Reflection:

As we have read in the verse previously, led by the Spirit, we are daughters and sons of God. Paul further elaborates by saying we have received ‘the Spirit of sonship’.

A better, more accurate and richer translation is ‘the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship’. Paul is saying that through the Spirit’s power, God our Father has actively adopted us into sonship.

Adoption was very common in ancient Rome. It offered a means to a more secure and richer future for the one adopted, or a means by which a man without a son could continue a family line or an opportunity to strengthen political binds between families.

Unlike today, adoption would often involve not so much young or infant children, but adolescents or even young adults. The adopting father would make serious and binding contracted commitments to assume all responsibility for the one he was adopting. In turn, the child being adopted would immediately receive all the rights and privileges associated with being a child by birth, including inheritance rights and all debts from his previous life being wiped out. These were just some of the privileges of ‘sonship’. In our new identity as God’s sons and daughters, we no longer live with insecurity and fear but are able to cry the cry of intimacy — ‘Abba Father’ or ‘Daddy, Father’ — for we who were once a long way off are now home again, or perhaps home for the first time.

What are the privileges of being a son or daughter of God that you are most thankful for?

Prayer:

Thank you, God, for adopting me as your child. Thanks for the safety and security I have in your family. Amen.