"When considering your monetary gifts and your gifts of talent to the church think of God's gift to us, his son, Jesus who died for our sins so we may have eternal life."

Carl Russ
Stewardship Team

Adoption to the Glory of God
by Jennifer Walrod

            Reflecting back on our gospel reading Luke 21:16 warns us of; parents betraying their children; brother betraying their sisters, friends betraying their friends. What does that have to do with adoption you might ask? Betrayal? It certainly comes to my mind? Let me ask you, when you think of adoption what comes to mind? Do you have positive regards for adoption or do you harbor some negativity.  Do you think of children; orphans; joy; sorrow; inconveniences, hardships; sacrifice; or a cross covered with the blood of Christ? Do you hear the conflict? Why is it we are so often surprised when something so “right” comes with such adversity and pain? Whether we are discussing the adoption of earthly children or God’s adoption of his chosen ones, adoption is messy business.  

Adoption is a journey of grief, a journey of angst, a journey of sorrow, brokenness, loss and a journey of joy that surpasses all expectations.  It is a journey of unrelenting perseverance and adversity but a journey done in light of things hoped for and certain of things unseen.  The relinquishment of a child for adoption comes with a sorrow rivaling the death of a child, and the placement of that child into an adoptive home comes with an odd bitter-sweetness.  This mixture of relinquishment and adoption; sorrow and joy, is not unlike the birth and ministry, death and resurrection of Christ for the adoption of orphaned sinners.  Could it be adoption is the very heart of the Gospel message? Could it be that adoption, whether heavenly or earthly, comes with such adversity because it is so right?  Looking back to Luke 21:15, Christ has a word for us; a word of comfort and encouragement, “For I will give you words of wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.”  In our remaining time together I would like to parallel six similarities between the earthly adoption of children and God’s adoption of those of us he has called into his kingdom family.  Whether you yourselves are adopted, have adopted, you have pondered adoption, or you support adoption, my prayer is you will leave with a desire to embrace adoption to the glory of God.

The text I have chosen for our time together comes from Galatians 4:4-8,

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a 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.”  I begin with this passage of Scripture as a reminder that the deepest, most meaningful act of adoption, is NOT humans adopting other humans.  Don’t misunderstand, humans adopting humans is a “good” thing to do.  However, the most meaningful, incomparably important act of adoption is God adopting sinful, corrupt, perishing humans.  In the most amazing act of grace, God planned since the foundations of the heavens and the earth, for the adoption of a people to call his own.  He knows the sacrifice, the sorrow, and the cost.  God sent for his son, to redeem those who were under the law.  God bailed us out of the jail of his wrath.  And He did this at the cost of his Son becoming a curse for us, nailing him to the cross and in so doing nailing our sin to the cross.  Let’s make no mistake; God is acutely aware of the costs associated with adoption.  He ordained that his Son would die in order to satisfy the legal cost of our adoption into God’s family. 

The first similarity is the costs of adopting.  The earthly costs of adoption pale in comparison to the sacrifice of the unblemished Jesus Christ.  Our earthly adoptions do however come with costs.  These costs are often financial.  As any parent, birth or adoptive, will tell you, these costs see no end.  Whether giving birth to a child or adopting a child there are undoubtedly monetary costs.  There are also emotional costs.  The time, stress, and disappointment of building a family through adoption can be overwhelming.  And the costs don’t stop once an adoption is finalized.  As parents we continue to experience the price of caring, worrying, and fretting over our children; juvenile children and adult children.  Adopting children may be viewed as a costly burden of time, money, stress, encumbered lifestyle and an intrusion on my freedoms spanning several decades.  Yet, there is something that just seems so right about this price tag and something that seems just so contrary to our pragmatic, self-absorbed culture.  If we belong to God’s kingdom family are we not called to live contrary to the world?  In the words of the Apostle Paul, we are “to be in the world but not of the world”.   Could it be that our adoption of a child with all the known and unknown costs displays our joy, delight and contentment in the power and supremacy of God? Could it be that our acceptance of the costs is a testimony in and of itself because it is so contrary to our culture? But we accept these costs with gladness because the price God paid to adopt us as children was infinitely more than what we might incur through our adoption of children. 

