16 Truths You Should Know: Believers Belong

Friday

Aug282020

Friday, August 28, 2020 at 3:30AM

One of the joys of being a grandmother is seeing my grandchildren with their families. They love me, they love their cousins, they love their friends, but when push comes to shove, they all know their truest place is with their own parents and siblings. They belong, first of all, to a family.

When you believed the gospel, you were adopted by God. He brought you into his family. He became your father and you became his child (John 1:12). Before you believed, you were estranged from him, but now you have entered into a loving father/child relationship.

Adoption is one of the saving benefits that comes to us through Christ’s work. A believer’s sins have been forgiven, God’s wrath toward them has been propitiated, and they can be adopted by him.

Or to put it another way, a believer has been been united with Christ. “In and through Christ,” J. I. Packer explains, “God loves them as he loves his only begotten Son and will share with them all the glory that is Christ’s now.”¹Jesus is the unique Son of God, of course, but those united to him, as his siblings, are also God’s sons and daughters—sons and daughters by adoption.

A Perfect Father

Adoption is—or should be—an encouraging truth. If your earthly father loved and cared for you well, you are one step ahead in understanding what it is for God to be your father. Thinking of God as your father will naturally reassure you that you are secure in his love.

On the other hand, if your father was abusive or neglectful, you may need to reshape your idea of fatherhood starting, not from your past experience with your human father, but from what scripture says about God as father. He is the true and perfect father. Even the best human fathers are imperfect copies of him. In God’s family, writes J. I. Packer, “you have absolute stability and security; the parent is entirely wise and good, and the child’s position is permanently assured.”² God, as the ultimate father, will always love you, care for you, and never abandon you.

There are many benefits that come from our adoption into God’s family. First, adoption gives us a loving relationship with God. We can come to him as a child comes to a human father, expressing our deepest wishes and fears, and asking for help with everything. Second, God’s adopted children are led by the Holy Spirit to be obedient to him (Romans 8:13-14). God works his children’s obedience in another way, too—through his discipline. This may not seem like a benefit of adoption, but it is. His loving discipline works for our good, causing us to grow in holiness and keeping us faithful to him (Hebrews 12:7-11).

What’s more, as adopted sons and daughters, we receive an inheritance. We are, says scripture, fellow heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). “All the great privileges and blessings of heaven are laid up for us and put at our disposal because we are children of the King, members of the royal family, princes and princesses who will reign with Christ over the new heavens and new earth.”³

Not Yet Perfect Siblings

The family we join when we are adopted includes all the other adopted sons and daughters of God. Every believer is our brother or sister. Another name for God’s family is the church. The church as God’s family exists at two levels. First there is the family that includes all believers world-wide throughout history, and then there is the smaller family that includes all the members of a local church.

There are no only children in God’s adopted family. The New Testament assumes that all believers will be spiritually nourished and trained in a local church family of believers. Ideally, as believers fellowship, worship, and serve with their adopted brothers and sisters, they grow in love for God and each other. At it’s best, a local church is a little foretaste of our eternal heavenly family.

In this life, of course, none of our spiritual siblings are perfect, and some of our adopted family relationships can be difficult. Several years ago, a very elderly woman who had been attending my church passed away. In an article in the local paper marking her death, someone described her as “crotchety,” and that’s the perfect word for her. She was deeply concerned for the well-being of those who were in need, but she was not easy to get along with! She had been estranged from her biological family for most of her life, but in God’s family she found brothers and sisters who loved her well in spite of herself. And as they helped her with her many needs as she grew more feeble and even more irritable, they gained, at the very least, a little more patience.

This is the way it should be in God’s family. As members of a spiritual family whose bonds are stronger than the bonds of an earthly family, we should keep loving and serving each other even when it’s not easy, knowing God uses our experiences with each other—even the difficult ones—to sanctify us.

Are you thankful for your adoption into God’s family? Are you thankful that you are his child? Do you look forward to belonging to him forever?

1 Concise Theology by J. I. Packer, page 167.
2 Knowing God by J. I. Packer, page 209.
3 Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, page 740.

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