Spirit of Adoption
3 sermons on this topic
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.
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.