Adopted

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

ADOPTED

Eph 1:3-10

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

NIV

Being declared holy and blameless in his sight because we are in Christ is an incredible spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms and now we can add being adopted. Because of His great love for us even before He created the foundation of the earth He decided the method by which we would become His children. Once again, this is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. But the facts are the facts and we cannot deny the facts. Before He made Adam in their image God knew that Jesus was going to have to be the sacrifice that would give us the right to be adopted as the children of God. We do wonder if God knew that before He made Adam in their image, that Adam would disobey and thus become aware of both good and evil and in doing so abdicated his immortality and sonship and therefore God already had a plan for Adam and all his descendants to regain both. However, that is the fact. It is God’s good pleasure to make a way through Jesus Christ for us to be adopted as His children. God always loves us, in fact, God is the very epitome of love. He loves all of His creation, starting with us. Again, it boggles our mind that even before we loved Him and were living in sin He still loved us as He does with those who are still living in sin and either have never heard of Jesus or are refusing to accept Jesus because they love their sin. In some sense this is exactly what Jesus said when he made the point we cannot serve two masters. Of course, Jesus was using God and money as the two masters and in that sense, money does represent our self, or our sin. If we refuse to love God, then we love our selves which is our sin. Yet, because God still loves us, he decided the only way for us to be his children as He would have us to be, is adopt us through Jesus, or because of our faith in Jesus. This is a wonderful event, to be an adopted son of God. It means we are now His heirs. Of course, we do not inherit all that is God’s because He died and left all that is His to us. We are adopted into His family being co-heirs with Christ and we have already inherited all that is God’s. We may not fully have it all just yet, such as incorruptibility, imperishability, and immortality, but we will, and we can go to the bank on that, in fact, all that is already in our heavenly bank account. Therefore, let us live to the fullest this adopted life of ours, living completely in the love of God as His children, enjoying all that is His, knowing that it is already ours.