selected us out from among others, even as He elected us before the foundation of the world unto holiness, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love, having foreordained And this word in the original, having foreordained, is translated in other contexts, having predestined us, and so the words are used interchangeably in our translations, having foreordained or predestined us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself. So when we are taken, not by human speculation, not by the pressure of logical theologians, but by the hand of Scripture, God's own words, when we are contemplating God's scheme of salvation, and we ask the question, what place does our adoption have in that salvation when we are taken into a passage that tells us something of the purpose of God that lies behind every facet of our enjoyment of those blessings that are ours in Christ, we confront these two words, chosen or selected in Him unto holiness, for ordained or predestined unto adoption as sons. He chose us to become the recipients of salvation in Christ, one that would render us holy and without blemish before Him in love, and also, predestined or foreordained by the same provision of salvation in Christ, to adopt us unto Himself. Now some commentators go so far as to suggest that the grammatical construction of these two verses warrants the conclusion that is given in Charles Hodget's commentary on Ephesians in which he says the following. God, having predestined his people to the high dignity and glory of the sons of God, elected them unto holiness without which that dignity could neither be possessed nor enjoyed. And there was another commentator that I consulted who said that in a very real sense the grammatical construction leads to the conclusion, having set his heart upon adopting us, he elected us unto holiness, for it is only in being brought unto holiness that the great end of our adoption could be realized, namely, whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate, Paul says, to be conformed to the image of his Son. But whether or not the grammatical construction warrants that strong and radical a conclusion, this much is clear. Our being placed as sons and daughters in the family of God based upon the salvation accomplished in Jesus Christ is central to the purpose of God from all eternity. That much stands on the face of the text. And with your Bible open in your lap, and with your eyes upon the text, if you can't see that, then I have to say it's because you will not to see it. So when we ask, what place does this matter of adoption have in our redemption? When we go back as far as God allows us to go into the purposes of God's mind and God's heart before the worlds were formed, we come to this conclusion that our adoption as sons unto Himself, a key little phrase, unto Himself, not just adopted to have all kinds of goodies as God's children, but adopted unto Himself to have God as our Father, God as our great inheritance as we shall see in subsequent passages in The message is to follow. This then shows us that our adoption is indeed central in the saving purpose of God. And before passing on, notice the answer to these two basic questions given to us in this passage. What is the ultimate cause of this election unto holiness and this predestination to sonship or adoption? Look at verse 5b. Having foreordained us or predestined us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. We were chosen and predestined according to the good pleasure of His will. Why were we chosen and not others? It was the good pleasure of the will of God. And why was it the good pleasure of the will of God? Because it was the good pleasure of the will of God. And God does not allow us to go any further than that expression of His absolute, loving, sovereign choice of His own in order to be chosen unto holiness, predestined unto sonship. And what's the ultimate end of that choice? 6a, look at the text, to the praise of the glory of His grace. all to the end that God would be recognized as the God of infinite, inscrutable actings in grace, and that we would stand back and praise Him, that we would revel in that grace. Now do you see, dear child of God, why it's so vital that you grasp the reality of your adoption, that you shape your thinking about your relationship to God in the light of it? When God set His love upon you before the foundation of the world, it was with an intention no less amazing and elevating than this, that you and I, disinherited children of Adam, children of wrath, as we are called in Ephesians chapter 2, sons and daughters of the devil, as Jesus calls us in John 8.44, we who were the heirs of hell, that through Christ we should become His children, heirs of heaven, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. That you and I, by God's election unto holiness, by His predestination unto sonship, He has given us this marvelous privilege. Now then, we move secondly to the central place of adoption and redemption accomplished Now this term, redemption accomplished, I'm taking probably because of my frequent reading of Professor Murray's marvelous little book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, but we're speaking of the actual work of Christ in the space-time history of Jesus of Nazareth. And we want to see what place does adoption have when Christ comes forth and appears among us as the God-man. lives, labors, dies, rises from the dead, goes back to the right hand of the Father. Well, notice in the Ephesians passage, these references to him, verse 4, even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love, having foreordained us unto adoption as sons, now notice, through Jesus Christ. God's foreordination, predestination of us unto adoption as sons, was never conceived of apart from the person and work of His own begotten Son. Now then, that should raise the question, in what way is our adoption dependent upon the person and work of Christ in his earthly life and ministry? Well, I answer in two categories. There's an inferred answer, and then there is an explicit