In the Fullness of Time: Adoption | Galatians 4:4-7
Brian Hedges | December 18, 2022
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Galatians 4.
It has been well said that Jesus became the Son of Man in order to make us sons of God. That statement, in a variety of different ways, has been said by a number of different people. You can find variations of that from John Calvin or from C.S. Lewis. If you go all the way back to the second century, the earliest form of that statement that I’ve found is from St. Irenaeus, who was a theologian of the second century, and in his great apologetic work Against Heresies he said this:
For it was for this end that the word of God was made man: that he who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man, having been taken into the word and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God.
We could really summarize that great truth in this way: the purpose of the incarnation was adoption. The reason why Jesus became the Son of God among us—he was the Son of God from all eternity, but he became the incarnate Son in the incarnation—the reason he did that, the reason he was born and suffered and died, all that he went through was so that you and I could be welcomed into the family of God as God’s children.
We sang it this morning in Wesley’s hymn:
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that men no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth . . .
Or you might remember the words from that Christmas hymn by Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” In one of the verses he says,
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend on us, we pray;
Cast out our sin
And enter in;
Be born in us today.
All of those statements, all of those songs, are getting at the same idea: that somehow the purpose of the incarnation was our adoption, our being brought into the family of God. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning.
We’ve been working our way through this series looking at Paul’s great summary of the gospel in Galatians 4. So far we’ve looked at anticipation, incarnation, and redemption. Anticipation, as we’ve thought about what it means to remember and to anticipate and to realize the great truths of the gospel in our lives; incarnation, as we thought about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messianic Son, the divine Son, the incarnate Son, as the great object of our faith. Last week we talked about redemption, as we thought about our need for redemption from slavery to sin and death and the law, and how Christ has come among us, the incarnate Son of God, and he’s redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, so that we are now freed from sin and death.
Today we look at adoption, which really is the purpose of the incarnation and of redemption, as we can see here in Galatians 4. I want to begin by reading the passage, and today I want to read a couple of extra verses. We’re going to look at Galatians 4:4-7. I’ll read this passage and then give you the outline for the message. Galatians 4, beginning in verse 4.
But 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!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
This is God’s word.
I think we can break this passage down into three basic points. I want us to look at: first, the gift of adoption; second, the Spirit of adoption; and third, the hope of adoption. In the first point, I just want us to understand the positional reality, the change of status that is ours if we are adopted into the family of God. Then, in the second point, we’re going to enter into the spiritual, experiential reality of this as we receive the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of adoption, into our hearts. Then we’ll end by looking at the future aspects of adoption, the hope that we have as heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
1. The Gift of Adoption
First of all, point number one, the gift of adoption. You see the allusion to this gift in verse 5, where Paul has told us that God sent his Son, who was born of a woman and born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, “so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
“So that we might receive . . .” What do we receive? We receive a gift. What is this gift? It is the gift of adoption as sons.
What I want you to understand about this gift is that it is both a legal status and it is an objective relationship. Adoption confers upon us a legal status and an objective relationship.
The legal status means that if we’re adopted we are welcomed into God’s family as sons, with all the legal rights and privileges of sonship. There probably is, at least in part, a historical background to Paul’s use of this word “adoption.”
In the Roman jurisprudence, the Roman legal system, adoption was common, where children could be adopted and become the legal heirs of their fathers, just as it’s common in our culture as well today. The most famous example of this was Julius Caesar, who adopted his great-nephew Octavius. His great-nephew Octavius later became Caesar Augustus, who was the emperor of Rome. He was actually the emperor at the time when Jesus Christ was born. But he entered into all of the legal rights that belonged to him as a son of Julius Caesar, because he was adopted.
When the Scriptures talk about adoption and talk about us being children of God, they often emphasize this legal aspect of our status as God’s children. Let me give you an example.
In John 1:11-13 the word “adoption” isn’t used, but the whole idea of adoption and the rights that belong to us as God’s children are emphasized. You see this in John 1:11. Speaking about Jesus, it says, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.”
That word “right” really carries the idea of authority. He gave them the authority or the right to become the children of God, “who were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Do you see this? Part of adoption is receiving this legal status that gives us the rights and the privileges that belong to the children of God. This is built into the definition of adoption in the famous Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 34. Adoption is defined in this way: “Adoption is an act of God’s free grace whereby we are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.” To be adopted is to be a son of God and to receive all of the rights and privileges that belong to a son.
Now, I should just make a note here of the masculine terminology. It’s really clear in this passage. Paul is not using the word for children, he’s using the word for sons. We are adopted as sons, and if you are a son, or because you’re a son, you receive the Spirit of the Son into your hearts. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but you are a slave.
