3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
God heard our prayers and blessed our family conference; it was convicting for all of us. We should be careful not to hear it and say, “Oh, it is tough, a very high standard; we can never change like this,” or, “It’s very humbling,” and then conveniently forget it as the days go by. If you try to forget like that, all the truths we learn in Ephesians will also bring us those practical applications in chapter 5 onward: wives subject to husbands, husbands love wives, children obey parents. Why should we strive for such a responsible family life? Because we want to glorify God, who has blessed us with such glorious blessings. We want to bless him through our lives. What will motivate us to overcome our native laziness, remaining sin, and selfishness and live such a high standard of family life, unlike worldly people? It is by deeply grasping how much God has blessed us and who we are in Christ. It’s these truths, by which we climb to the heavens and learn to bless God like Paul, that transform us by the renewing of our minds. These truths will reorient and change our focus. Instead of always looking at ourselves, our ego, and our selfishness, we start seeing life from God’s perspective: what God has done for us, what he is doing for us, and what he will do for us. It will make us worship him like Paul. It is the depth of personal and family worship that leads to such a lifestyle. These truths, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will give us the motivation and grace to strive toward such God-glorifying personal and family lives.
We saw the glorious truth of the seven wonders of God’s election, a thrilling truth that makes us realize God’s love for us didn’t begin when we believed him, not even at the cross of Jesus Christ, but that God the Father set His heart upon us from before the foundation of the world. This means that there has never been a time in eternity when he didn’t love us. The eternal God did not exist at any time when His love was not set upon you and me. It’s thrilling to realize how much God valued us. It’s something to fall down on your face and praise God for! As we forget ourselves, we feel like standing on the highest peak of eternity, blessing God that out of millions of people, he has elected us in eternity. We think there cannot be anything beyond this; this is the peak. Paul stuns us in verse 5 with another marvelous, in fact, a higher blessing than election, to intensify our worship and bless God: predestination to adoption.
Oh, how blessed our lives would be if we just realized this blessing. There was an orphanage with 12 boys. All were always discouraged, fearful, and worst in studies. They were depressed. There was no love, no care, only cruelty and fear. They were regularly beaten with rods and had tissue paper put in their mouths and tied for days without food. They always lived in fear, in a spirit of bondage and guilt. A father adopted the 12 children and showed such love and care. The love of the adopted parents conquered all their fears. They grew in the assurance of that love. They began to do well in school, went to top universities in the U.S., and became great men in society. You have to multiply that by infinity to realize our spiritual state. We were in the orphanage of the devil, who only kept beating us with rods, filling our consciences with guilt, our hearts with fear, making us slaves to sin, filling us with worries in this world, and never allowing us to do anything for God’s kingdom. In salvation, God adopts us and gives us the supreme status of his children. He gives such an assurance of love and care that we rise up to face anything in this life, overcome any sin or weakness, and become more than conquerors through him who loved us. Predestination to adoption is an all-conquering truth.
In verse 5, we see six wonders of predestination. I couldn’t get seven this time.
- The Act of predestination
- The Goal of predestination
- The Object of predestination
- The Cost of predestination
- The Manner of predestination
- The End of predestination
1. The Act of Predestination
Verse 5 uses the word predestination, a big word. If you want to stop a heated discussion or argument, just throw out this word. “What do you think about predestination?” Everyone stares at you in hush silence. It is a high concept. In simple words, the two English words combined to make up the one Greek word mean “pre,” something before, and “to destine,” to mark or to appoint. Predestinated means to appoint beforehand.
This is a doctrine of enormous comfort for the Christian. The Confession of Faith, in its second chapter, talks about the decree of God. God has decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass. From the smallest things to the biggest, everything is predestined. In that decree, paragraph 3 says, “He has predestined some to salvation to glorify his grace and some to damnation to glorify his justice.” He predestined the end of all his creatures. Paragraph 6 says not only the end but also all the means as to how that end will be achieved. Predestination is God’s plan for the ages.
