The writers of the Confession describe those who are adopted by God as “all those that are justified.” This is important to understand because while justification and adoption are separate doctrines, as previously mentioned (the former being a legal blessing of salvation, the latter being filial), they are always linked. The point is, all whom God declares “not guilty” and imputes to them “the righteousness of Christ” (justification) become a son or daughter of the living God (adoption).

As we saw last time, adoption into God’s family is a glorious doctrine, one which is “most precious, heartwarming, and practical of all of our theological beliefs.” We’ve already examined some helpful definitions of adoption, but the one I would like to focus on in this post is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter twelve.[1] Here the authors say:

All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have His name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as by a Father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation.

Note four things about this definition:

The Recipients of Adoption

The writers of the Confession describe those who are adopted by God as “all those that are justified.” This is important to understand because while justification and adoption are separate doctrines, as previously mentioned (the former being a legal blessing of salvation, the latter being filial), they are always linked. The point is, all whom God declares “not guilty” and imputes to them “the righteousness of Christ” (justification) become a son or daughter of the living God (adoption). Simply stated, there is not a justified person in all the world who does not receive the tremendous blessing of being brought into God’s family. In fact, just as justification is a one-time, immediate, and permanent act, so also is adoption. Hence, John Murray aptly notes, “The person who is justified is always the recipient of sonship.”[2] He writes, “Adoption is, like justification, a judicial act. In other words, it is the bestowal of a status, or standing, not the generating within us of a new nature or character.”[3] Joel Beeke further observes,

“Justification is the primary, fundamental blessing of the gospel; it meets our most basic spiritual need—forgiveness and reconciliation with God. We could not be adopted without it. But adoption is a richer blessing, because it brings us from the courtroom into the family. ‘Justification is conceived of in terms of law, adoption in terms of love. Justification sees God as judge, adoption as a father.’”[4]

The Author of Adoption

God the Father is the author of adoption. It is He who, as the Confession states, “vouchsafeth” or graciously grants that we who are true believers would receive this spiritual blessing. In love, He predestined us or literally “marked us off in advance” for adoption as sons (Eph. 1:3–6). In His rich mercies, He ordained that believers would be taken out of the fallen mass of mankind who were headed to hell, and be brought safely into His redeemed, spiritual family on the earth. This was His eternal choice concerning us. For the great I AM said about us, “And I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:18). When such a grand truth is set against our great rebellion toward the Almighty, it is astounding. Who can fully comprehend it? Scotty Smith warmly remarks,

Of all the magnificent riches of the gospel, none is more to be treasured and pondered than our adoption in Christ. When the Father lavished his love upon us and made us his children, we weren’t just street-wandering orphans looking for a good meal and a warm bed. We were self-absorbed slaves to sin and death. Indeed, we weren’t in the orphanage of loneliness; we were in the morgue of hopelessness. Adoption, therefore, is the quintessential freedom for which we long, and for which we’ve been redeemed.[5]

The Mediator of Adoption

Jesus Christ is the sole Mediator of our adoption (Eph. 1:5; Gal. 4:4–5). The Westminster divines say this unequivocally when they write that our becoming the supernaturally born children of God was “in and for His only Son Jesus Christ.” By saying, firstly, that this was done “in…His only Son Jesus Christ,” the authors show us that they clearly understood that everything we receive as Christians comes to us not by a natural connection with Abraham or Moses, but exclusively through a spiritual connection with Christ. On this point Richard Muller concludes, “The concept of adoptio, therefore, also rests upon the Reformed teaching of the unio mystica (q.v.), or mystical union with Christ: graciously united with Christ, who is Son of God by nature, believers are made sons of God by grace.”[6]

The Reformed teach us that Jesus is the exclusive source for how we, who are joined to Him by faith alone, become the children of God. For it is only in union with Him, who is the beloved of God, that we are accepted with God (Eph. 1:6). All of this is based not on our works, but completely on the sinless life and substitutionary, sin-bearing work of Jesus on our behalf.

Consequently, adoption has only one ground: The person and work of Christ. Paul says this explicitly in Ephesians 1:5, when he writes that we have been predestined to adoption as sons “by Jesus Christ.”[7] This prepositional phrase can be rendered as “through (dia) Jesus Christ,” and its use in this verse in the genitive case sets forth Christ as the divine agent through whom our adoption is effected. This is so because Jesus came to “redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:5). Sam Waldron notes, “The whole story of the Bible is the story of how mankind’s original, filial relationship with God as their father is restored through the work of Christ.”[8] Dan Cruver further comments,

“Paul is revealing that adoption was not given to us apart from or in isolation from Jesus. Nor was it given to us in addition to Jesus. Rather, adoption is nothing less than the placement of sons in the Son. These two concepts—adoption unto the Father, and being in Christ—are so necessarily joined to one another as to be inseparable.”[9]

Second, the authors say that God ordained our adoption “for His only Son Jesus Christ.” I take this language to mean that our being adopted into God’s family was not only for our sake, but for Christ’s also.[10] In fulfillment of what is commonly called, “the covenant of redemption” Christ will see the salvation of His spiritual seed for whom He died and they will be given to Him as spoil (Isa. 53:10, 12; John 6:37–39). He will see the “travail of his soul, and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11, cf. Heb. 2:11–13). The late Dr. R. C. Sproul put it well when he said,

It is through the grace of God that we are brought into the family of God through adoption. And we, in turn, are the Father’s gift to the Son. From all eternity, the Father and the Son were in agreement in this enterprise, and so the Father was pleased to give us to the Son, and the Son was pleased to receive us from the Father. The Son was so pleased about this gift that He laid down His life for us while we were still His enemies, so that we might be His brothers and sisters.[11]

The Blessings of Adoption

We will now consider five blessings of adoption, according to the supporting Scripture provided in chapter 12 of the Westminster Confession.

A. We are Received into the Family of God

The confession says that we are made partakers “of the grace of” or the undeserved mercy of adoption, by which we are “taken into the number…of the children of God.” This means that our Father who is in heaven “cuts us off from the family to which we naturally belong in Adam as children of wrath and of the devil and grafts us into His own family to make us members of the covenant family of God.”[12] It means that we who were once “not a people” are “now the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10), since He has delivered us “from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1:13).

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