The Spirit of Adoption

 

“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

(Romans 8:15)

 

The Spirit of God dwelling in us leads us away from sin, and away from all dependence upon our own righteousness, in paths we did not know before. He leads us in the way we should go, in the path of faith, truth, and righteousness. In a word, he leads us to Christ, to his blood, to his righteousness, to all the fulness of grace in him, and into the presence of God. He leads us into the house of God, the ordinances of divine worship, the truths of the gospel, and at last into glory. He ever leads us to see the iniquity of our hearts and nature, to lay hold on Christ and salvation by him, and into the grace, and love, and favor of God, in Christ our Savior.

 

            Those who are thus led by the Spirit of God, “they are the sons of God,” the objects of God’s peculiar love and tender care. We were adopted by our heavenly Father as his own dear children before the world began, and have been given the Spirit of adoption by his grace in regeneration (Eph. 1:3-6; Gal. 4:6; 1 John 3:1-2). We did not become God’s children by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Holy Spirit came to us in grace and gave us faith to trust our Savior because we were adopted as the children of God from eternity. At God’s appointed time, every chosen child shall be made the recipient of God’s saving grace and given the Spirit of adoption in the new birth (Gal. 4:6-7).

 

            Chosen sinners come to know their election and adoption as the children of God, only as God sends his Spirit into their hearts in the saving operations of his grace, giving them faith in Christ. At the time of love, God sends his Spirit and causes his adopted sons to gladly receive the adoption of sons. When he creates faith in us, effectually applying the Savior’s blood to the believing heart, he gives us the right, in our own consciences, to be called the sons of God, enabling us to lift our hearts to heaven and, with confident joy, call God himself our Father. Blessed, wondrous grace this is in the experience of it!

 

            “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (v. 15). — The Spirit of God dwelling in us raises us into this blessed state of sonship. By regeneration, the new birth, we have been born into a new life, and made “partakers of the divine nature,” as Peter puts it. In the new birth God the Holy Spirit brings into existence a person who never existed before, a new person, a new creation, “which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:24). And “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” never bondage, but liberty, the ever-increasing liberty of free grace in Christ!