Redemption Accomplished and Applied: Adoption

I’m participating in Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program. The book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, and this week’s reading is the sixth chapter of Part 2: The Order of Application.

In this week’s reading, John Murray focuses on God’s gracious act of  adoption. In the application of redemption, it is by our adoption that we become sons and daughters of God.

Adoption is a distinct act, differing from both justification and regeneration, but related to them. The three acts—regeneration, justification, and adoption—always come together. No one is justified who does not become an adopted child  of God, and all God’s adopted children have already been born again. Like justification, adoption is a judicial act of God. In it God takes into his family sons and daughters who are also being made like him in their nature, making the renewal of regeneration a prerequisite to adoption. Adoption, Murray says, “is the apex of grace and privilege. … It staggers imagination because of its amazing condescension and love.”

There are scriptural distinctions to be made when thinking about the fatherhood of God. First of all, within the Trinity, the Father is the father of the Son. That is a unique relationship, and no one else shares in this particular father-son relationship. There is also the universal fatherhood of God, in which God is called the father of all people because he created them and provides for them. But more frequently, when scripture speaks of God’s fatherhood in relation to men, it is speaking of the special relationship he has with his people—the fatherhood that comes by redemption and adoption. “God,” Murray reminds us, “becomes the father of his own people by the act of adoption.”

In the last half of this chapter, Murray establishes that it is specifically the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, rather than the Trinity as a whole, who becomes our father in adoption. One text he uses as proof of this is John 20:17 where Jesus says he is going to “my Father and your Father.” The same person who is the Father to the Son is also the Father of the disciples. However, that Christ does not say “our Father” instead of “my Father and your Father” reminds us that our relationship to the Father is different than his own.

How secure this makes us as God’s own children!

Could anything disclose the marvel of adoption or certify the security of its tenure and privelege more effectively than the fact that the Father himself, on account of whom are all things and through whom are all things, who made the captain of salvation perfect through sufferings, becomes by deed of grace the Father of the many sons whom he will bring to glory?

What do we pray for in the fourth petition?

In the fourth petition (which is, Give us this day our daily bread,)[1] acknowledging, that in Adam, and by our own sin, we have forfeited our right to all the outward blessings of this life, and deserve to be wholly deprived of them by God, and to have them cursed to us in the use of them;[2] and that neither they of themselves are able to sustain us,[3] nor we to merit,[4] or by our own industry to procure them;[5] but prone to desire,[6] get,[7] and use them unlawfully:[8] we pray for ourselves and others, that both they and we, waiting upon the providence of God from day to day in the use of lawful means, may, of his free gift, and as to his fatherly wisdom shall seem best, enjoy a competent portion of them;[9] and have the same continued and blessed unto us in our holy and comfortable use of them,[10] and contentment in them;[11] and be kept from all things that are contrary to our temporal support and comfort.[12]

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Theological Term of the Week

repentance
A God-worked change within the sinner whereby he hates his sin and becomes genuinely sorry for it, turns from his sin to Christ, committing himself to walk in obedience to Him.

• From scripture:
  

  For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV)
  

  The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31 ESV)

• From The Second Helvetic Confession:

  Chapter 14 - Of Repentance and the Conversion of Man

  The doctrine of repentance is joined with the Gospel. For so has the Lord said in the Gospel: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in my name to all nations” (Luke 24:27).

  What Is Repentance? By repentance we understand (1) the recovery of a right mind in sinful man awakened by the Word of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, and received by true faith, by which the sinner immediately acknowledges his innate corruption and all his sins accused by the Word of God; and (2) grieves for them from his heart, and not only bewails and frankly confesses them before God with a feeling of shame, but also (3) with indignation abominates them; and (4) now zealously considers the amendment of his ways and constantly strives for innocence and virtue in which conscientiously to exercise himself all the rest of his life.

  True Repentance Is Conversion to God. And this is true repentance, namely, a sincere turning to God and all good, and earnest turning away from the devil and all evil. 1. REPENTANCE IS A GIFT OF GOD. Now we expressly say that this repentance is a sheer gift of God and not a work of our strength. For the apostle commands a faithful minister diligently to instruct those who oppose the truth, if “God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth” (II Tim. 2:25). 2. LAMENTS SINS COMMITTED. Now that sinful woman who washed the feet of the Lord with her tears, and Peter who wept bitterly and bewailed his denial of the Lord (Luke 7:38; 22:62) show clearly how the mind of a penitent man ought to be seriously lamenting the sins he has committed. 3. CONFESSES SINS TO GOD. Moreover, the prodigal son and the publican in the Gospel, when compared with the Pharisee, present us with the most suitable pattern of how our sins are to be confessed to God. The former said: “‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants’” (Luke 15:8 ff.). And the latter, not daring to raise his eyes to heaven, beat his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (ch. 18:13). And we do not doubt that they were accepted by God into grace. For the apostle John says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (I John 1:9 f.).

• From Big Truths for Young Hearts by Bruce Ware: 

  Repentance involves seeing sin for the deceitful and deadly thing that it is, so that we turn from it. Belief in Christ involves seeing Christ for the gracious and powerful Saviour that he is, so that we turn to him. These two acts go together in a person’s salvation. Repentance and belief are like two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one side of the coin without the other side also.
  

• From Arthur Pink in The Nature of Repentance:

  Evangelical repentance is a heart-apprehension of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is the recognition of the chief thing wherein I am blame-worthy, namely, in having so miserably failed to render unto God that which is His rightful due. As the Holy Spirit sets before me the loveliness of the divine character, as I am enabled to discern the exalted excellency of God, then I begin to perceive that to which He is justly entitled, namely, the homage of my heart, the unrestricted love of my soul, the complete surrender of my whole being to Him. As I perceive that from the moment I drew my first breath God has sought only my good, that the One who gave me being has constantly ministered to my every creature need, and that the least I can do in return is to acknowledge His abounding mercies by doing that which is pleasing in His sight, I am now over-whelmed with anguish and horror as I realize I have treated Him more vilely than my worst enemy.

  Oftentimes example is better than the most accurate definition. The New Testament furnishes quite a number of concrete instances, even where the term itself is not found. When the “publican” stood afar off and would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), we behold repentance in action. He recognized that awful moral distance which sin had taken him from God; he was deeply conscious of his utter unworthiness to gaze upon the Holy One; he unsparingly judged himself; he realized that his only hope lay in the sovereign mercy of God. So, too, the thief on the cross: in his words to his hardened companion, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation, and we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:40-41). There was no self-extenuation, but a ready owning of his sinnership and his desert to be punished.

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: What is repentance and is it necessary for salvation?
   
2. Bob Burridge: Repentance Unto Life
3. Arthur Pink: Repentance
4. R. L. Dabney: Repentance
5. Wayne Grudem: Doctrine of Conversion - Faith and Repentance (mp3) 

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