answer. And the inferred answer derives from the concerns expressed by Dr. J. I. Packer in his very helpful little article in Condensed Theology on Adoption. He writes this, Adoption is the crowning blessing of salvation to which justification clears the way. Adoption is the crowning blessing of salvation to which justification clears the way. I trust you will remember, those who were here for my recently completed series on justification, that I said we must constantly remember the biblical context of justification, the biblical context of God's justifying of sinners, declaring them forgiven and accepted as righteous in his sight. The context is the reality of who God is in himself, holy, just, righteous, how God relates to us as creator, lawgiver, and judge, and how we are related to God as creatures morally accountable to this God. And because of our sin, there is pure, holy, righteous wrath in God towards us. God describes us as his enemies, not only because we have enmity toward God, Romans 8, 7, but because God has righteous enmity to us. God is angry with the wicked every day, the scripture says. The wrath of God abides upon him that believes not. Now God cannot take into intimate fatherly communion with Himself creatures who are the objects of His wrath, creatures who should be the recipients of His fiery judgment. And so justification, God's declaration that all the provocations of His wrath are resolved, sin is forgiven, the perfect obedience of Christ is credited to us. God, by justifying the sinner, clears the way to embrace him to his bosom as a father. So the implied relationship between the work of Christ and our adoption is simply this. that God must deal with the offenses that we've committed against Him in the judicial, in the criminal court before He can move us over into the family court and take out adoption papers and make us His own sons and daughters. That's the inferred answer to the question, what is the place of redemption accomplished in our adoption. Do you get that? Do you see the connection of those things? I don't know how to illustrate them without profaning them. So I hope I've explained them simply enough. But then there is an explicit answer to that question. In what way is our adoption dependent on the person and work of Christ in his earthly life? Turn with me now to the second key passage, Galatians chapter 4. Galatians 4, verses 4-6, But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so that thou art no longer a servant, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. Here's the explicit answer to the question, in what way is our redemption dependent upon the person and work of Christ in His earthly life? Now let me pause to say, if I were expounding in detail the book of Galatians and came to this passage, it would be irresponsible not to underscore the peculiar significance of this passage. Paul is dealing with the whole question. of what's the relationship between the Mosaic Covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant. God gave a covenant of promise to Abraham. He added to it the covenant of Moses, the covenant of the law, which was to be a temporary arrangement, which was not to cancel the Abrahamic Covenant, but served a purpose until the Abrahamic Covenant could come to its full realization in the work of Christ and in the gathering of the true seed of Abraham unto Christ. But I don't have time to open up the whole argument of the book of Galatians, nor go into this matter of the relationship of the covenants. However, for the purpose of our concerns today, note the dominant issues that are clearly set forth on the very surface of this passage. First of all, the activity of God in the sending of His Son. This has to do with what God has done in space-time history in order to accomplish redemption. Notice, He emphasizes the timing of His sending the Son. When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son. Here we are confronted again with the God who before the foundation of the world had a purpose, a purpose to adopt us as his children. This God is governing the whole flow of history, and this God purposes that at a specific time in human history, He would send forth His Son. And so He sends forth His Son, and notice the conditions in which He sent Him. He sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. He sends forth His Son by way of Mary's womb, the eternal Son, the eternal Word of John 1, 1-4. It is that One who is made of a woman, that is, He takes to Himself a true human soul in body in Mary's womb. He is not born after the ordinary manner of men through sexual intimacy between a man and a woman. He is sent forth in the fullness of time, born of a woman and, notice, born under the law. He is born in a situation where he is subjected not just to God's moral law, as all of us are, but to the whole Mosaic economy. That's part of Paul's argument. And as I say, we can't go into it in detail. But when it says, born under the law, this is why when you open up the Gospel of Luke, you find that at eight days, Jesus is taken up to the temple and is circumcised because the law of Moses required that on the eighth day every male child should be circumcised. Thirty-one days later, Mary and Joseph go up with baby Jesus, and they present a sacrifice of two turtle doves or two pigeons, and Christ as the firstborn of Mary's womb is dedicated unto the Lord. Why? Because the law of Moses required that for every male child that was firstborn. And then we see our Lord attending all of the stated feasts at Jerusalem, coming all the way down from the upper regions of Palestine in the Galilean area where Nazareth was, down to Jerusalem. Why? Because God said, all your males shall appear before me three times every year. In other words, every facet of Jesus' life was strictly kosher. It was a kosher life. But in addition to being a kosher life, it was a life of perfect obedience to all of the standards of God's moral law, so that our Lord never thought one thought, never indulged one motion of desire. never experienced one reflex reaction