Secondly, adoption involves legal realities.  God’s own justice, holiness and law demanded that we, an unholy, unjust, sinful people, be punished and excluded from his presence.  However, in the most incomprehensible display of grace God sent his Son.  What does this mean? We are legally made children in God’s family through the acceptance of the cross.  This legal positioning, justification, comes before we experience the joy of the relationship.  This can also be said of adoption.  The legal relationship lays the foundation for the growth of family feelings.  In a wisdom we have come to expect, Mother Theresa stated, “we do not serve those we love, we love those we serve”.  I remember with great affection the raw candor in which the adoptive mother of a Korean born son, said to me.  “The first several weeks I would look at him and think, “you are SO Korean”.  One year later, this same adoptive mother cannot even find the words to describe the depth of her love and affection for “her son”.  After months of serving him, she no longer looks at her Korean son, she looks at him as “her son”.  The same could be equated to God’s adoption of us. God doesn’t look down on his chosen ones and see our fallen sin nature, He sees his Son, Christ Jesus reflected in our countenance.  He certainly could have and would have every right, to just save us from eternal punishment, a formal truce of sorts and upon death relegated us to a distant planet.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  God’s adoption of us is more than a philanthropic rescue mission.  He adopted us as his own, to dwell with us in the here and now and the future promise to live with him in eternity.  How inconceivable to think of adopting a child only to relegate that child to a cabin in the backyard.  God is not satisfied, nor should we be satisfied in just the legal relationship.  Upon the satisfaction of His justice, He is now in the process of transforming us into the likeness of the family; the resemblance of Christ.  God is relentless in his pursuit of our soul, affections, time, and attention.  He demands closeness in order that we will take on this family resemblance.  An adopted child will not pour over the court documents in order to make certain their place in the family.  They are certain of their place by the level of love, acceptance and nurturance which develops over time in the context of relationship.  That sense of security, belongingness is birthed out of relationship.  The parallels stand without explanation.

The third point, the adoption into God’s family and the adoption of children bring the rights of being heirs.  Back to our text which states, “and if a son and heir of God”.  An adopted child has the same rights as a birth child to the family name and inheritance.  Being an adopted child of God also brings an inheritance.  OH, how much time we spend dwelling on our family inheritance compared to the amount of time we dwell on our eternal inheritance.  Can we honestly say we are as captivated by heaven as we are by earthly pleasures and possessions?  I am reminded of a birth mother I served named Stephany.  Stephany has a compelling story of childhood abuse, physical and sexual, an adult life of homelessness, assault and truly nowhere to lay her head.  Despite the pain of saying goodbye to child number seven, she placed that baby boy into the arms of an LSS adoptive couple.  Just minutes before her discharged from the hospital she asked me why God leaves her on earth.  Before I had time to find some completely inadequate theological answer to her suffering, Stephany answered her own question.  She decided God leaves her on Earth to teach people not to be so judgmental and the trials she had faced in her life where making her that much more anxious for heaven.  Perhaps God makes our Earthly shoes too tight in order that we may long for the relief only heaven can offer.  Pastor John MacArthur tells of a time he traveled to the border of Tibet and met with villagers who were the offspring of a group of Russians exiled by Stalin’s regime.  After hours and hours of ministering to these villagers, exhausted and nearly tongue tied, Pastor MacArthur attempted to end their time together.  The villagers begged him to teach just a little bit longer.  What is it they wanted him to teach them? They could not get enough information about their heavenly home? I do believe it is difficult for Americans to understand the kind of abject poverty and suffering elsewhere on the planet when we live in the Disneyland of creation.  This group of Russian villagers were acutely aware of their tight shoes. 

