My most enjoyable times on planet earth were not the vacations that I have taken, nor the faraway places I have been nor the great sights of God’s creation that I have seen. No, my most enjoyable times, hands down, have been sitting around my table listening to my family, listening to my four children interact. Family is so vitally important. You as a born again child of God are part of a family also. That wasn’t always the case, at one you point you were ‘fatherless’ as far as God was concerned. But, now you and He are family. 

Deuteronomy 10:18 (KJV)
18 He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.

• Today we are going to look at the label, ‘fatherless and replace it with another label, ‘family’ or ‘son’.
• You know one thing about cooking, and cooking is on the agenda during Thanksgiving and Christmas, is that the dish that you end up with never looks like the ingredients you start with.
• If you are baking a cake, you need flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, eggs, milk etc.
• The flour doesn’t look like the eggs and the eggs do not look like the sugar, and when you put all of these together in proportion, you get a cake that itself doesn’t look anything like the parts you started with.
• So, here are some ingredients for this “Bible” meal.
• We are going to take the Bible term ‘adopted’.
• And add it to the thought ‘conventional vs. unconventional.
• And mix that combination with the word ‘orphan’.
• Finally we will top it off with a by-product of ‘orphan-hood’ which is ‘insecurity’.
• Hopefully when all of that is put together, you will have a meal you can grow on.

Taking a Look at the Bible Term ‘Adopted’

Rom. 8:15 (Weymouth)
15 You have not for the second time acquired the consciousness of being–a consciousness which fills you with terror. But you have acquired a deep inward conviction of having been adopted as sons–a conviction which prompts us to cry aloud, “Abba! our Father!”

• The term ‘adopted’, as we know it in the 21st century USA, is not the same concept used in the first century.
• When Paul uses the term ‘adopted’ in Romans 8:15, he could not have been using the American version of it because America did not exist at that time.
• Let’s look at ‘adopted’ in the first century

DEFINITION: adoption/υἱοθεσία/hyiothesia – appointment or acceptance as a son, adoption ¹. Derived from huis – ‘son’ and thesia- placing and so ‘son-placing’.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Adoption

• Paul was very familiar with this term ‘adoption’. He was himself a Roman citizen Acts 22:28.
• He uses the word many times (Rom. 8:15, 23, 9:4; Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5).  In our ‘western’ part of the world, the concept of adoption has a legal basis.  A child who is unrelated is adopted into a family and gains full legal status. The adopted son legally operates the same as the physical son of descent. If we use the western concept, then Jesus would stand as the physical ‘blood-son’ and we would be the adopted sons.
• But since the Bible was written in the eastern part of the world and not in the west, the eastern concept needs to be applied in order to properly understand Paul’s use of this word.
• For example, the Roman concept of adoption does not describe a person from a different blood-line being brought into a family and legally given full rights the same as a son of physical descent.
• Rather, the Roman concept references a blood-son coming into manhood.  ‘Blood-sons’ had to be adopted to receive full status and rights in a Roman family.
• Under Roman culture, children had no rights and were equivalent to household servants.  But when a child reached adulthood (somewhere around the age of fifteen), an ‘adoption’ ceremony took place named the ‘Toga of Man-hood’. The Toga was ceremonially conferred which placed the child into adult status with full rights of maturity.
• If I use my son as an example, even though he is my only son, I would have had to adopt him at 15 years of age via this observance and only then would he have become a ‘man’ in the eyes of Roman society.
• Paul’s word ‘adoption’ mirrors this concept in Romans 8:15; not the adoption of a child from another family, but the welcoming into the family of ‘a full son’.
• Now when you overlay certain Bible verses over this concept of adoption, watch what happens.
• Listen to Paul in 1Corinthians

1 Corinthians 13:11 (ESV)
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

• When I was a child, when I had no rights because I was only considered a servant…
• I reasoned like a child.
• But when I became a man, when the Toga of manhood was conferred upon me and I became a ‘full blood son’…
• I gave up my childish ways. I gave up my servant mentality.
• What are you saying here?
• Here it is in a nutshell. Quit thinking like a servant of this world and start thinking like a ‘full blood son’- of the Most High God!
• Now let’s add the second ingredient:

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Conventional vs. Unconventional Living

Matt. 11:16-19 (ESV) 
16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, 17 “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ 18 for John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

• According to Jesus the generations of men have only the mindset of a child.
• Every worldly generation is childlike in its thought processes of spiritual things.
• So, you can never look to the world or the generations of men for mature understandings of the Most High.
• You won’t find it there.
• And Jesus gives us an example of this.

Matt. 11:17 (ESV) 
17 “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;…

• This speaks to convention.
• It is conventional that when you have party, when you have a celebration, you dance when the music is played. That is how things are done.
• “Don’t you know that John, don’t you know that Jesus? This is how things are done. You both were supposed to dance when the music was played, but you didn’t do it.”

Matt. 11:17 (ESV) 
17 … we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’

• A ‘dirge’ is a funeral-song.
• This is, again, convention, when there is funeral and funeral song, you mourn, you cry, you act sad. That is convention.
• But neither John nor Jesus acted according to convention.

Matt. 11:18 (ESV)
18 for John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’

• John the Baptist did not come eating and drinking and celebrating. He came living a fasted ascetic life.
• That was unconventional according to the world.
• And because he lived that way, the world said “There is something wrong with that guy. Look at him, he is out in the wilderness. What’s worse, he’s eating bugs, he is eating locusts. He is dressed all weird in camel hair.”
• Camel’s hair was not high fashion attire in Jerusalem society.
• In their childlike understanding of spiritual matters they concluded that John was so weird and unconventional, he must have a demon.’
• They thought he should have been celebrating and dancing at parties and John did nothing of the sort. He lived in the desert, a quiet and simple separated life.
• Are you supposed to live like that?
• Maybe, maybe not. Let’s look at how Jesus lived.

Matt. 11:19 (ESV)
19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

• Jesus was different than John.
• And you would have thought that when the Holy Messiah of God, the Great Deliverer and Redeemer would come upon the scene that he would come super serious and living a fasted austere life. And He didn’t do that.
• Jesus did the opposite. He went to parties. He went to celebrations where there were sinners.
• Both John and Jesus lived life opposite convention.
• They lived unconventionally.
• They acted according to the plan of God for their lives.
• They sought God for themselves and found out from Him how they should live and what they should be doing.
• And then they did it.
• Get your direction from Him and not from the world’s childlike way of thinking. Get your calling from Him and not from ‘this is how things are’ or ‘this is how we have always done this’.
• Jesus ends with this thought.

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Matt. 11:19
19 …But wisdom is justified by her deeds.

• Wisdom is not ‘wise’ sayings but actions based on those sayings. Wisdom is not sayings but deeds.
• Wisdom is not ‘sayings’ but ‘doings’ in other words.
• When we act according to wise principles, when wise principles spur us to deeds, those actions justify those ‘sayings’ as true and accurate. It is not what you say but what you do that shows you are a wise person.
• So, you see it is how John the Baptist acted that showed himself to be wise.
• It is how Jesus acted that showed Himself as wise.
• How did they act?
• They acted unconventionally. They acted not according to convention, not according to the status quo.
• What does this all have to do with orphans? (That’s next week’s blog :))

Call to Action:

If you are a born again child of God, you are just ‘a chip of the old block’ so to speak. You are God’s son, you are God’s daughter. Walk in that confidence. Hold your head high. Approach the Father God with your requests with confidence (Heb. 4:19). Live this way everyday of your life and walk hand in hand with your Father God.

Question: How has your life been altered once you realized that you were a real part of God’s family? Would you please leave your remarks in the comments section below?