Last time we saw how Paul pivoted from focusing on the ‘before’ picture of humanity, to the ‘after’, by talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in freeing us from the way of sin to live out God’s holy way of love. Today we’ll turn to a short passage in which he introduces a new metaphor for the life of faith: adoption.
Text
[14] For all who are led by God’s Spirit are sons of God. [15] For you did not receive a spirit of slavery so as to become afraid once again, but you received a Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry “Abba! Father!” [16] This same Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. [17] And if we are children, we are also heirs. And being God’s heirs, also joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we might also be glorified with him.
Experience & Encounter
I have to say that of all the many metaphors the New Testament uses to describe salvation, adoption is among my very favourites. I love the way it emphasizes a new way of making family and home.
Explore
Being a short passage, it’s no surprise that there’s only one major question that I want to explore, but we can divide it into several sub-points:
- What was the role of adoption in Judaism?
- What was the role of adoption in Roman society?
- What are the theological implications of understanding salvation in terms of adoption?
Adoption in Judaism
It is widely noted that adoption is not a significant theme in the Old Testament. The Law of Moses makes no provision for adoption, nor is the practice referenced in the Prophets or Wisdom texts. The only overt reference to it in the whole Old Testament is in Esther, a folk tale set during the Persian period, in which the main character is adopted by a cousin following the death of her parents (Esther 2.7). If we expand the horizons to include the practice of establishing a non-son as an heir, we’d have to include Abraham and his steward Eliazer in Genesis 15 and Jacob counting his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48.5-6), but considering one of these cases was a hypothetical, and the other simply elevated grandsons to the status of sons, these examples are marginal at best. The closest the Old Testament comes to the adoption metaphor Paul uses here is in Hosea 11.1, where the prophet, in God’s voice, says: “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.”
While contemporary Jewish practice does allow for adoption, the biological heredity still takes priority in questions of Jewish identity and hereditary office. This is far from the situation Paul envisions, in which the adopted children receive the same benefits and status as the Son of God (Eberhart; Kruse 340).
All this to say, in making this analogy, Paul is not drawing on his Jewish heritage (Eberhart; Kruse 337).
Adoption in Roman Society
The situation could not have been more different in Roman society, where adoption was common, especially among the upper classes (Eberhart; Tonstad 246; Kruse 337). In fact, at least seven Roman emperors received their inherited position by adoption (Eberhart). The practice was also used in imperial propaganda; for example, one coin shows an image of the emperor adopting the children of the barbarian kings so as to civilize them (Eberhart). While Roman law did allow for both sons and daughters to inherit, preference, especially with regards to adoption, was given to sons, which at least partly explains Paul’s starting by calling us sons first before going to the gender-neutral ‘children’ (tekna) (Kruse 339; Eberhart).
While we think of adoption as primarily involving young children, in Roman practice it was generally used as a way of formalizing patron-client relationships, bringing a client (sometimes a freedman) permanently and legally into the household. As Eberhart notes, this involved formally transferring the adopted son from one family into a more powerful one, bestowing on him not only new rights and privileges, but even a new name. This has strong resonance with Paul’s message here, about being transferred from the old humanity (Adam, sin, death) to the new (Christ, justice, life), as well as with the ancient Christian practice of receiving a new name upon baptism.
Theological Implications
This short passage has huge theological implications. It’s one of the clearest New Testament examples of the theology behind the ancient Christian saying that I repeat often here: “We become by grace all that Christ is by nature.”
This connection is another likely reason why Paul starts off by referring to ‘sons’ (hyoi, often translated as ‘sons and daughters,’ but this is a case where the inclusive language can cause us to miss something important) before switching to the gender-neutral ‘children’ (tekna) later in the passage.) He wants the reader to connect their own experiences and vocation within the new humanity to that of its archetype, Jesus. He is the Son of God and heir of all that is God’s; but, through adoption we all become sons of God and co-heirs in him. This sense is reinforced by the return in 8.16-17 to the participatory language of 6.4-8; ‘bear witness with,’ ‘joint heirs with,’ ‘suffer with,’ and ‘glorify with’ (Witherington 219; Eberhart).
Paul’s articulation here of our adoption as children and heirs, of God extends beyond simply being made an heir but as part of the family. This is the major theme of Kelley Nikondeha’s wonderful book Adopted: The Sacrament of Belonging in a Fractured World, in which she explores this biblical theme through her unique lens as both an adopted child and adoptive mother. She writes of the theological significance of adoption:
Anyone can be your family if you choose to live with fidelity toward one another. …Every time the family gathers at the breakfast table, the counter-narrative of non-biological belonging is incarnated. We are connected by more than genes; we are relatives by daily fidelity and even deeper mysteries.
