What Does it Mean to Be Adopted?

     Teacher Debbie Moon’s first graders were discussing a family  picture.  One little boy in the picture had a different color hair than the other family members.  Billy suggested that he was adopted.

A Little girl named Jocelyn Jay said, “I know all about adoptions because I’m adopted!”

What does it mean to be adopted?” asked Andrea.

“It means,” said Jocelyn, ““that you grew in your mother’s heart instead of her tummy!”  Ahh, don’t you just love that?

     Norma Jean and I know what Jocelyn meant. We adopted our daughter,  Rachél, when she was four months old.  It’s special.  And she’s special.

     But let me tell you what else is special—being adopted by God.

     Listen to these wonderful words: “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.“In love He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”  (Eph 1:4-6, ESV) 

William Hendriksen in his commentary on Ephesians expressed the thought of the text in a  beautiful fashion.  “When the Father chose a people for himself, deciding to adopt them as his own children, he  was motivated by love alone. Hence, what he did was a result not of sheer determination but of supreme delight. A person may be fully determined to submit to a very serious operation. Again, he may be just as fully determined to plant a beautiful rose garden. Both are matters of the will. However, the latter alone is a matter of delight, that is, of his will’s good pleasure. Thus, God, who does not afflict from the heart (Lam. 3:33), delights in the salvation of sinner”      

     If you are a Christian, God has adopted you.  He chose you.  He delights in you.  He has a purpose for you.  It was a decision He made based on love. And it wasn’t a snap decision. He made it before he ever created the world!