Prayer for Divine Guidance

Heavenly Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit bless and enlighten me as I read, reflect and rest in the boundless riches of salvation that Christ Jesus has won! Abba Father, draw me closer into the Divine Dance with You, Your Son, and Holy Spirit to continually transform my life here on earth to taste life with You in Heaven! Amen.

Reflection

Before there was “before”, the eternal Three mutually indwelled one another, sharing the relational unity of ecstatic, overflowing love. In the depths of eternity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were never lonely but forever existed in the delight of the Dance of love. Such boundless love could not be contained but spilled over, longing to be given away. “Thus, the Trinity is to be understood as the eternally dynamic communion of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which is not closed in upon itself but freely opens towards us in the incarnate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be brought into the eternal fellowship of God’s love.” (Thomas Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God)

As the Three who are One live in the communion of self-giving love, so by “adoption” God includes us in the perichoretic dance of eternal love. The apostle Paul proclaims God’s gracious act of adopting us as His children in Ephesians 1:4-5:

“He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of will.”

Having set forth our adoption, which God initiated before time, Paul announces our adoption as accomplished in time: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Paul looks to adoption as practiced by the Romans in order to illustrate God making us His beloved children. Rather than adoption (Greek: huiothesia, “placing a son”) being a way to care for orphans, Romans used it as a way to grant a person a new identity, status, and inheritance. Adoption often conferred on someone greater honor than being born into a family. For instance, Gaius Octavius was adopted by Julius Caesar and then made Emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus.

Through adoption all previous debt and obligation were cancelled and the old life and former family ceased to exist. The adopted was awarded the adopter’s name, privilege, and estate. Notably, Roman law made adoption more secure than natural birth, as a biological child could be abandoned, but an adopted child was forever part of the new family.

We can only imagine how Paul’s readers must have rejoiced in learning they had been adopted by the God of the universe! Their lives were no longer defined by their old lives of sin and shame but by their new identity and dignity as God’s own children into eternity.

Through Jesus Christ we are adopted into the life of the Trinity, sharing the relationship that Jesus the Son has always enjoyed with His Father and the Holy Spirit. Adoption means that God looks at us as His own sons and daughters, right alongside Jesus, loving us even as God loves Jesus. As the Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus, so that we are “in Jesus” and Jesus is “in us” (John 14:20), we actually share in Jesus’ Sonship. In Jesus Christ “we are adopted into the household of God, sharing in His Sonship by grace, not by nature, but in a union that is no less real.” (Thomas Torrance, The Mediation of Christ)

Being adopted into the dance and the life of the Trinity means that the Holy Spirit lives within us, exclaiming: “Abba! Father!” We actually share in the Son of God’s relationship with the Father: “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God” (Galatians 4:6-7).

How wondrous that the Father’s words spoken over Jesus at His baptism (Matthew 3:17) and at His transfiguration (Matthew 17:5), “This is my Son, the beloved,” are the words Father delights to speak over you and me! Our hearts rest in our identity as eternally loved and claimed by God our Father. We worship Him because the love forever flowing through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit flows through us!