Word of the Day: Adoption

Greetings in Christ Jesus, Fellow Soldiers.

When you think of adoption, you probably think of that act by which a family take a child that does not belong to them by blood and makes that child their own. Many of you might know someone who has adopted child, with the ensuing challenges and blessings.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you have been adopted by God into His family. This is why Jesus is called the firstborn of many brothers (of which you are one!), and by the power of the Holy Spirit (God's irrevocable gift to His children), you are able to call out to the Almighty God as your Father (all of these concepts found in Rom. 8).

In other words, the entire Trinity is involved with your adoption into God's family.The beautiful thing about your adoption by God is that it is not dependent upon your blood or your work. It is dependent on God's love, which stretched forth from eternity into history through the work of Jesus Christ until it conquered your very heart by the Holy Spirit.

In fact, you were very much not a part of His family apart from His grace. You were not a child of God, but a child of wrath (Eph. 2). You were an alien to His promises and a stranger to His covenant. We know His love in this--while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5).

Next time you witness the love of a parent for an adopted child, remember that you too were once an outsider who now knows the love of the greatest Father in the world, through Jesus Christ our Lord.