Sunday, August 23, 2009

Vertical Adoption

Eph. 1: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Adoption gets some strange looks and ideas, even in the Church. There are those who think that adoption is fine as long as it is within the same race. There are those who believe adoption is fine as long as you sort of keep your family looking somewhat the same and with similar personality traits; they may even think that one should try to attain a similar intellectual level when adopting.

But what does God show us through His vertical adoption of His children? If there is every tongue, tribe and nation represented in God's family, then it should make sense that He is not interested in segregation within a family. It should make sense that He has chosen His children in eternity past and He did that without any merit on our part. He selected us before we had any intellect, looks or character traits.

There are people who would like to adopt that want to be selective of their children's features. Does that resemble How God made His choice of us? Isn't it awesome that He did not choose us because of something that we had done? If He did, then we would always have to keep doing it to remain in His good graces. But He chose us because He loves us and wanted to choose us. He chose us because He knew He could get glory in making us His own. When all we had to offer was sin and need, He chose us.

Now we have a "Big Brother" who makes intercession for us. Now we have an Advocate to the Father who will do what is best for us. Now we have an Advocate who has been tempted in all things, but He did not fail in any and He is making intercession for us. He can approach the Father, because He is perfect.

What an amazing story. This is the Gospel and everyone needs to hear it. We need to preach the Gospel to ourselves everyday. God did this for us!

4 comments:

Mistyanne said...

Hey Mr. Weinberg I never got to tell you, its really cool that you guys are adopting, and as a kid whose been adopted into a family, it will mean alot to the boy your adopting, and that your family is amazing to be willing to open your arms and love a child that was not born to you. It takes alot of love to be willing to do that.

Chuck Weinberg said...

Misty,
Thanks for the comment. God is good and He desires to use us if we just will submit to His leading.
All Christians have been adopted and we are called to take care of widows and orphans and it will be fun to watch what God has in store for the Weinbergs.
Thanks for your encouragement.

Randy said...

AMEN! I understand. People have been supportive of our adoption, but many are quite puzzled as to "why?" - from Ethiopia and at our age! It's a blessing to be able to give our testimony. Once the boys are here, we expect the stares and questions to intensify. Bring it on!! SJ

Leila said...

Adoption is such a picture of God's love - I am so blessed to understand just how total God's adoption of us is! It's not just hanging out in the family, my parents are my *parents,* and I am God's child completely. I'm so thankful He spread His love to all races - just imagine the variety there will be in heaven!