Predestination includes all sinful acts. Amazingly, Acts 4:27-28 says, “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.” The NASB says, “purpose predestined to occur.” All the cruel, sinful acts that happened around the cross were all predestined by God. Predestination is an eternal act of God where he appoints everything that will happen. Everything in this life, good or bad, is all predestined by God. It emphasizes three things: the sovereignty of the activity of God (he predestined by his sovereign will), the certainty of that activity (being almighty, he will accomplish all he predestined), and the eternity of that activity. Oh, if you grasp the weight of the word “predestination,” if God predestines something, it is a done deal. Nothing in the whole universe can ever hinder that; it is his decree. The word “predestination” brings together God’s sovereignty, certainty, and eternity. It is an awesome, mysterious truth, just as on the cross, when the whole world seemed to be doing something against God and his will, God was able to use all that to accomplish his purpose. How? The Confession says, “in which appears his unsearchable wisdom of God in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.”
2. The Central Goal of Predestination
Predestination is an awesome, scary act of God in one way. How does that act make Paul cry out, “Blessed be God”? Because of the central goal of predestination. Notice it in verse 5: “having predestined us to adoption as sons.”
Amazing! Paul tells us God not only elected us. A king may elect servants; it is a big honor. But the Lord in heaven has not only chosen us, going beyond that, he has determined to bestow the highest eternal honor of the universe on us. Notice he predestined us to adoption as sons. Sisters, I am learning to reduce my male-centered chauvinism; we can add daughters. God predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters. This means that in this great act of his predestination, where he determined all acts that would come to pass, he not only wished, not only voted or elected, but he willed, and as the central act of predestination, he predestined us to adoption as sons. It is one thing for God to wish, will, or desire, but predestination means it is a done deal. No creature can ever stand against God’s predestination. The amazement is that this great God, in this great act of predestination, has lifted me to the highest honor of adoption. Oh, if you just understand the word, we will really faint. This idea overwhelms the Apostle John, who is amazed and cries out: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” May the Holy Spirit help us. When I say the word “adoption,” certain things register there in the computer called your brain. I want to reach into that computer and press “alt delete” to throw away all your preconceived ideas about adoption and infuse a fresh biblical idea of adoption. This biblical idea alone will make you stand back and be amazed in wonder and bless God.
The concept of God adopting us has no parallel in human experience. Nothing in human experience even comes close to this. One preacher says it is useless to look for human comparisons, for the adoption of which Paul speaks surpasses anything that takes place on earth. Humans adopt children to fulfill a need, but God had the most blessed, satisfying, eternally perfect, and fulfilling Son. There was no need for him to adopt. Yet he predestined us to be adopted. Let us try to grasp what made Paul rise to this height of blessing God. This is the crowning blessing of redemption, the highest privilege of God’s redemptive grace—to be called sons and daughters of God. Our catechism defines adoption as “an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.”
Adoption happens by two acts of God. There is an external legal act and an inward supernatural act. Adoption is a legal, external act. Just like justification, adoption is a legal or judicial act in the court of heaven. It is not a process; it is a one-time act. We are not progressively adopted. Once made a full child of God, I remain a full child of God forever, with irreversible legal status as a child of the living God for all eternity. After God elected me in eternity, God went a step ahead and signed my adoption papers, predestining me to adoption. In the order of my salvation, after God effectually calls, regenerates, and justifies, the highest blessing is adoption.
I become a legal heir of God, a joint heir with Christ. I am legally included as a family member of the Trinitarian God. It is one of the great climaxes of our redemption. It is a legal act. I may not feel it sometimes, I may doubt because of my circumstances, but whatever my feelings or circumstances, as a believer in Jesus Christ, I am a child of God. That is my status. It is not something I have earned; it is an act of God’s free grace. Just like justification, it is something God did to me and for me in the court of heaven. I am given all the privileges of the family of God.
