What is the beautiful image of adoption in the Bible?

Paul uses the image of adoption five times in his writings. Once describing God's adoption of Israel (Romans 9:4), and four times describing the adoption of Gentiles into his family (Romans 8:15, 23; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5). /p>

But what does Paul mean when he talks about being adopted by God? The answer to this question is more complicated than we might think based on current adoption practices.

Adoption in the Roman world

Adoption today typically involves infants or young children, usually due to the inability to have children or provide homes for children who otherwise would not have loving families. But adoption was quite different in the first-century Roman world.

At that time and place, adoption was all about finding an heir. In the Roman aristocracy, families were generally small, infant mortality was high, and having no sons who could inherit the estate was not uncommon.

Adoption provided a means of being able to perpetuate the family name and the estate when a natural son was not available.

Certain aspects of Roman adoption are particularly relevant to Paul's use of adoption. First, as mentioned above, adoption was about inheritance. The reason for the adoption was to provide an heir when one was not otherwise available.

Only free Roman citizens could be legally adopted. Non-citizens and slaves could not be adopted. However, a slave could be freed and then as a freedman he could be adopted.

If the slave belonged to someone other than the one who freed him, he would have to be bought first. And once the purchase price was paid, the slave could be freed.

When a person was adopted, they were given a new name, the name of the family they were adopted into. If the adoptee was not previously the head of his family, he brought nothing with him into the adoptive family.

However, while he was the head of his original family, whatever came with him was placed under the ownership of his new father. Thus, the adoption essentially resulted in a fresh start in life.

slaves of sin

Paul's use of adoption is not simply the adoption of one Roman citizen by another. Instead, it focuses on the adoption of one who was a slave and must first be redeemed and freed from slavery before adoption.

Several times in Paul's letter to the Roman church, he refers to us as having been slaves to sin (Romans 6:6, 16, 17, 20; 7:14, 25) or that sin was our master (Romans 6:14).

Sin is not used here in the sense of individual acts of disobedience. Rather, sin personifies our fallen human nature.

We were not free to choose our own future. We were slaves and had no prospect of escaping this slavery. While we had limited freedom to order our lives, in the end we were still slaves to sin, possessed and controlled by this nature.

redeemed and set free

Romans 6:17-18, while affirming that we were slaves to sin, says that we have now been set free from this slavery of sin.

And in Revelation 5:9, the heavenly host sang to Jesus: "Worthy art thou to take the book and to open its seals, for thou wast slain, and with thy blood thou hast purchased for God people from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

God has done for us what we were unable to do for ourselves. He paid the price of our freedom to our former master. And he freed us.

Adopted into the family of God

As mentioned in the introduction, Paul uses the phrase “parental adoption” five times in his writings. We were not originally born into God's family as sons and daughters. We were slaves to another master. But God, who purchased our freedom, adopted us into his family.

We are no longer outside looking within. We are now intimate members of the family of God. In Romans 8:15, Paul says, "The Spirit you received brought about your adoption as sons. And through him we cry out: 'Abba, Father'.”

Abba is an Aramaic word for father. According to the Vines Expository Dictionary, it's the word a young child would use for his father, making it the equivalent of our "daddy".

Not only are we children of God now. But we are called "beloved children" in