You might ask, “Oh, is Paul leaving out all the women? Is he leaving out all the female members of the church?” Not at all! He’s already said in Galatians 3:28 that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In fact, what he’s doing is he’s applying the masculine metaphor of sonship to all of the people of God, because all have the rights that belonged to sons in the ancient world. It was the sons who would receive the greatest portion of the inheritance, not the daughters. Paul is applying that to all who are in Christ, male and female.
We might say that in the same was as Paul applies the feminine metaphor of the Bride of Christ to all the Church, so that every male member of the body of Christ is a part of the Bride of Christ, so he applies the masculine metaphor of sons to all the Church, so that every member of the Church is a son of God. This is a legal status that is given to us as God’s people.
But it’s also an objective relationship. It’s a legal status, but it is an objective relationship, so that we now relate to God as our father. The relationship between the Christian and God is not simply the relationship of a creature to the Creator or a subject to a king or to a law-giver or to a judge; but it is a relationship of a child to a father.
This is so important for us to understand. We know this in our culture. Probably two or three decades ago a new term was invented in psychology; it was the term “father hunger.” You can read about this easily online. I Googled it and found this article by Edward Kruk in Psychology Today called “Father Absence/Father Deficit/Father Hunger.” It shows how so many of the problems among children and young people in our society can be traced to the absence of a father. Fathers are absent from their lives, and it leads to behavioral problems, delinquency, crime, addiction, low scores in school, homelessess—all these things are often rooted in the lack of the presence of a father. So we intuitively know this. We know this in our culture, we see it in the world, that children need fathers. Of course, they need mothers too, but there is a particular need for a father.
Well, God knows this. He knows that we need a father, so he becomes to us a Father to meet that deep father hunger in our hearts.
J.I. Packer, in his wonderful, classic book Knowing God, speaking of the fatherhood of God, calls adoption the highest privilege that the gospel offers. He says it’s even higher than justification.
Just think about these two terms, justification and adoption. Justification is primarily a legal metaphor, and it pictures the sinner who is declared righteous in the sight of God, righteous in the eyes of the law, who is absolved of all guilt and is counted as being in the right before God, the divine Judge. That’s justification. That’s wonderful; that’s a glorious privilege of the gospel, and as good Protestants we celebrate justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
But Packer says that adoption is even better than this, because adoption is not just a sinner being declared righteous in the eyes of the court, adoption is the sinner being welcomed into the family of God, so that he now relates to God as Father. It means that we have a seat at the table. It means that we are welcomed into the family with all of the love and the tenderness that belong to us as God’s children.
Packer puts it like this. He says, "If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the fatherhood of God. 'Father' is the Christian name for God."
I just want to ask you this morning, do you know God as your Father? Do you know him as your Father? If you trust in Jesus Christ, you are a son of God, you’re a child of God. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ and you’ve been born again of the Spirit, then God is your Father.
But it may be that you’ve never related to God in that way. Maybe you think of God as your Creator. Maybe you think of God as the law-giver. Maybe you think of God as the Judge, and you tremble as you think of having to give an account to God, the Judge; but you’ve never thought of God as Father.
If that’s where you are this morning, I just want to encourage you that the good news of the gospel is that the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ is the gift of adoption, the gift of a new relationship with God. You can receive that gift, and the way you receive that gift, as John says in John 1, as we’ve already read it, is to receive Christ and to believe in his name. Or, as Paul says in Galatians 3:27, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” Through faith in Christ. Depending on Christ, trusting in him, and receiving him into your heart and life, you become a child of God. It’s the gift of adoption.
2. The Spirit of Adoption
But this gift is not only an objective positional reality that gives you a new legal status and this objective relationship with God. It is also a profoundly experiential reality. That leads us to the second point, the Spirit of adoption.
You have this in verse 6. Notice how Paul states it. He says, “And because you are sons—” There’s the adoption; that comes first. “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
What Paul is saying here is that the great sign and seal of our adoption is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. We just need to think for a few minutes about what this means, who this Spirit is and what it means to have the Spirit indwell us as the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of his Son.
The Scriptures tell us the Spirit is the promise of the Father. God had promised the Spirit. In fact, if you go back to the Old Testament—especially you see this in the Old Testament prophets—again and again God promised that there would come a day when he would pour out his Spirit on his people. This would be part of the new covenant. It would be a part of the blessing given in the last days. Read the prophet Joel. That prophecy is fulfilled in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit is poured out on the church.