Secondly, going beyond the legal external act, God also did an inward supernatural act. If I adopt a child, the child may legally be my child, but genetically may not be. God goes beyond that. He, through regeneration, implants his seed in us through the Holy Spirit, through which I not only have the same nature of God, but I experientially and subjectively realize I am a child of God. God has done what no human father and mother can do when they adopt a child: change the personality and nature of the child they’ve adopted so that it is like theirs. Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!'”
Look at this. God is not only interested in calling us his children objectively and legally and then telling us to believe that. But God wants us to fully and truly experience that reality. So he sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts so we have the God-granted ability to experience what we really are—his children. We experience that not on a superficial level. The verse says we “cry out” Abba, Father. “Abba” is Aramaic for “Father.” It is not a formal title. It is a word of very close endearment, affection, and filled with love. With tears and emotions, you cry out in whatever language: “Appa,” “naina,” “daddy,” “Pithajee.” It is a word bursting out when the heart is filled with great love and affection.
My prayer life is sometimes so impersonally dead and dry. I groan, “Why can’t I go closer to God?” We have that natural hindrance, that strangeness created by sin and depravity. “How can I, a sinner, go to God?” The same God who sent his Son to redeem us from sins and make us his children, who clears not only all legal hindrances by atonement and justification but also provides an intimate access to himself and clears all positional hindrances—that same God sends the Spirit of his Son into my heart so all ethical, experiential, psychological, and emotional hindrances are removed. That Spirit comes into my heart, a heart with a million diseases of depravity and carnal enmity against God, that is always far from God, doubts God’s love, doubts his grace, and always has hard feelings and wrong thoughts and feelings about God. The Holy Spirit removes all that and makes me realize how much God loves me, how much affection is there in the heart of God for me, and gives me a sense of intimacy in my union with Christ, enabling me internally to feel the reality of an irreversible, eternal, unbreakable relationship of sonship established, not only objectively but also through subjective experience. I feel it so intensely, unable to bear it, that I loudly cry out and burst out, “Abba, Father!” That is the first purpose of the Holy Spirit’s sending into our hearts: to enjoy and experience and address the one true living God as Abba Father so we might have an internal, naturally reflexive conscious, filial disposition with God. The Spirit imparts a conscious, experiential, fatherly-related disposition. What a blessing! By a legal act, he assures us in faith that we have the rights and privileges as sons in the family, but by an inward supernatural act, he assures us experientially that we are his true sons and bear the nature and likeness of the household.
This is a high blessing in the order of salvation. Justification is a glorious blessing, but this is beyond justification. Adoption is different from regeneration; some confuse it with new birth. No, this is different and higher than regeneration. Both deal with different problems. Regeneration deals with our natures; we were dead in sins, those sinful hearts of ours that drink iniquity like water. God changes those sin-loving personalities of ours by the new birth. Adoption deals with our status. We are by nature children of wrath and children of the devil. Our status is one of alienation and condemnation; we feel a strangeness in coming to God. But because of the sin-removing work of Christ, our whole status has changed, and we can now be called children of God. In fact, the goal of God’s regeneration and justification is preparation for this crowning blessing of adoption.
That is adoption. What can I say about the blessings that flow from adoption? Not just me, but I have preached 10 sermons on this. Do you remember I preached 10 sermons on the blessings of adoption during COVID times? What comfort it gave us during that time. I can go on and preach all that and the sheer pure thrill, but we will not finish Ephesians. I will just mention seven blessings:
- Eternal Status: It gives me an forever irreversible legal status as a child of the living God.
- I have the profound and precious status of a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus Christ.
- The Promise of Fatherly Provision: God as our Father promises to provide for all our needs in this life. Knowing our unbelieving hearts, always worried and doubting his love, he gives an infallible guarantee of Father’s provision. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Arguing from the greater to the less, if you have any smallest understanding of what God has done through Christ, how shameful it is to question God whether he will meet my temporary needs. “How shall he not freely give us all things?”—a question, a reasoning. “All things!” How comprehensive the grant! All things needed to make us holy and blameless and bring us to glory. Every need—physical, social, psychological—God guarantees will be met. Just as all good fathers, my Father will supply all your needs. He wants you and me, in the struggles and doubts and trials of necessity in life, to use this argument: if he gave us his Son, how will he not give us all things? And to rebuke our own complaining hearts from worrying about worldly things.
