All the audio from Together for Adoption Conference 2008 is now online:
I had the privilege of preaching at Grace Church of Memphis yesterday on the cosmic significance of adoption within the story of redemption. You can listen to it here.
Justin Taylor introduces his sermon (23:35) on adoption by considering adoption within Islamic thought in contrast to its central importance within Christianity. I think you will find the entire sermon a great introduction to Scripture’s teaching on God’s gracious provision of adoption.
(HT: Jason Kovacs)
Reformation Heritage Books has just announced Dr. Joel Beeke’s latest book: Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption. Here’s the Ad for Beeke’s excellent forthcoming book. You can purchase a copy of it here. Both Ligon Duncan and Justin Taylor have endorsed this spiritually rich new book by Beeke:
“Dr. Beeke is well-known for his landmark work setting the record straight on the Puritan doctrine of assurance. Now he comes to our aid again with a superb treatment of the Puritans on adoption. I welcome his expert entry into this important field, and commend his keen insights and careful analysis to all who are interested in knowing ‘what the Puritans really said’ about adoption.” —Ligon Duncan
“In this short but spiritually substantive book, Dr. Beeke—a wise and careful ‘pastor theologian’ in the best sense of both words—introduces us to the Puritans’ comforting and transforming work on spiritual adoption. More than just historically informative, this volume should be warmly welcomed by all Christians who want to learn more about this crucial aspect of our identity as sons of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” —Justin Taylor
Yours truly was given the privilege of writing the foreword. Here’s what I wrote about Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption:
Foreword
Earthly adoption is horizontal. It is one human being establishing a relationship with another human being. Heavenly adoption is vertical. It is the eternal God graciously establishing a relationship with fallen human beings, creatures who are by nature “children of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2) or “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3).
God is an adoptive Father. Jesus, our Elder Brother, is God the Father’s eternal, only-begotten, natural Son. We believers are His children through adoption. This identity is central to who we are. As adopted children, we enjoy all the rights and privileges of the relationship that God the Father enjoys with His eternal Son. This is an amazing reality and eternal privilege.
Adoption is heavenly before it is earthly. One is what God does; the other is what we do. Adoption is something God has done and is doing before it is something we have done and are doing. Adoption was invented by God even before He created the world.
Adoption is how God brings us into His family. If adoption is first heavenly before it is earthly, why do we Christians so often think of earthly adoption before we think of heavenly adoption? Why do we think horizontally before we think vertically?
I think one reason for this is the neglect of the doctrine of adoption in the history of the church. In his massive, 2,600-page work The Creeds of Christendom, the church historian Philip Schaff only includes six creeds that contain a section on adoption because they are the only ones he could find while scouring almost 1,900 years of church history.
The early church was primarily concerned, and rightly so, with the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ because those doctrines were being attacked within the church. The Reformation and post-Reformation church necessarily focused on defending the doctrine of justification. These battles were all essential for the church to fight in the defense of Christian truth, but unintentionally they resulted in the church’s failure thoroughly to develop Scripture’s teaching on adoption.
Even though adoption has been relatively neglected in the history of the church, the Puritans have not contributed to that neglect. To my knowledge, no tradition in the history of the church has rejoiced in and proclaimed the truth of adoption as have the Puritans. Though the Puritans, as of late, have received bad press in their treatment of this great doctrine, their writings demonstrate that they esteemed nothing higher than the incomparable privilege of being God’s children through adoption.
Dr. Joel Beeke offers a great service to the contemporary church by examining the Puritans’ substantial and worship-filled treatment of the believer’s adoption by God. Beeke does a masterful job of setting the record straight on behalf of the Puritans. He has extensively studied the Puritans and is uniquely qualified to write on this most important subject.
The church today should richly benefit from this exposure to Puritan teaching on the biblical doctrine of adoption. If we as Christians even begin to approach the Puritans’ love of heavenly adoption, we will be spiritually richer for it. Therefore, I highly recommend Dr. Beeke’s book: Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption.
