"Adoption is a central biblical description of how God saves. It emphasizes the quality of the new relationship that God brings us into, a relationship of having been made into his children. In explicitly Trinitarian terms, this means that God brings us into the relationship of sonship that has always been part of his divine life. When we become sons of God, we are joined to the sonship of the incarnate Son, which is in turn the human enactment of the eternal sonship of the second person of the Trinity. Sonship was always within God, and it came to be on earth as it is in heaven, in the person of the incarnate Christ. Every time we hear the biblical proclamation that we have been made God’s children, we should hear the deep incarnational and Trinitarian echoes of this good news: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). Paul declares, “God sent forth his Son . . . so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:4–6). Paul’s way of putting it is especially helpful because it also refers to the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about our sonship. The Spirit is the one who baptizes us into Christ, forms us into sons on the pattern of his sonship, and even takes up residence within us as the principle of sonship that enables us to call on God as Father. When the eternal Son becomes the incarnate Son, his eternal, filial relation to the Father takes on a human form. He does not become a different person but remains the Son. His procession from the Father extends into a mission from the Father. Thus divine sonship appears among humans, in Christ. The Holy Spirit, as we have already seen, is involved in this mission of the Son to be incarnate. He brings about the conception of Jesus and empowers Christ in his ministry, among other things. But the role of the Spirit is especially important in incorporating believers into this sonship of Christ. It is the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15), or the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), who makes us children of the Father. He puts us into the place of sonship. This is how “the two hands of the Father” work simultaneously to bring us into fellowship with God: the Son opens up the path of human sonship, and the Spirit puts us into it."


Sanders, Fred (2010-08-31). The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (pp. 157-159). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

Blogs to return Monday