We could spend days if not months relishing in this truth.  But in the interest of time my inadequate interpretation might be God saying something such as, “You like to have things? You think that’s important? Okay, here’s the deal, you own everything.  It’s just a matter of time and has absolutely nothing to do with your own efforts. Now relax and get down to the business of what is really important, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God”. (Rom. 5:2b)

The fourth comparison is adoption requires serious planning.  According to Ephesians 1:4, God’s adoption of us was planned before the foundation of the world.  This was not some sort of God losing control and now needs to resort to plan B.  Plan A was not a planet of children who never sinned and had a robot response to the Holy God.  No, Plan A was creation, fall, redemption, and adoption so that the fullness of God’s glory might be seen throughout the Earth.  Adoption was NOT second best in God’s plans and should not be considered second best in our plans.  There is something marvelously precious and unique about having birth children.  And there is something marvelously precious and unique about adopting children.  Having birth children is not Plan A and if that fails then we resort to Plan B.  Certainly, adopting children may be sequentially second but NOT second best.  I don’t know that any of us sitting here today who can be called a child of God would believe his adoption of us is anything but a supremely A+ plan.  God is also able to make the adoption of children a supremely A+ plan.

Now that Plan A is settled, the fifth similarity is adoption is often from a bad situation.  It certainly is for God and often is for children.  God did not find us cute, cuddly and irresistible.  He found us sinful, ugly, and corrupt.  Furthermore, He was angry about our condition.  Yet in an incomprehensible act of love He pursued us through adoption.  God’s adoption of a wrathful, sinful people crossed a greater chasm than any of our adoptions.  Despite race, country, culture, language or disability, a holy God adopting a sinful people takes the cake for contrast.  Perhaps God is communicating and sanctioning and blessing a powerful pattern of adoption.  Adoptions do not always come from nice, favorable, healthy, ideal situations. 

1 John 3:1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.” 

How great a love, that God calls us his children.  How great a love that a birth parent gives her child life.  How great a love a birth parent rejects the absolute right our society has given her by calling it her moral right to choose, and decides her child also has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  How great a love that a birth parent, contrary to every message the world is sending, decides the life of her baby trumps her “right to choose”.   How great a love a birth parent has for a child to make a choice out of the best interest for her child and places that child for adoption.  How great a love a couple has when they look beyond impoverishment, drug abuse, violence, race, culture, genetics and disabilities and calls an adopted child, “their own”. 

            Finally, adoption means that we may have to suffer now and experience glory later. 

Romans 8:22-23, “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”.

I am quite certain the majority of you have a story of groaning as you wait for the full-experience of your adoption – the resurrection of our bodies.  No more heart disease (physical and emotional), cancer, cholesterol, calories, hip replacements, or arthritis.  Looking a little further, isn’t it interesting how the Apostle Paul compares these groanings to childbirth?  Oh, the pains associated with conceiving, bearing and raising children.  The path toward adopting children also comes with much groaning.  State, federal and international red-tape; home-studies, FBI fingerprints, paperwork, background checks, reference checks, blood tests and an overall vulnerability that leaves some feeling downright victimized.  This path is often littered with great hopes and even greater disappointments; a loss of control; feelings of helplessness and frustration.  Groaning indeed.  However, lest we forgot, the path God traveled to adopt his children is littered with persecution, beatings, hunger, imprisonment, and blood. Our groaning is not done in futility but in eager anticipation, whether it is the adoption of a child (I have yet to see an earthly adoption covered in blood) or the promise of future grace.   May it never be far from our hearts and minds that, “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us”.  (Rom. 8:18)   

            Despite a path soaked with the very blood of God’s own Son, God chose to adopt us into his family.  Despite this path of adoption soaked with inconveniences, money, time, disappointment, sorrow, commitment, and various other encumbrances, I wonder if this church might be a church soaked in the culture of adoption.  What if the church embraced a culture of adopting children, with all the incumbent expenses and efforts, as a glorious display of our thankfulness and assurance of our position in God’s kingdom on earth and in heaven? What if this culture of adoption, the pondering of adoption, or the supporting of adoption, displayed the authority and influence of a life empowered by the Holy Spirit?

1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” 

What if the church, out of our deep and lasting satisfaction in Christ, made decisions that show the supreme worth and glorious riches of our adoption? What if, out of our unspeakable joy as God’s chosen ones, we make decisions contrary to our American culture?  Could it be that a culture of adoption exalts God’s name, high and lifted up and displays his glory among the nations? May Faith Lutheran Church of Hamilton, Montana display the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus as you embrace a culture of adoption; unspeakable joy in your adoption as a child of God and the adoption of children to the glory of God.  In the words of Eph. 3:20-21, may we all be a testimony “to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen!”