Adoption

Pastor Martin expounds the third and final experiential privilege of adoption — the pledge of God's paternal provision — built on Philippians 4:19 ('my God shall supply every need of yours'). He examines the substance of the pledge, the fourfold pattern of its fulfillment (God's true estimation of our worth, sensitive awareness of our condition, perfect knowledge of our real need, and proven provision for our greatest need in giving his Son), and the three house rules under which it is fulfilled: commitment to the priorities of the household, asking of the head of the household, and harmonious relationships with the other members.

Pastor Martin concludes his series on adoption by setting forth the responsibilities that flow from it, framing every obligation with the gospel pattern 'do because you have.' Following a thread he credits to J. I. Packer's Knowing God, he unfolds three great obligations of the adopted: pleasing the Father (drawn from Matthew 6 and 2 Corinthians 5:9), imitating the Father (from Matthew 5:43-48 and Ephesians 5:1-2), and glorifying the Father (from Matthew 5:13-16 and 1 Corinthians 10:31). He illustrates throughout with the pardoned criminal brought into the king's household and closes by urging believers to meet every temptation with 'I am a child of God.'

Pastor Martin moves to the second peak of sanctification — progressive sanctification — and covers four headings: the fact established (continuous mortification, growth, renewal, transformation, and pruning), the necessity explained (inescapable reality of remaining sin, undeniable imperfection of existing graces, and the unchangeable revelation of God's purpose), the essence asserted (mortification and conformation — negative and positive held in tandem), and the goal described (total eradication of all sin and complete conformity to the image of Christ). He closes by urging believers to hold the perfection of justification and the irreversibility of adoption clearly while pressing on in sanctification.

After a digression of several Lord's Days, Pastor Martin returns to the Here We Stand series with a lengthy review of the ground covered — the book we believe and obey, the God we worship and confess, and the salvation we receive and proclaim, including Christ in the mystery of His person and the majesty of His offices. He then transitions to the next major division: the cardinal blessings of salvation — calling, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. Using the analogy of a multi-course banquet, he argues these are not synonyms for 'saved' but distinct courses of one gospel feast. He closes with two framing truths — the orbit of these blessings (union with Christ, outside of which there is not a crumb) and the order of these blessings (those that bring us into union, those that are present fruits, those that are future benefits).

Pastor Martin continues his pastoral appendix on justification and sin, reviewing the first two principles and expounding the third: sin in a justified person must be dealt with primarily in terms of God's fatherly displeasure, not judicial wrath. He argues from Matthew 6, 1 Peter 1, 1 John 2, and Hebrews 12 that while God no longer wears the face of an angry judge toward the justified, He does wear the face of a displeased Father. He exposes the antinomian's discomfort with obedience and fear and the legalist's discomfort with filial confidence, and closes with a Murray quote summarizing the change of relation.

Pastor Martin opens a new section on adoption, arguing that adoption is an even higher blessing than justification — as a judge's son rescuing a criminal only illustrates justification, but the judge adopting the pardoned criminal as his own heir pictures adoption. He then traces adoption's centrality through four spheres: God's eternal purpose (Ephesians 1), Christ's temporal activity (Galatians 4), the initial application of salvation (John 1, Galatians 3-4), and the final application of salvation (Romans 8, 1 John 3, Revelation 21). He closes by rebuking the notion of universal fatherhood and urging believers to enjoy this pinnacle privilege.

Pastor Martin begins to unfold the nature of adoption by first carefully distinguishing the fatherhood peculiar to adoption from three other biblical senses of divine fatherhood: the eternal Father-Son relationship within the Godhead, the general fatherhood of creation and providence, and the theocratic fatherhood God sustained to the nation of Israel. Only the fatherhood revealed in Ephesians 1:5 and Galatians 4:4-6 — dependent on the Father's predestination, the Son's redemption, and the Spirit's attestation — is the fatherhood of adopting grace. He closes by urging unbelievers to renounce the family of the devil and pleads for the Spirit of adoption to light up these privileges in believers' hearts.

Pastor Martin distinguishes the legal and experiential dimensions of adoption with a vivid illustration of adoptive parents waiting to receive their child, then expounds three legal privileges of adoption: an inviolable sonship grounded in the work of Christ for us (John 1:11-13), a shared heirship as co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:14-17), and a conferred brotherhood in which the risen Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren (Hebrews 2:10-17). He urges believers to meditate on these privileges until they become felt realities and warns the unconverted of their alien, wrath-bearing position.

Returning to the cardinal blessings after a two-month digression, Pastor Martin moves from the legal to the experiential privileges of adoption and expounds the first and chief one: the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. Working through Galatians 4:4-6 and Romans 8:12-26, he shows that Christ was sent precisely to secure sonship, that the Spirit is freely given to every adopted child, and that the Spirit's primary work in adoption is to impart a filial disposition expressed in the cry 'Abba, Father.' He guards the witness of the Spirit from both dead orthodoxy and fanatical subjectivism, insisting it is never independent of the Word and the other fruits of the Spirit.

Pastor Martin expounds the second experiential privilege of adoption — the reality and certainty of God's paternal discipline — from Hebrews 12:1-13. He sets out three principles: the Father's love for his true children constrains him to discipline them (making the mathematical equation Father's love + adoption = discipline), God's discipline aims specifically at conforming us to the family likeness of holiness, and the proper response is to expect, understand, and submit to it. He closes with a sustained exhortation on the goodness of loving parental discipline both in the home and from God's hand.