Part 4: Quick Survey of Adoption’s Marking Function (read the other parts here)
As I noted in part 3, God’s work of adoption has a “marking” function in the grand story of redemption. It plays a leading role from before the beginning of the unfolding story of redemption (before God created the world) all the way to the end (when all of God’s adopted children enjoy the full privileges of their adoption on the new earth in glorified bodies). Here is a brief overview of adoption’s marking function in the grand story of redemption:
Act One: In Ephesians 1:4-5, Paul states that in love God the Father “predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” This is really quite amazing: adoption’s marking function began before God created the universe. Even before the earth existed God marked us out (i.e., predestined us) for the great privilege of being His children through adoption. Adoption was not a divine afterthought. It was in God’s mind and will even before the dawning of human history. One amazing truth we learn from Paul’s words here, as John Piper has said, is that “adoption is greater than the universe.” Read the rest of this entry »
Part 3: Adoption’s Importance and Recovery (read the other parts here)
So how important is the doctrine of adoption and why should it be recovered? Its importance should not be evaluated by considering the number of times the term adoption is actually used in Scripture. One of the other reasons adoption has been neglected in church history, in addition to the one mentioned earlier, may be because Christians failed to recognize its importance since the term is only used five times in Scripture—all found in Paul’s epistles (Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5; and Ephesians 1:5). But we must be careful never to determine the importance of a doctrine solely based on the number of times Scripture uses it. For example, I think we would all agree that the Trinity is a doctrine of fundamental importance to the Christian faith. Yet the word Trinity is nowhere to be found in Scripture. Clearly, the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity is not determined by the frequency of its use as a term in Scripture. Its importance is established in other ways.
If adoption’s importance is not established by considering how many times it is used in Scripture, how is it established? Answer: Read the rest of this entry »
Part 2: The Neglect of Heavenly Adoption (read the other parts here)
If adoption is first heavenly (i.e., vertical) before it is earthly (i.e., horizontal), why do we Christians so often think of earthly adoption before we think of heavenly adoption? Why do we think horizontally before we think vertically? I think one reason for this is the neglect of the doctrine of adoption in the history of the church. In his massive, 2,600-page work The Creeds of Christendom, the church historian Philip Schaff only includes six creeds that contain a section on adoption because they are the only ones he could find while scouring almost 1,900 years of church history.
The early church was primarily concerned, and rightly so, with the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ because those doctrines were being attacked within the church. The Reformation and post-Reformation church necessarily focused on defending the doctrine of justification. These battles were all essential for the church to fight in the defense of Christian truth, but unintentionally they resulted in the church’s failure to develop thoroughly Scripture’s teaching on heavenly adoption.
One of the consequences of this neglect is that heavenly adoption is not on the radar of the Christian community’s consciousness as it should be. To overstate it slightly, when heavenly adoption should be a part of the Christian’s functional vocabulary, it isn’t. As a result, not only do Christians tend to think first about earthly adoption when they hear the word adoption, but also their thinking and attitudes toward the earthly practice of adoption are largely not informed and shaped by Scripture’s teaching concerning our heavenly adoption.
Fortunately, God seems to be awakening the church to the importance of the doctrine of adoption—an importance that is established by the central, God-ordained role it plays within the Bible’s unfolding story of redemption. We will begin exploring adoption’s role within redemptive-history in part 3.
What do you first think of when you hear the word adoption? Most people think of the earthly practice of adoption before they think of heavenly adoption, that is, they think of couples adopting children before they think of God adopting us as His children.
Throughout this new series of posts on the importance of adoption within the story of redemption I am going to use the word adoption in two different ways. First, I will refer to the practice of couples adopting children, both domestically and internationally, as earthly adoption. Second, I will refer to God’s adoption of us as heavenly adoption.
Earthly adoption is horizontal. It is one human being establishing a relationship with another human being. Heavenly adoption is vertical. It is God establishing a relationship with human beings. So what do you first think of when you hear the word adoption, earthly or heavenly adoption? Do you thoughts move vertically before they move horizontally? Most of us think earthly adoption before we think heavenly adoption. We tend to first think horizontally rather than vertically.
You may be wondering why I have asked this question. Let me explain by telling you a little about my family. God has given me the great and wonderful privilege of being an adoptive father of a multi-ethnic family. We are, what the adoption community calls, a
conspicuous family. God gave us our first two children (a girl and boy) through biology and our next two children, two black boys, Isaiah and Noah, through adoption. I absolutely love being the father of a multi-ethnic family! It has its unique challenges, but it is a great joy to be in a family that mirrors, in miniature and imperfectly, the multi-ethnic family of God. Shortly after we adopted our second black child, a husband and wife were sharing in our excitement over the new addition to our family. I happened to be holding him as we were talking. After I finished telling his adoption story, the wife paused, looked at our two boys and then asked, “Are you and Melissa planning on telling them that they are adopted?” Read the rest of this entry »