to misunderstanding, to hurt, to abuse, to insult that even partook of the first twitches of sinful resentment, of sinful anger. Never once did he look upon others who had more possessions and had the slightest twitch of a desire that would have broken the Tenth Commandment. He never coveted. Never once, when responding to his mother and father, did he shade the truth one ten thousandth of an inch in order to spare himself, in order to make himself appear better. Everything that the Ten Commandments desire from the outmost reaches of any deed to the deepest recesses of motivation, of thought, of intention, of attitude, of desire, he perfectly, fully, comprehensively, extensively kept the law of God. so that in that obedience he has perfected a righteousness as our covenant head which God can credit to us, which is the crowning blessing of our justification. And so it was necessary, look back at the text, that he in the fullness of time be sent forth, born of a woman, constituting the God-man, born under the law to what end? And now you have two purpose clauses. And if you had a Greek testament in front of you, it would be clear. You see the little word, hina, H-I-N-A. In order that he might redeem them that were under the law. Hina, in order that we might receive the adoption of sons. all that he became and all that he did in the space-time history of his life as the God-man, as much God as though he were not man, as much man as though he were not God, in total obedience, not just to the moral law, but even to the Mosaic system of things, In order that, he might redeem his people to the end that they might receive the adoption. All that Christ became, all that Christ did, was to the end that we might receive the status of adopted sons and daughters. And central to all that he did that secures that blessing, Paul is already identified in verse 13 of chapter 3. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. When Paul says here in chapter 4 that he might redeem them, how did he redeem them? Not by the example of his life, but by the horrific death of vicarious curse bearing when all that our sins deserved of the wrath of God was heaped upon him and the wrath of God came castrating down upon him. until he cried, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then when he cried, It is finished, God amened his cry when three days later he rose, he raised him from the dead to validate that the offering was complete, the sacrifice was accepted in the court of heaven. To what end? Paul says that we might receive the adoption of sons. So when we ask the question, what is the place of adoption in the actual accomplishment of redemption? Here we learn that adoption is the crowning blessing for which Christ came into the world, bore all that He bore, suffered all He suffered, underwent the horrible death of the cross, The shame of Gabbatha, the place of judgment. The agonies of Gethsemane. The horrors of Golgotha. Never forget the three G's. Gabbatha, the place of shameful trial and abuse. Gethsemane, the place of intense agony. And Golgotha, the place of forsakenness. So the writer to the Hebrews can write as he does in Hebrews 2 and verse 10. Look at the text. Hebrews 2 and verse 10, for it became him for whom are all things and through whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Bringing many sons to glory We are brought to glory as sons because of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. So when we ask the question, what place does adoption have in redemption purposed? We see it is central. God never thought of us as those whom He would redeem without purposing, predestinating that we should experience adoption as sons unto Himself. And throughout the entire scope of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the great end in view was that we might receive adoption as sons. Dear child of God, Your adoption has been procured at a tremendous price. Can we love the Savior and be indifferent and say, ah, more of this doctrinal preaching. I'm saved. I'm trusting Jesus. Let's get on with more important things. My friend, what's more important than Jesus having a people appreciate who He is and what He's done to give them the status that they have as adopted sons and daughters? But then we come, thirdly, having considered the place of adoption in redemptive purpose, the place of adoption in redemptive purchase or accomplishment, thirdly, the central place of adoption in redemption applied. If our adoption as full-grown sons is central in the purpose of redemption, central in the accomplishment of redemption, then surely we should expect that in the application of redemption to every sinner who is brought by God's grace and power into the orbit of that redemption that adoption should be a central reality. And we're not disappointed in that expectation. Consider briefly the place of adoption in redemption applied at its inception at its continuance and at its consummation. Because if we're adopted, there comes a point in time when that adoption begins. But it doesn't end. It issues into a relationship that is to be cultivated and nurtured as the children of God to their heavenly Father. And then it will be consummated for most of us in two stages, death and the second coming. For those that are alive at the return of the Lord, it will be consummated in one stage. When at His return, Perfected souls will then inhabit those deathless bodies. Well, where is the place of adoption in the inception of new life in Christ? Where is adoption at the inception of our new life in Christ? When does a man, a woman, a boy or girl become a true Christian? Well, the answer of the Bible is when we are effectually called by the Father into a saving union with Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That's when anyone becomes a true Christian. When he or she is effectually called by the Father into a saving union with Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit who, by regenerating us, enables us to repent and to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, here we turn to