Adoption as Children of God – Paul Estabrooks
By Paul Estabrooks
While working with Far East Broadcasting Company in Manila, Philippines, my wife, Dianne, and I felt led of God to adopt a baby Filipina girl. We named her Melinda and she happily joined our two older birth children as a permanent member of our family to this day. (You guessed it! We adopted Melinda, the Host of See Hear Love!)
The foundation for the act of adopting children is indeed biblical. In the Old Testament there are stories of three adoptions: Moses, Esther, and Genubath (See 1 Kings 11:20) – two in Egypt and one in Persia. In the New Testament we learn that God’s adoption plan was not a Plan B. His
plan existed even before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-6). As Pastor John Piper loves to say, “Plan A was creation, fall, redemption, adoption so that the full range of God’s glory and mercy and grace could be known by His adopted children. Adoption was not second
best. It was planned from the beginning.”
This adoption by God is also at the very heart of the Gospel. In Galatians 4:4-5, the Apostle Paul says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” God
chooses to speak of us as adopted as well as being children by new birth.
Today adoption is costly and it was for God also. To redeem us so we could be adopted as His children, cost Him His only Son’s very life. That was infinitely greater than any cost we endure
in adopting and raising children.
God does not leave us in our fallen condition with no feelings of acceptance and love. Rather, He pours the Spirit of His Son into our hearts (Galatians 4:6) enabling us to feel the affection of
belonging to the very family of God. He gives us both legal standing as His children and the Spirit of His Son so that we find ourselves saying from a heart of deep conviction, “Abba, Father.” In our words, “Daddy!” I pray that you have or will experience that kind of adoption!
Paul Estabrooks is a Writer, Podcaster, Speaker & Melinda’s Dad