- The Promise of Fatherly Chastisement: We worry about two things: trials and pain, right? He promises all sufferings, trials, and pain that come in our life come from our loving Father’s hand, not as punishment, but as loving chastening to aid in mortifying our sins and sanctifying us, to make you holy and blameless.
- The Gift of the Holy Spirit is an all-inclusive package of comfort, joy, and peace. Catechism question 36 says, “What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?” The answer is, “assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.” We will persevere until the end. What else do we need? Adoption blessings don’t stop there. There are adoption blessings at death, at the second coming, at the final judgment, and for all eternity in heaven. If I were to explain all that, I would need 10 sermons. If you want to hear them, go to the GRBC website, topical sermons, miscellaneous, COVID sermons. We have both English and Tamil sermons.
What a comfort here. Paul uses the scary word “predestination” to show the sovereignty, certainty, and eternity of our adoption. Wow! That means in eternity God predestined our adoption, and nothing in the universe can stop it. Wherever his children are, God’s providence will work to make them God’s children, and then once made children, everything in life will work toward making the adoption blessings effectual in their lives. That is the central goal of predestination. God has unshakably, immutably, and infallibly predestined us to adoption, the effect of all its blessings. You are settled! Blessed be God the Father for predestination.
3. The Object of Adoption
The object of adoption is “us.” This is the wonder of Paul; it makes him fall prostrate. God could have adopted holy, unfallen angels, but Mordecai adopted Esther because she was beautiful. What was in us? We were depraved, children of the devil. When someone adopts a child, they adopt the best child, right? One boy was feeling sad that he was an adopted child, not like his other friends. His parents said, “My son, your friends were born into their families. Their mummies and daddies had no choice at all, but we loved you so much we chose you to be our child. You are so special.” What is special about us? Sometimes, we jokingly say, “We brought you from the garbage.” It is very true of us.
See the graphic description in Ezekiel 16:4-5: “As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.”
You and I were born in sin, from head to toe. Not just handicapped or impotent, but dead bodies, with our whole bodies full of the leprosy of sin, with defiled sores. In God’s sight, we were most abhorrent and abominable to him. What did he see in us? Verse 6 says, “When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!'” His eye of pity. The wonder of predestination is its objects.
What story can make this wonder dawn on us? Imagine a terrible criminal with many murders, who made families fatherless, a child rapist, who cruelly killed many small children. Many families are very angry with him. The whole nation is full of anger and wants to see justice, the worst punishment for him. He comes before a judge as a child of wrath, having broken all the laws of the nation and the judge’s court, a full criminal in person and act, with not a drop of regret for what he has done, deserving eternal punishment. Let us say in some mysterious way, the judge says, “I pity you and forgive all that you have done. Now you are innocent.” What a shock!
The judge goes beyond that and says, “Okay, you are not only forgiven but justified, as if you perfectly kept the law, all the laws of the nation all your life. You should be rewarded for that. Congratulations, righteous man. You will be treated as a noble person and awarded by the president for life and services. This court declares and signs that you are righteous forever.” Amazing grace. Let us say the judge goes beyond that and says, “You know what? In this same court, I will adopt you as my child and heir of all my wealth. So I am signing adoption papers also. All my 500-crore wealth is yours.”