Paul connects this promise to the promise given to Abraham. You remember what God had told Abraham? God had told him, “Abraham, I’m going to give you a son, a descendant, and through your son all the nations, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed.”
In Galatians 3 Paul connects that promise, the promise to Abraham, to the gift of the Holy Spirit. You see this in Galatians 3:13-14. We looked at verse 13 last week, but notice that everything in verse 13 leads to verse 14. Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”
Yes, good news, beautiful; that’s glorious. But why, Paul? Why did Christ redeem us from the curse of the law? Look at verse 14. “So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”
The whole reason why Jesus came and died is so that you can receive the Holy Spirit, you as a Gentile could receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. This is the promise of God. It is fulfilled as the Spirit is poured into our hearts and lives.
Paul says, “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” So the Spirit here is called the Spirit of his Son. Why is the Spirit called the Spirit of his Son?
I think the reason is because of the close relationship between Jesus the Son and the Spirit. Jesus, as the Messianic Son, is what theologian Graham Cole calls "the Bearer and the Bestower of the Spirit." He bore the Spirit, he’s the bearer of the Spirit; and he bestowed the Spirit.
Go back and read the Gospels. Read the Gospels, and read the Gospels with an eye for the work of the Spirit in the life of Jesus. What you will see is that in the incarnation, at his baptism, in his temptation, in his earthly ministry, in his transfiguration, at the cross, in the resurrection—I mean, just read it in the Gospels and the epistles—it is abundantly clear that the Spirit is present all the way through, right alongside Jesus.
I love the way Sinclair Ferguson puts it. He says, “From womb to tomb to throne, the Spirit was the constant companion of the Son.” The Spirit was there with the Son, empowering the Son, filling the Son, anointing the Son. The Spirit was given without measure to the Son; he is the bearer of the Spirit.
But then, after Jesus dies and is raised from the dead and ascends to the right hand of God, what does he do? He gives. He bestows the Spirit upon the church on the Day of Pentecost. Therefore he is called the Spirit of the Son. The Spirit comes to us with all of the character of the earthly life of Jesus, applying that then to our lives, so that the very same Spirit who accompanied Jesus through all of his humanity is the Spirit who now indwells us as the Spirit of the Son.
This Spirit, the Spirit of the Son, is given to those who are sons. This is one of the great privileges of adoption, to receive the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Paul in Romans 8 calls this Spirit—the Spirit of the Son, the promised Spirit—he calls the Spirit the Spirit of adoption. Romans 8:15-17—this is a parallel passage to Galatians 4, and I want to read it and I want to point out a couple things from it. In Romans 8:15-17 Paul says,
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Notice, in both passages Paul says that we cry out, “Abba! Father!” But in Galatians 4:6 he says that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So it’s the Spirit inside us who is crying out. But in Romans 8 he says we have received this Spirit, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
It shows us one of the great mysteries of prayer, that at one and the same time the Spirit indwelling us is praying. Paul goes on to talk about how the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. But at the same time, we are praying. The heart of his cry out to the Father is the cry, “Abba! Father!”
The words here are so important. The word “cry” is a very vivid word in Greek. It’s a word that means “to cry aloud,” “to cry with a loud voice.” It’s a word that connotes emotion. It’s used of the disciples when they cry out to Jesus to rescue them in the storm, of Peter when he’s about to sink in the waves and he cries out, “Lord, help me!” It’s used of people who cried out to Jesus for mercy; think of Bartimaeus, blind Bartimaeus in Jericho in Mark 10. He cries out, “Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” It’s used of Jesus himself when he cried out on the cross in Matthew 27.
Paul says that if we have received the Spirit into our hearts, we cry this instinctive cry to the Father, and we are crying out in our suffering, in our griefs, in our sorrows. We’re crying out to God! What do we cry? We cry, “Abba! Father!”
The word Abba is an Aramaic word, and it was a term of endearment. It was similar to a word that children might use today as they call their father Papa or Daddy, a very close, intimate word that shows the close, trusting relationship between a child and his father. Paul is telling us that as the children of God who are adopted into the family and who have received the Spirit of adoption into our hearts, this is what it’s like. It’s this deep, personal relationship with God, where we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
It’s the same word that Jesus would use in his own prayers to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane.
Brothers and sisters, this gets us to the deep, personal, experiential heart of Christianity. Listen, Christianity is not merely believing facts and truths about God and Jesus. It includes that; there is no Christianity without truth. It includes that. But it’s more than just giving a mental assent to facts and truths. Christianity is a profound experience of God’s love and God’s grace in our hearts that is brought by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and it absolutely changes our lives.