John 1 and verse 12. John 1 and verse 12, having stated that our Lord came to His own, most likely His own people, the Jews, and the vast majority received Him not. We read verse 12, but as many as received Him To them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Here John joins, as we saw last week briefly, both adoption as a status, a right, and then sonship by birth, who were born. When the new birth occurs, when by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit we are brought into union with Christ, the first effect of that is that we receive Him. Receiving Him being a synonym for believing upon His name. And what is the nature of that reception of Christ that is the very essence of saving faith? It is a yielding allegiance to Jesus as the eternal Word made flesh, trusting Jesus completely, acknowledging the claims of Jesus over us without reservation, and confessing Jesus with gratitude. My friend, Dr. Donald Carson, has that beautiful description of what does it mean to receive Christ? It means far more than tip the hat while you walk by the cross, say, thank you, Jesus. You died for sinners. I believe it. I'm fixed forever. That's not receiving him. That's playing games with God. That's a travesty. To receive him who was the eternal word and now the word become flesh. The one who says, if any would come after me, he must love me more than father, mother, brother, sister, yes, in his own life also. The one who has total claims over us. What does it mean to receive him? It means to yield allegiance to him for who he is. to trust Him completely for the forgiveness of our sins, to acknowledge His rightful claims over us, and then to confess Him with gratitude. That's what true faith is. The Holy Spirit never regenerates people to simply tip their hat to Jesus. Never, never, never, never! It would be an insult to the Son of God that the Holy Spirit who has come to bear witness to Christ to work out in men the fruit of the sufferings of Christ would simply bring men to tip their hat to Jesus and say they're all fixed up forever and go on their way living for themselves, living for the world, talking like the world, looking like the world, acting like the world. It's an insult to the Son of God and to the Holy Spirit. When men are born of the Spirit, born not of blood, nor of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. That new birth brings them to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 6. And when they behold the glory of God in the face of Christ, they yield allegiance to Him for who He is. Trust Him completely. Acknowledge His claims over them. They say, it's all over, Lord. Up till now, I've lived for self. I've pursued the interest of self. I have dictated my own terms of what I'll live for and how I'll pursue what I live for. Lord Jesus, it's all over. You've conquered me. Lord Jesus, I'm done from here on in for me to live. is Christ. If that hasn't happened to you, don't talk about believing on Christ. You're a stranger to grace, a stranger to the new birth, a stranger to receiving Him. But if by God's grace that has been effected in you, then God says, upon receiving Him, verse 12, what happens? As many as received Him To them gave he the right, the authority to become children of God. What is the place of adoption at the inception of new life in Christ? It becomes the immediate and marvelous privilege of the one who believes on the Lord Jesus. to be given the right to be constituted and to be treated as and to think of oneself in terms of Son of God, Daughter of God. That's why Paul could write in Galatians 3.26, You are all the sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Well, what about the continuance of the new life in Christ? Well, as we shall see in subsequent messages, God willing, in a very real sense, the heart of living the Christian life is to be found in living before the eye of God as our Heavenly Father, trusting Him and seeking to honor, to please, and to reflect Him in the totality of our lives. I've given you a whole message in one sentence. That's one of the subsequent messages. What is the continuance of this new life that we receive and are given the status of sons and daughters? What is the essence of it? I want to demonstrate from the Scriptures that the heart of living the Christian life, according to the New Testament, it is to be found in living before the eye of God as our Heavenly Father, not a threatening judge, trusting Him as our heavenly Father, seeking to honor, to please and to reflect Him in the totality of our lives. And so that the continuance of the new life in Christ is the continuance of the outworking of our new status as sons and daughters of the living God. But then what about the consummation of our new life in Christ? Turn with me to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. What place does adoption have in the consummation of our new life in Christ? I begin reading at verse 18 and read through verse 23. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us. For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself should be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now, and not only so, But we ourselves also, who have the first fruit of the Spirit, even we ourselves, grown within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, that is, the redemption of our body. Now, I don't have time to unpack this passage in all of its details. Suffice it to say, here's the picture. Paul says, because of man's sin, the earth has been cursed. through no choice of its own, he's speaking of creation, the created order, as though it were an animate thing, and he says, it's in a state of corruption and bondage, not through any choice of its own, through any act of its own, but by the act of God. There is one who subjected it to bondage and to corruption, but he did so with a greater end in view. He subjected it in hope. That is, in the confident expectation that a corrupt and vain creation would not be the last word. Man's sin caused God to put a curse upon the earth. But when God is finished dealing