See, this is beyond a human example. What grace! “That’s too good to be true.” Yet God, in his marvelous, bubbling, amazing grace, to show the height of the riches of grace, has done exactly that for us in adoption, infinitely. While the whole holy universe was angry with us, there is no heaven’s law we have not broken. The first great tablet, which angers God the most: we have not worshiped God, made idols, taken his name in vain, broken his Sabbath, or dishonored our parents. We have murdered in our hearts, with innumerable adulteries, lies, robbery, and covetousness in our blood. Such criminals before heaven! God elects, not only calls, regenerates dead, depraved sinners, forgives all their sins, justifies, and then adopts them to the highest status of heaven. Blessed be God for predestination unto adoption. For the objects of adoption, if you have any sense of your heart, this should make you fall prostrate. If this doesn’t make you fall prostrate, see the next point.
4. The Cost of Adoption
Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.” Imagine the cost he had to pay for adoption. Some may adopt by paying some money and signing legal documents for adoption. But God, to adopt sinners, oh, what a price he had! He signed a bond in eternity with the blood of his beloved Son. He adopted worms of dust at the most expensive price. What can we say? Imagine the same judge sees a criminal who has killed thousands of children, but he also killed his only beloved son and raped his daughter very cruelly, torturing her for hours. How much anger is in the father’s heart! Then the judge says, “You criminal, oh sinner, still I forgive all your sins, justify you, and will adopt you as my son.” That blows our minds! That is the cost God had to pay.
How could God accept into His family the likes of you and me? Being God and being holy, we lie below His wrath. How can God say, with open arms as the Father did to the Prodigal, “I welcome you into my family, I confer upon you all the privileges of the family,” when His righteousness and His justice called out for our judgment and for our damnation? Will his divine love negate the demands of divine justice?
NO. The only way he can do that is by paying a heavy, heavy cost, even to the infinite God. Just like with election, how can God predestine such unimaginable blessings for depraved, sinful creatures? A holy God can do this only—notice verse 5—by predestining us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ. The privileges of the adopted state, both legal and inward, are so bound up in the work of Christ as Mediator. It is on the basis of the person and work of Christ. It is adoption unto sons through Jesus Christ.
Galatians 4:4-7 says, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters. Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.”
If Christ did not redeem, there could be no adoption. Why? The simple reason is that God’s love cannot negate God’s holiness and the demands of His justice. And His law has been broken by us. God has purposed that in Christ all the demands of that broken law shall be fully met so that when the Father adopts them, He doesn’t, as it were, close one eye to His law.
Imagine what a horror it would be in such an adoption where God closes his eye, forgets our sins, puts our guilt under some deep rocks or ocean, and adopts us. But what if sometime in the future eternity, some angel or devil opens it and shows all our guilt to God? “Behold what sinners these are! If you are a God of justice, by no means will you clear the guilty. What will you do with that man’s sin?” What a terrible, terrible state heaven would be if we always went about with the fear that some angel might open our past sins and show them to God.
Do you know what God did in His Son? God openly displayed the full weight of His wrath upon Him, bruised Him, cursed Him for our sins. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” so that there are no hidden unpunished sins in our account. And I can think of the future and all the privileges of sonship, never wondering if something will be discovered that will negate that privilege and force God to disinherit me. No, no. I can have the confidence that everything that stood as a hindrance to God adopting me from the legal standpoint has been fully removed. In Christ, when He hung upon a cross, He cried out, “It is finished.” And so He satisfied the demands of the law against His people that they might receive the adoption of sons. We can look into this God’s wonderful, smiling face and we can cry “Abba, Father.” He died, rose again, and said, “I go to my father and your Father,” and went and sat at his right hand and sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts, so you and I can experience the reality of our sonship and cry “Abba, Father.” So Christ not only procured atonement and justification by his life and death, but because of his continuing heavenly ministry as the ascended, exalted Lord, all the gifts and graces of the Spirit have been bestowed upon us.
Oh, blessed be our Savior Jesus Christ! Without him, God could not have only elected but also predestined us to be his sons. That is why someone said, “To the measure you feed upon Christ in the glory of His mediatorial office—Christ crucified, Christ exalted, Christ enthroned, Christ our priest—will be in direct proportion to the liberty of filial access that you enjoy as a son and daughter of God.” Otherwise, you will always come like a guilty slave. When we know such a high privilege we have, we will draw near, and then we shall know the liberty of the sons of God. Blessed be God, the Father of Jesus Christ.