It’s all the difference in the world. The Spirit makes all the difference in the world between mere religion and an actual thriving, flourishing relationship with God as our Father.
One of the great historical examples of this is John Wesley, who was so instrumental and used by God in that First Great Awakening in the 1730s and ’40s, and the father of Methodism. John Stott, in his commentary on Galatians, tells the story of Wesley. Wesley, in his postgraduate Oxford days, was a member of the Holy Club, this religious club or society of Oxford graduates who were so devoted to their religious practices.
Here is Wesley, the son of a clergyman. He is himself ordained in the Church of England. Stott says he was “orthodox in belief, religious in practice, upright in his conduct, and full of good works.” He and his friends are tirelessly wearing themselves out; they’re visiting the inmates in prison, they are feeding the children in the slums of the city, they are observing the Sabbath day on both Saturday and on Sunday, they’re going to church, they are taking communion, they are giving alms, studying the Bible, they are fasting, and they are praying—and they’re absolutely miserable. They didn’t know anything of the life and the joy of being the children of God.
Everything changes when Wesley witnesses the vibrant faith of the Moravians, and then later at the Aldersgate Street chapel, when he hears the words of Martin Luther read from his preface to the book of Romans, and Wesley says his heart was strangely warmed and he began to trust in Christ and in Christ alone for salvation.
After all of that took place, Wesley looked back, and this was his comment on all of his religion in those earlier days. He said, “I had even then the faith of a servant [or slave], though not that of a son.”
Paul here is saying something similar. He’s saying, “You’re no longer slaves, but now you’re sons, if you’ve received the Spirit of adoption.” I’m telling you, this is what makes a difference between Christianity as a mere religion and Christianity as a vibrant, thriving, flourishing relationship with God. It’s the power in the ministry of the indwelling Spirit in your heart and life.
So once again I ask you, have you received the Holy Spirit? I’m not saying to look for some huge Damascus-road experience, but can you discern the quiet but real work of the Spirit in your heart and in your life that not only convicts you of sin but reproduces the character of Christ in you and that points you, over and over and over again, to God as your Father, so that at the very heart of your prayers you are crying out to God, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit of adoption.
3. The Hope of Adoption
If this is true of you, it means that you are an heir, and if you are an heir, you have the hope of a great future inheritance. That’s point number three: the hope of adoption.
Here I want to add to the picture a little bit more. I want you to see that adoption is not only a positional reality—a new legal status and an objective relationship with God—and it’s not only this deep, experiential, spiritual reality because of the ministry of the Spirit in your heart and life; but it also means that we anticipate and hope for a future reality.
We have to understand hope in the Bible. Hope in the Bible is not a mere wish. Hope in the Bible is not a flimsy fancy that may or may not be fulfilled. Hope in the Bible is a confident expectation of future good. That’s what hope means: a confident expectation of future good.
Paul here alludes to that hope in verse 7 when he says, “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
What is an heir? An heir is someone who is going to receive an inheritance, and in Scripture it’s very clear that the Holy Spirit is the down payment on this inheritance. But what is the inheritance? What is it that we’re hoping for? What are we still waiting for? Advent is all about waiting, it’s all about anticipation. We enter into the hopes and the expectations of the Old Testament people of God, but we also hope ourselves. What are we hoping for? What are we waiting for in the second advent of Christ?
I think we can sum it up in two things. We’re hoping for the day when we will see Jesus as he is and we will be like him, and we are hoping for the day when he will make all things new, and this world itself will be renewed into a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth.
Let’s look at two passages together quickly.
1 John 3:1-3. We’ve already read it in our assurance of pardon, but read it again now. With everything that we’ve understood so far about adoption this morning, read it. As we read it, I want you to see how the Bible uses hope as the great motivation for living a holy life. John is writing, and he says,
"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now [that’s your identity!], and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." There’s your destiny! And now, in light of that, verse 3, here’s your responsibility; here’s your behavior. "And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."
This is the way the Bible teaches us to live. It’s not merely giving us commands, but it’s rather giving us expectations in light of our new identity in Christ, in light of our glorious destiny in Christ. Because this is who you are, because this is who you will be, now live in this kind of way.
Listen, this morning if you want to be more like Jesus, if you feel in your heart and in your life the need to overcome anger or lust or anxiety or any other sin problem, here’s the blueprint. Realize who you already are in Christ. Realize your identity in Christ. Then remember your destiny. Your destiny is perfection! You’re going to be like Jesus someday, completely like Jesus! You’re going to be conformed to his glorious image. Now live in the hope and in the strength of that, and begin imitating Christ now. Purify yourself even as he is pure.
