If my memory serves me correctly, this is the first Christmas I’ve actually celebrated my adoption into God’s family as I’ve celebrated God’s gift of His Son. If you think about it, what we celebrate during the Christmas season—God sending His Son to redeem us—was for the purpose of giving us adoption as sons. According to Paul, God the Father sent His eternal Son into the world so that we might receive the status of sons and eternally share in the Son’s communion with Him.

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:4-6).

So, as you celebrate the gift of God’s Son this Christmas season, celebrate the adoption you have received as a result of the eternal Son’s incarnate work. Here are several resources to help you celebrate your adoption this Christmas:

• Adoption: The Heart of the Gospel (John Piper)
• Predestined for Adoption to the Praise of His Glory (John Piper)
• What does it mean that we have been adopted by God (John Piper)
• Adoption is about Relationship
• What God has done in Adoption
• This is My Beloved Son…
• Adoption and the Trinity

Merry Christmas and Happy Adoption!

*Originally published at from hope to reality.