5. The Manner of Adoption
The manner of adoption is “according to the good pleasure of His will.” This is a mystery we cannot fully grasp. What is the ultimate reason as to why such blessings should be conferred upon us with such a cost? Is the answer to be found in us as believers? Is the answer to be found in the world? Is it to be found in angels? Is it to be found in the devil or demons? No, no. He says the ultimate reason for which these blessings have come to us as believers is hidden and locked up in the activity not of our wills or the wills of angels or other men, but it is locked up in the will of God.
Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” The ultimate source from which these blessings flow, he says, is locked up in the activity of the divine will. See, this is the great issue that divides all of Christianity into two: whether it is human will or divine will. The first word is God’s will. One’s will is one’s determination, purpose. Verse 11 says God works “all things after the counsel of his will.” The two words, “all things,” include everything that is done according to God’s will.
The reason I titled this “the manner of predestination” is to notice something peculiar said about the exercise of that will of God with reference to the acts of election and predestination that is not said in verse 11 when God runs the universe. The second phrase is “according to the good pleasure of his will.” Wow! It is a strong word, the same word as “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God has determined in his will to elect and predestine us as sons, not just a mere determination and mere sovereign purpose, or because of no choice, some compulsion within himself, but he has done it with infinite sheer delight.
There is a great difference, you know. Suppose you have a stomach pain. You go to a doctor. The doctor says you have to get an injection and medicines, and you should eat only curd rice, no spice. You don’t like it, but realizing it is for your good, you make a will to do it. Or sometimes someone comes to help; you pity them, so out of compulsion you do it. According to what kind of will? A will of compulsion? “No other option”? A will of hesitation? Suppose you love traveling; you always wanted to go to Kashmir, a dream destination. Your boss says you have to travel to Kashmir for 3 months; only 3 days of work, 4 days of vacation. How will you do it? “According to the good pleasure of his will.” It is a delight and a joy to do this. Well, you see, you are exercising your will, but this exercise of your will brings pleasure and delight. In one, there is sheer determination; in the other, there is the good pleasure of your will.
Paul says, “How did God bless us with such a great blessing?” Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” He didn’t do it grudgingly, “no other way,” but out of the good pleasure of his will. He did it with infinite sheer delight. So there is not only the note of inflexible, unchallenged sovereignty in this will, but there is the concept of ineffable delight. So when we think of God’s blessings, with these infinite blessings, the very appointment of those blessings was something God Himself found great delight in.
Finally, what is the end of this adoption? You notice a little phrase: “to Himself.” You are all thinking you are the focus of all this. Oh no. Romans 11:36 says, “For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” God’s purpose for the creation of man is for himself: to glorify his image in man, a similarity of character, that he might have intimacy of communion.
Man was created for God’s delight, for himself, to give delight through fellowship with him. But men fell into sin. Scripture says all mankind became unprofitable; they are no longer profitable for the very thing for which they were made—to bring delight to the heart of God in intimate communion based upon a similarity of character. In the blessings of redemption, by regenerating, justifying, sanctifying, and adopting, God regains that purpose of man’s creation. This is all for his delight. We are caught in his delight.
Scripture talks of his delight in us in amazing, unbelievable words. Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save.” And what will be the result of His saving? Notice the God-centered perspective. “He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will rest in His love. He will joy over thee with singing.” Wow! How can we fathom this? Almighty God, so happy with what He gets in redemption, that He breaks into song.
So, brothers, here is the act of predestination, the goal of predestination, the object of predestination, the cost of predestination, the manner of predestination, and the end of predestination.
Application
To praise God properly for the glory of His grace in Christ, we must recognize the extravagance of His grace.
First: Realize the high status of being a child of God.