This is what we hope for: likeness to Christ.
Here’s the second thing; Romans 8:18-23, where Paul continues to use adoption language, but he uses it in this future aspect as he talks about the hope of creation itself. Notice what he says. This is amazing.
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."
You see here that there’s this already/not yet aspect to adoption. We already are adopted because we’ve received the Holy Spirit, but we’re not yet fully adopted, because we’re waiting for the redemption of our bodies, when Jesus Christ comes again, and the world itself is renewed and redeemed in the revealing revelation of the sons of God.
Isaac Watts said it so well:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make this blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
Creation itself is going to be redeemed. Our destiny, brothers and sisters, is not merely to go to heaven when we die and live eternally in a disembodied spiritual existence. It’s more than that. It’s that someday these old bodies that die and then decay in the grave are raised up materially, gloriously, resurrected, so that our bodies are renewed and we are made like Jesus Christ, and we live in a resurrected world, a new heavens and a new earth, where all things are made new. This is what we hope for.
This is what we do in Advent. To go all the way back to the first Sunday and Brad’s message, in Advent we remember, we anticipate, and we realize. We remember as we look back to the promises of God, as we enter into the hopes and expectations of God’s people in the Old Testament, as we look at what Jesus did in his first advent. We anticipate as we look forward to the hope of glory, as we wait for the second coming of Christ, and we hope for all that God has promised us in him. And we realize as we live in the reality of this hope and this grace in the here and now and seek to be like Jesus and live in the power of his promises.
Just think for a moment as we close about specific situations in your life where this is what you need. You need to remember, you need to anticipate, you need to realize.
Think about grief. A lot of us feel grief, maybe even more than joy and celebration, when we enter into the holidays, because you’ve lost a parent or you’ve lost a child or you’ve lost a spouse or you’ve lost a sibling or someone else that you love. Or maybe the memories of your childhood, maybe those are sweet, but it just feels like loss. What you feel is grief more than joy.
But if you remember the gospel, if you remember what God has done and you anticipate all that Christ has promised and you seek to realize and live in the power of those promises in the here and now, then you can be like Paul and you can say, yes, we sorrow, but we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. We grieve in a different kind of way, because we know that the best is yet to come. We know that there is reunion. We know that there is redemption. We know that there is glory down the road. So we do not sorrow as the world sorrows.
Or think about the more mundane anxiety and stress that comes to us in the holidays. I mean, there’s a lot of stress that happens in the holidays. You’re traveling, you have family coming to visit, your schedule’s upended, you’re spending a lot of money—all this stuff that happens in the holidays. What do you do with the stress? I mean, sometimes we just try to white-knuckle it, grind our way through. Or maybe in our worst moments we cope through escapism or even addiction. The gospel gives us a better way. It tells us that the pressures, the afflictions—the word carries the idea of the pressures, the stresses of this present age—are working for us a far greater weight of glory.
So these stresses aren’t something that we merely get through, they are actually the tools that God is using to prepare us for the glorious future down the road. Paul says the glory is not worthy to be compared to these light and momentary afflictions.
Brothers and sisters, this hope makes all the difference in the world, the hope of the gospel that is given to us in Christ.
We’ve seen three things, in summary: We’ve seen the gift of adoption, a new status and relationship with God as we relate to God as our Father; the Spirit of adoption, the life-changing ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit in our lives; and the hope of adoption, that we will be like Jesus in a world made new.
Have you embraced that hope as your own? If you have, live in the power of that hope during this season. If you haven’t, let today be the day when you become a child of God by receiving Jesus and trusting in him as your Lord and Savior. Let’s pray together.
Gracious and merciful God, we thank you this morning for the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you that you sent your Son to be incarnate among us and to redeem us from sin and death and the law so that we could be brought into your family, so that we could become your children, so that we could relate to you as our Father.
We pray this morning that we would know this truth and all of the profound experiential reality of it; that we would know the ministry of the Holy Spirit, filling our hearts, shedding abroad the love of God in our hearts, as Paul puts it; and that we would from our hearts cry out to you as our Father: “Abba! Father!” May this birth within us a deep and powerful hope, hope that sustains us through our trials and sufferings, hope that motivates us so that we live in holiness and in imitation of Christ our Savior, as we anticipate who we will someday be when Christ is revealed.
Father, I pray that even as we come to the table this morning that these moments would be moments of spiritual renewal for us, as we set our hopes on Christ, as we remember what he has done, and as we anticipate what is yet to come. So draw near to us, we pray, give your Spirit to us in full measure, and help us to glorify and to worship you. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