I can think of no better definitions of the new vision of humanity Paul envisions for the Church than this. It’s a radically new understanding of religious belonging, no longer slaves but beloved children (cf. Galatians 3-4). This family-making metaphor for what Jesus was doing is hinted at in the Gospels, for example in Mark 3.34-35: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother,” but really comes into its own as Paul develops it in Galatians and here. As Eberhart rightly notes, this image would have all the more resonance for a community that included many currently and formerly enslaved persons, who understood first-hand the “existential angst” and “precarious predicament” of life on the outside of a family’s circle of care (Eberhart; cf. Witherington 217). This explains the focus in 8.15 on fear. That former fear grounded in existential precariousness is replaced by familial bonds of love. The power behind all this is the Holy Spirit, which Paul considers the single defining characteristic of the Christ-follower (8.9; Eberhart; Witherington 219; Kruse 336).
It must be remembered in this discussion that being part of the family also comes with responsibilities and its own kind of obedience. It’s just of a different kind, and inspired by different motivations: it’s the faithful obedience that is the natural outflow of a loving human relationship rather than one grounded in law and order (Eberhart). If we are part of God’s family that is revealed in and created by Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, our lives will take on the shape of God’s values and concerns — and lest we forget, living out those values and concerns got Jesus crucified (Witherington 218f; Kruse 340). As 8.17 reminds us, we might expect no less.
Challenge
This passage has both been celebrated and critiqued by historically marginalized voices. On the more critical side, feminist interpreters laud the full inclusion of women in this vision of family, but note how patriarchal that vision remains (Eberhart). Women are fully included but as sons, and the soul still cries out to God as Father not as Mother. There is a long-standing myth in much of Western Christianity about the supposed intimacy and ‘childlike trust’ of the term ‘Abba’ that Paul uses here (and which Jesus used). This myth has been rightly shattered by scholars over the past half century, led by Mary Rose D’Angelo, who demonstrated that it was just the normal word for father without any particular special affection attached. In the Roman cultural context, we must also remember that the father of the family (paterfamilias) held incredible power and was in many ways ‘above the law’ for how he dealt with his household.
Along this line, the idea of the emperor as the paterfamilias of the empire and adopting the barbarian children as his own is of course a remarkably colonialist image. At this point, we might also hear the voices of the now adult children who were adopted and raised by families of a different race or cultural background and the kind of dysphoria and erasure they experienced in otherwise caring and loving homes. In lovingly ‘not seeing’ their adopted children as ‘different’, adoptive parents can unwittingly ‘not see’ their children, and the unique challenges they may face, at all. (This is to say nothing of the mentality behind the Sixties Scoop here in Canada, where adoption of Indigenous children into white families was an intentional assimilationist policy!)
What might we say to these critiques of the images Paul uses here? The biggest thing we, on all sides of such debates, must remember is that all of our language about God is metaphorical. No metaphor is going to work perfectly; there is always going to be a gap between our words and the reality behind them, and so we have to respect those gaps as much as we respect the metaphors. God is Father, but God is also not Father.
There are two other considerations we would do well to remember that are connected to this need for linguistic humility. First we need to ensure that, as much as possible, we are allowing the gospel rather than our social constructs to define what our language means. We may call God ‘Father’ but this is not the harsh controlling Roman paterfamilias (or the aloof and disconnected stereotype of the suburban father in our own context), but the good and gracious Father revealed in Jesus’ teachings. Likewise, we may call God our lord and king, but this not the capricious, arrogant, and power-hungry image of human power-brokers and kings, but the wise and just, peaceable rule of God revealed in the prophets. In the case here, one of the main points of Paul’s whole ministry was that Gentiles didn’t have to become Jewish to become followers of his Jewish messiah. So I think we can safely say that the vision Paul has for the Church does not involve cultural erasure and assimilation! But the concerns of those who have experienced these all-too-human dark sides of adoption stand as a witness and reminder that we need to be aware of the risks inherent in the metaphor and do our best to mitigate them.
And second, the inability of our language and metaphors to match the theological reality we are trying to communicate means that we need to make space for many different metaphors. When speaking of this new humanity, the New Testament sometimes speaks of it in terms of an adoptive family, but also as a kingdom, as a democratic assembly (ekklesia), as a priesthood, as a city, and more. Some may resonate with us more than others, but we need the breadth of them all so we don’t fixate on only one image and therefore misrepresent the reality.
Finally, before leaving this section behind, I’d be remiss as a gay man not to talk about the resonance of the image Paul uses here with the importance of found or chosen family within the queer community. Queer people know better than many that family isn’t always a matter of blood, but of who shows up for you: family by faith and written on the heart rather than in a written (or genetic) code.
Expand
In this passage Paul introduces a powerful new image for the community of the faithful: as an adoptive family. The image radically expands our idea of kinship and belonging, of who we consider to be ‘ours’. It is no longer based on blood-ties, or bonds of shared age-and-stage, cultural or ethnic background, or any other natrual affinity, but about shared participation in the life of Jesus.
Summary & Conclusions
As part of his larger discussion of the new life made possible by the Holy Spirit ‘in Christ’, Paul uses the analogy of adoption. We were once slaves in the household of God but are now adopted as ‘sons’, as full members of the family of God and heirs to the promises of God’s kingdom. But in belonging to this family, we take on its characteristics: its values and lifestyle and concerns, characteristics that will always leave us out of step with the prevailing culture.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 