Again, this is another blessing to bless God. Do you realize how we should bless God again for this adoption? If election is glorious, this predestination to adoption is higher than that. Selection does not mean adoption, but the Lord in heaven has not only chosen us, he who has predestined what will happen in the universe has also predestined us to the highest status and privilege: son of God—something the angels themselves have never known, nor ever will. An heir of God, a joint heir with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. All the wealth of God is ours, an inexhaustible supply of God’s benefits. The Apostle Paul is saying that whatever your status may be in the world—you may be rejected, poor, sick, or hated by God—rejoice! You are an heir of an infinite God who rules over all things. You belong to his family. Your last name is God’s last name.
Surely this is the pinnacle point of grace and privilege. We would not dare conceive of such grace, much less claim it, apart from God’s own revelation and assurance. It staggers the imagination because of its amazing condescension and love. It is only as there is the conjunction of the witness of the revelation of God and the inward witness of the Spirit in our hearts that we are able to scale to this pinnacle of faith and say with childlike confidence and love, “Abba, Father.”
The marvelous blessings of adoption: the guarantee of God’s provision for all your needs. All suffering and pain are for your holiness and blamelessness. Blessings of death, the second coming, judgment, and all eternity. How blessed we should feel within ourselves! Do we cherish that? Do we realize that we are the most immensely privileged people in the world? I will tell you, it is such a realization that not only removes all complaining but makes us strive for a high standard of family life.
It has enormous consequences that the sons of God know they are God’s children. The way we see life—whether we will always be complaining and grumbling for small needs or thanking God for what we have and trusting him for our needs—depends on this. The Spirit makes us realize that the Father is very loving and kind, that he provides and cares. He protects them, and he is always on their side. We see all trials and sufferings coming from the Father’s hand and bear them patiently.
Secondly: Realize the great gift of the spirit of adoption.
The Spirit of adoption gives us an intimacy with God (Romans 8:15). Our prayer can become real by him. He gives the assurance and confidence that God is our Father, crying aloud, “Abba!” That cry is the mark of the strength of our new relationship with God.
The Spirit of adoption guides us in life, modifying and influencing the deepest recesses of our personality. He guides our thought processes habitually. He modifies our instinctive reaction to all kinds of circumstances so that our constant and habitual state of mind is like that of children of God.
The Spirit of adoption kills sin in our life. “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God” (Romans 8:13-14). He gives us a hatred for sin and the spiritual energy and stamina to kill sin in our lives.
Unbelievers
If you are outside of Christ, do you realize what you are blessing? Your sins are not forgiven; there is no justification; no adoption. You don’t realize what you are missing in this life without becoming God’s child. Then, when you leave this world, yesterday we went to the hospital late at night; one man with low blood pressure suddenly died. Believers have adoption blessings; their souls go to heaven; their bodies rest for a future resurrection. But as an unbeliever, their souls are immediately cast into hell to experience unbearable torment, and their bodies wait in the grave for the coming resurrection and judgment. Let me give you some picture of your last day. You will have all your relatives standing outside. Death shall put an end to all the benefits and comforts that you now enjoy. Now you must say, “Honors, friends, pleasures, riches, credit, etc., farewell forever! I shall never have one more happy moment! Death will be an inlet to judgment, yes, to an eternity of misery!” No one will be with you alone in the ICU. The monitors will show weak signals. You will die sweating, filled with fear. It is like being dragged to the slaughter. Your soul is filled with terror. Black horrors and thick darkness gather round you.
How do you become a child of God? John says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God.” Oh, receive Him as He’s offered in the Gospel, freely, as an adequate, an able, and a willing Savior. It all comes by Jesus Christ. Just like Joseph was raised from a dungeon to the top position in the kingdom overnight, if you will believe these truths, you will be raised to the most royal status in the universe overnight in your spiritual experience from the dungeon life you are living. If you get to him, get into him, they are yours: full pardon, acceptance with a holy God. He will make you his child and send his Spirit so you can cry, “Abba, Father.”
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 