with man's sin, the curse shall be lifted from the earth. and it will be delivered from its bondage and its corruption and its vanity. But now notice that with respect to everything he says about this future deliverance of the created order, he relates it to the sons of God. And then, having said that the whole creation groans and travails, waiting not for an ultimate death, but for a birth into liberty, he says, and by the way, we ourselves, the true people of God, who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is the firstfruits of our full redemption, we join in this chorus of groaning with the world, waiting for what? He says, when our bodies will be fully redeemed, when we get our glorified bodies, and that is so crucial to our coming to our full adopted privilege, that He actually calls the part for the whole. And He says, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Now, I hope that's clear enough in broad strokes that this is the general thrust of the passage, but what I want you to see is our adoption is so central to the application of redemption that at every part, God pushes it to the prominence. At the inception of the life, when we embrace Christ as he's offered in the gospel, we're given the right to become the children of God. The development of the Christian life is basically cultivating the outworking of that new relationship so that living before God and pleasing God and seeking to be like our Heavenly Father is the organizing principle of our lives. And then when we think of the future, what do we think of? We're going to come into all the implications of being God's adopted sons and daughters. We will yet have sinless souls inhabiting deathless bodies in a creation released from the bondage of corruption, entering into the glory of the liberty that is ours as the sons of God. So what we are in the eternal purpose of God and what we've begun to experience in the application of the salvation of God will come to consummation in the framework of adoption. That's what I want you to see. Look at the phrases that Paul piles up in verse 19. The earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Verse 21, from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. and then verse 23, waiting for our adoption. So what's the bottom line? The bottom line, dear people, is that God's purpose to adopt us as His sons on the basis of the work of Christ is no secondary issue in the application of our salvation. At its inception, at its continuance, and at its consummation, it is central so that when God brings it all to its final culmination. Our final text, and then I'm done. Revelation chapter 21. Revelation chapter 21. John has described the new heavens, the new earth, the earth delivered from the bondage of corruption. He sees the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. And from the parallel passage earlier in the book, the New Jerusalem is not a thing, it's God's people, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. God himself is with his people in his immediate presence. And then verse 7, he that overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. It's as though God says, I'm going to hold back the best till last. No more sighing, no more crying, no more mourning, no more tears. All is glorious. And as the capstone over all, my people will fully enjoy without interruption all of the glory and privileges of being my adopted children. What's the place of adoption in the entire scope of God's redemption? In its purpose, it is central. In its accomplishment, it is central. In its application, it is central. Therefore, children of God, It ought to be our great desire to understand, as much as God will help us to understand, what does it mean to have all the privileges of a son or daughter of God? What are the implications and responsibilities laid upon me in this high and dignified and glorious position of a child of God? But I remind you, this is not for everyone. For John no sooner brings the people of God to the apex of their privilege in the age to come, but he drops down with this sobering word in Revelation 21.8. But for the fearful and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part shall be. in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Fearful. Fearful. That's some of you. If I really sell out to Christ, what will happen to my friends? I'm afraid I'll lose my friends. I'm afraid I'll have to give up my cherished dreams. Everything I've bent all of my energies for, fearful, keeps you back from Christ, unbelieving. You will not embrace Him on His turns. You will not sell out to Christ. Throw yourself upon His mercy. You will be classed and gathered along with the openly profligate, the lawless, the abominable murderers, idolaters, liars, the whole bunch of those who never came to sonship, never came into the privilege of adoption, the lake that burns with fire and with brimstone. Oh, my unconverted friend, I trust you'll be made jealous to become one of us. Who this very day, as John says, beloved now, are we the sons of God? And it doesn't yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Well, I hope you had your lens adjusted to its wide angle, as together we've considered these massive biblical realities of the place of adoption in the scheme of redemption from eternity to eternity. Let's pray. Our Father, who but a God of infinite mind and of infinite love, could have ever planned and executed so great a salvation. Forgive us for our dullness that we do not, with John, stand back stunned and amazed at the love that would move you to give us so high a status. We pray that your spirit would take and apply your word with power. O God, confirm your children in the glorious realities of who and what they are as your children. Make sinners jealous. Fill them with dread at the thought of meeting you as an angry judge and not as a loving father. And may they flee from the wrath to come and flee into the arms of a welcoming Savior. Seal your word and dismiss us with your blessing, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.